Climate Smart Sorghum: Cost-Share Grant for Sorghum Growers

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0:04 Hey everybody Keith Burns with Green Cover here in another of our series of videos with the Climate Smart Commodity Grant opportunities. I've got Matt Durler here with the Sorghum Growers and he's going to talk a little bit about what the Sorghum Growers Climate Smart Commodity Grant has to offer for farmers.

0:23 So, may I go ahead and just introduce yourself, talk a little bit about your role within the organization and then just share a little bit with us about your Grant, the geographic area that it fits into, and what it offers?

0:38 Sure, happy to be here this morning. Matt Durler here. I'm the managing director of Climate Smart Sorghum, born and raised in southwest Kansas just east of Dodge City on a sorghum and wheat farm. Here we run some.

0:52 Cattle as well. Most of my career in the ethanol industry in operations for a bit and then predominantly on the commercial side, between selling co-products and handling the value added grains in our carbon programs.

1:07 Our climate smart commodities grant is set up as an inset to ethanol and essentially will cover 200,000 acres a year for the next five years. We piloted last year with 23 growers, about 10,000 acres to make sure we understood the ins and outs of how that would flow with the interaction with NRCS and USDA there, with implementation.

1:29 As an inset to ethanol, the biggest drivers to carbon intensity is nitrogen efficiency, both in terms of fertilizer and in flux from the field. So we focus a lot on climate smart farm practices being no till or reduced till, nitrogen management, and then conservation crop.

1:48 Rotation and what that rotation may or may not include a cover. A lot of times that's a wheat sorghum rotation, a wheat sorghum fallow, that sort of thing. So we get some biodiversity with that as well as the benefit of mixing crop species. But the end game here is really to provide that connection from farm practice into the renewable fuels market.

2:12 Sounds like it's a fairly straightforward and has a lot of benefits there. So is this for sorghum growers anywhere or just a particular set of states?

2:21 Yeah, so sorghum is a pretty regional crop if you look at it. You have the Coastal Bend of Texas and then essentially the Texas Panhandle up through Kansas and bottom part of Nebraska. We do have a little in South Dakota. So the footprint of this grant is the bottom two counties of

2:38 Nebraska over to the eastern two counties in Colorado defining our north and our western border, the entire state of Kansas, the state of Oklahoma, kind of the top third of Texas, and those easternmost counties in New Mexico. So a block right here in the Heartland.

2:56 So basically if you're in kind of a sorghum growing region, you're probably going to qualify there. Now, do they have? We would cover about 85% of the tortilla makers in the country.

3:06 Okay, great. Do they have to be selling this through an ethanol plant, or are there other marketing avenues that would still qualify them?

3:14 No, so our program looks a lot like EQIP and TSP. That's a good way to think about it. So this is payment for practice. The grain is not encumbered. Now we are working diligently on the side to provide those pre-market opportunities.

3:26 That we think will be durable beyond the life of the grant so working closely with the ethanol plant as we talk about clean fuels production credits, heavily engaged in the 45Z discussion, try to have that pathway where these climate smart practices can count into ethanol production but the grain's not encumbered. So while we're working heavily in the renewable fuel space we're talking with food companies just trying to provide opportunities for those producers that would add value on top of this and then hopefully be things that would survive beyond the five years of the program.

3:56 Okay so it's a five-year program, so if I sign up am I in it for all five years or is it like one year at a time and I can renew if I want to or how does that work?

4:07 Yeah so kind of the handshake.

4:09 Our commitment is that we would like producers to be in for all five years, but it is a series of five one-year contracts. That's predominant because of the fact that since we tied a farm track in field and sorghum's rotation crop, there's very little continuous sorghum planted—usually it's in conjunction with another crop, so it'll move around the farm. We enroll the actual planted acres each year, and for most farmers we'll cap out at about 500 acres, 450 something like that, because we do have a $25,000 payment limit per year per farmer. Unless you qualify as historically underserved, and then there's a 15% increase. But general practices are going to be kind of between $40 and $60 an acre for most producers.

4:53 Okay great, and is there—do these have to be new practices that are

4:59 Being implemented or can they be a continuation of existing practices. They can be continuation of existing practices. Probably the place where we see the most adoption of new practices on our program is around the nitrogen management and precision MT. As they start to understand not only are they saving money through efficiency there, but the impact that has on carbon intensity. But we have a lot of historical noil farmers that are bringing those practices in and then trying to get a little better with fertilizer utilization, that probably the dominant piece. But as we look at that inet play, you know, really telling the story of the efficiency of production agriculture is a big part of this. And then collecting enough broad data over time to make informed decisions for the regulated fuel markets as well as the.

6:30 Variety those sorts of things. So we think every time I'm in front of a group of producers I tell them whether they like it or not, we're in the data business now. Yeah, it's just their decision on what they want to do with that. But as we get better with data we make more informed decisions, and the companies telling with inputs can make better informed decisions as well if we want to participate in those markets. But completely up to the grower.

6:52 Yeah, so it sounds like it's a good entry way for people to get in, start collecting this data, and then you know this could be a launching point for additional programs down the road. Sure, we sure see it that way. So as National Sgan producers, we have about 5,000 members across the country, and really our goals here with the program is try to meet at least 80% of our producers.

7:14 Where they are today. You know, there's some people that are pretty advanced in the recordkeeping and bring it directly off of their equipment, where there's some shoe box farmers as well. So we've partnered with Farmers Edge to be able to bring in that telematic information where we can, but also be able to upload manual data whether that's coming from FSA or something that they have in invoices and spreadsheets to get that data in a place, usable, and then it's up to them where do they want to go from there.

7:41 We have seen a good bit of engagement, particularly younger people coming back to the farm, and people believe there's an opportunity to upgrade their data systems going ahead and taking that leap to say this is an opportunity to kind of forge a new frontier for the.

7:56 Operations, yeah, well sounds good. Talk to us real briefly here in closing about what does that application process look like? Is it take a long time? Is it something where you help the farmers apply or what does that look like?

8:10 Yeah, so all of our application is through direct contact. You can go to our website at sorom growers.com and ret smart and find the sign up form. That'll get you to me or one of our grower representatives. Really, it's a quick onboarding to go through what kind of practices are you implementing on the farm today? Do you have any existing contracts with CSP or equip? Want to make sure we're not double dipping those, obviously. And then making sure they understand the data burden. The data burden is significant as we need three years of historical records to form the baseline with which when we

8:48 Move forward, but the actual sign up process is pretty quick. If growers qualify and they're interested, and then through the growing season they can provide us with that historical data and if they sign up online, we'll get them in touch with one of our grower reps. We have about 10 scattered throughout the region that'll work directly with them and then show up on form when appropriate.

9:09 All right, well that sounds like that's doable for most people and you're not going into this alone. You're going to have some assistance in helping you through it if it's a program that you think is for you. So again, one last time, just go to what website to get the process started? Torum Growers climate smart and we'll try to post that in the comments here too as we put this out for people to watch.

9:37 Mat, thank you so much for taking the time to share a little bit about your program and sounds like it's something that can really help farmers. Thanks.