How Green Cover Got Started: Keith Berns on Cover Crop Mixes and Regenerative Farming

0:02 Well today we are very excited to welcome Keith Burns from Green Cover Seed. I'm sure most people are familiar with Green Cover Seed, but we're excited to have Keith on here. He's given some excellent presentations before on carbonomics, but today we wanted to just have a discussion and get to know Keith. Green Cover Seed has been an excellent partner and sponsor to a lot of our events, and as you know they're a leader in the cover crop community, and just wanted to get going. So thanks Keith for being here.

0:40 Yeah, thanks for having me. It's my pleasure, Liz. First I just wanted to start out with an introduction so people can get to know you. I wanted to ask where were you raised? I know you have a farm. How did you get started? How long have you been farming?

1:03 Yeah, no, happy to share that information. It's kind of a fun story. I'm actually living in the same house that I grew up in, so my family was raised here on the farm. We're in South Central Nebraska, about 30 miles south of Hastings, or for those not so familiar with Nebraska, we're about two and a half hours southwest of Lincoln, so the south central part of Nebraska. I was actually born in Moline, Illinois. My dad was an engineer for John Deere, but he moved back to his family farm area here when I was one year old, so I don't really claim Illinois as my home state. I definitely say Nebraska.

1:44 After graduating, I went to the University of Nebraska and got my degree in ag education. I taught school for 10 years. I was an ag teacher for four years and then kind of worked my way over into computers and technology. This would have been the late 80s and early 90s, and personal computers were just coming in, so I spent some time kind of doing tech coordinator stuff at a couple different schools. My wife and I moved back to the farm in 1998 and started farming full-time with my brother Brian because Dad was retiring, so it kind of opened up an opportunity for us to move back.

2:23 He had been experimenting with no-till since the early 80s, the late 80s, and when I moved back we made the determination to go 100 percent no-till on everything, and really we're very committed to that cause. We were very involved with the no-till groups and organizations, particularly No-Till on the Plains. My brother was on the board, and I did the website for No-Tilling on the Plains. It was such a good move for us because not only did we learn a lot of things, but we met so many people, and as with anything, so much of your opportunities come from the people that you know. We knew Gabe Brown and all these people who were kind of pioneers of the regenerative agriculture movement. We knew them back before we ever started Green Cover Seed because they were also involved in the no-till movement and no-till organizations.

3:22 A pivotal moment for us was in 2006 when a man by the name of Vladimir Caligari from Brazil came to the No-Till on the Plains conference. He was kind of the cover crop guru of South America. He came over and was showing us all these pictures and telling us all these stories of what farmers in Brazil were doing with this crazy concept called cover crop mixes, these cocktail mixes, blends—whatever you wanted to call them. Six, seven, eight, ten different things all mixed together, and then they plant them out there, and they're seeing amazing results. It was a pretty new concept back then because anybody that was doing a cover crop in 2006, well, you planted some sorghum or millet or you had radishes. Radishes were kind of a hot thing, so that was a revolutionary concept.

4:24 We thought it was cool, but we didn't do anything with it. But Gabe Brown and Jake Fuhrer and that whole innovative group of people up there in the Bismarck, North Dakota area, they took it and they put it out in the plots. They were extraordinarily dry in 2006 in North Dakota, but they put these plots out with monoculture strips and they all burned up to a crisp—nothing really grew and survived. But where they mixed all these seeds together just like the pictures that Vladimir was showing, they had incredible results. That inspired us to do the same thing here in Nebraska. In 2008, we wrote a small grant and got about five thousand dollars to buy some moisture sensors. We put these sensors in the ground and we planted monoculture strips of all these different cover crops, and then we planted mixes. These moisture sensors monitored the water that was raining because this was all dry land, so it monitored soil moisture, and what we saw very clearly was that the mixes outperformed the monocultures.

5:27 Was the same thing that Gabe and Jay saw up there but we saw it on the moisture sensors. Is that anything growing in a monoculture used far more water than anything growing in a mix. To this day we can't necessarily explain all the mechanisms of that but it was data that was showing the same thing that Gabe and Jake saw, that these mixes were just so much more efficient at using moisture. And so as a result of that, we learned three things. Number one, we learned that the mixes were much more water efficient. Number two, we learned that the cattle livestock did fantastic on these mixes because we planted the rest of this field to a cover crop mix. And then number three, we discovered it was really hard to find these things. If you're looking for 30 different types of cover crop seed, it just wasn't readily available. It was hard to source.

6:21 And so as a result of all those, we decided to start Green Cover Seed in 2009 and try to offer these diverse blends to people. And so from the very beginning, because of the experience that we had, we have been huge proponents of cover crop mixes and the power of diversity from the very beginning. And because we didn't start out as a seed company, we don't sell corn and soybeans and wheat seed. We didn't before and we don't now because we started as a cover crop only seed company. It has allowed us to really focus and to really zero in on cover crops, cover crop mixes, how these different species interact with each other, when to plant them, how to plant them. And all of our energy has been devoted to cover crops only and not the other hybrid type things for cash crops, which are still important. It's just not what we do.

7:23 We've been able to really focus in on that and develop some innovative things around that space. But to give you an example of how fast it's grown, in 2009 we moved enough seed out to people to cover about a thousand acres, and probably half of that was ours, and then we sold to other people. Well, we moved through the no-till group that wanted some, and it's grown every year since then. And we had to hire a lot of people and build a lot of buildings. But last year we moved enough seed out the door to seed about a million acres, and this year we're going to be running around 20 percent above that, even more than a million acres going out the door this year.

8:05 And that's not just us that has grown that fast. That's a testament to the whole industry. Whether you want to call it soil health, cover crops, regenerative ag, it's an indication of how fast that's caught on and how people are adopting it and continuing to do it because it works agronomically. So that's kind of a long background in how we got started, but it's interesting how all those connections work because so many of the people that we continue to utilize as resources and we partner with many of them, we met before we ever started the seed business simply because of our passion with no-till farming at the time.

8:51 I have found within, like you said, whatever you want to call it—cover crop, soil health, regenerative ag—that the community just seems to grow and grow and grow. And we all help and support each other. But so what do you think as this industry is growing—and I hate to call it industry, but as this movement is growing—what do you attribute that to? What do you think are the major factors that farmers or ranchers are seeing on their properties that are inspiring them to either start buying cover crops or buy more or expand?

9:35 Sure, you know there's a number of factors. Number one, there's just a group of people out there that are just crazy enough to try just about anything and everything. And we love working with those innovators because, like Gabe and Jay, you know, that'd be great examples. Because there were a thousand people in that room that heard Adamir talk about these concepts. To my knowledge, they were the only ones that took it home and did something with it right away. And so we love working with people like that that see a concept and think, 'I wonder if I could do that on my farm.' And there's a lot of people out there like that, and that's the great part about this regenerative ag community.

10:20 These people are fearless, but they're also a hundred percent not afraid to tell you that they failed and a hundred percent not afraid to tell you what worked for them as well. And so you can learn from their mistakes, you can build upon their successes. And it's just such a great community of people who are willing to share. It's really an open source information. And that's the way we want to be as a company as well. We're pretty passionate about publishing a lot of educational materials like this.

10:53 This is our eighth edition Soil Health Resource Guide. We're working on our ninth edition and we print 25 to 30,000 of these every year and we give them away completely for free. All of our information on our websites is all free. So we have gotten so much from the community around us that we want to be able to contribute and participate back. So that would be the first thing — there's just a real core group of innovators who are pushing this thing forward.

11:21 Number two, initially a lot of traction got it to the ground because it was so easy to see how cover crops could reduce erosion. In certain areas, erosion is just a huge problem and it still is. But within that, people who had the mindset of I really want to protect my land for future generations — cover crops just made a huge amount of sense. And so that went in early on within the movement.

11:51 Then as more and more weeds became resistant to some of the chemistries that are out there, more and more people started to jump on board from a weed control standpoint. Particularly cereal rye has a lot of positive benefits for weed suppression. So we started seeing a number of people come on board with doing these things from a weed suppression standpoint. And then of course there are different government programs like EQUIP contracts and CSP contracts that people would be in, and you can kind of tell if they're in it just for the program or if the program is helping them really accomplish the long-term goals that they want to have.

12:35 Really underlying all of that would be a big portion of our customer base — guys with livestock. And it's just so easy for them to justify these practices because not only do they see the great improvement in their soil health, water infiltration, water holding capacity, less erosion — all those things — they can directly monetize the planting of these cover crops when they graze them. There's just tremendous benefit and value to the grazing of this, and there are all kinds of documented cases of how much you can add to a farmer's bottom line when they have their own livestock. And I want to stress this — when they graze it properly. Because if you improperly graze it, graze it too much, raise it too long, you can actually send your soil health backwards into a negative state. But when it's done properly and when it's done right — Gabe and Jay and those guys up in North Dakota did a lot of really groundbreaking research and collected data on this — it can increase the carbon content, it can increase your organic matter faster than just about any other way of doing it.

13:42 So I think those things have all led to the continued growth of this. And now there's this huge infusion or will soon be this huge influx of money into the movement with the climate smart commodities grants that are being released. I thought it was a billion dollars but now they're saying they're going to be awarding 2.8 billion dollars worth of grants in this round. So I don't know what that's all going to look like — I haven't really read through them, we're not directly involved in any of them — but there's going to be a lot of opportunities for a lot of people to participate and potentially have some incentives to help them get started.

14:29 Yeah, I think that announcement was huge and I did see that they were adding more funding to it. So I'm not sure how that's going to look or what awards are going to come out for that. But you mentioned government programs and CSP and climate smart commodities. There's also lots of other programs out there like carbon programs. How do you feel like all of these are going to affect regenerative agriculture as a whole or the adoption of no-till, cover crops, and different practices like that?

15:09 Well, it's certainly going to have a positive benefit towards adoption. Now, how much of that will be long-term adoption — so the big question is will producers continue to do these practices even at the expiration of whatever program they're in because they see them work agronomically. And the answer to that is it depends. It depends on how they implement these. Steve Groff, a good friend of mine and has been a cover crop pioneer for many years, I love the saying that he has. He says cover crops will make a good farmer better and a bad farmer worse. And I love that because it's emphasizing the fact that cover crops will work if you are willing to apply the additional management that it requires to integrate it into your system. Now, if you're not willing to change anything else in your system and you're just trying to force cover crops into the hole that you've got and you don't change anything else within your system, it's probably not.

16:14 Going to work and you're probably not going to see the benefits and that the expiration of your program that you're in you're probably not going to continue to do it but if you're willing to manage the system and manage it as a system whether it be tweaking your rotation a little bit or tweaking some timings to where cover crops are now part of the bigger picture and not just an extra piece thrown in there it's going to work quite well, particularly again for the livestock guys but for the non-livestock guys as well.

16:47 And particularly for the people that own their own land or have long-term control over the land the people that are going to struggle with trying to justify it are going to be the ones that have no long-term control over the ground that they farm because so many of the benefits that accrue from these practices you get some immediate benefit but they're compounding and cascading benefits which means they get better and better and better every year and the longer you do it the better it gets and so if you're putting all this money into something for the first two three years and then you lose that land somebody else is benefiting from all the work and investment that you did.

17:30 So I think that there's huge opportunity for us as a movement—I like that word by the way much better than industry—us as a movement to really reach out to the landowners and landlords and get them to see the benefits of these practices and encourage them to talk to their tenants about long-term leases or long-term arrangements to where if you make these investments you know we're going to promise that you'll have control over this ground for you know five years ten years whatever that number is that they can both agree to and be comfortable with you'll see a much higher adoption rate from those producers if they know that they're going to be in line to reap the benefits down the road.

18:14 Yeah and speaking to that, maybe not only the landowners but also might generationally have you seen the transition from say a dad to a son or a granddad on down, has that been something you've encountered that might be somewhat difficult? Because I see that a lot, some of the younger generations want to come up and do something different but it's hard to. We all know it's hard to change anything we do.

18:49 Yeah, yeah we see that too and you know there's some young guys that come to us and you know they ask a lot of questions they want to do this that or the other thing and then they say well but you know I gotta I gotta ask Dad or I gotta ask Grandpa and totally understand that but what some of them have done and I think this is very clever and very creative and I would encourage anyone listening in a similar situation they've talked them into saying hey give me it doesn't matter if it's 10 acres 20 acres 40 acres give me this field that I can kind of try some of these things on and experiment with and just you know let me do this kind of proof of concept type thing if you will.

19:29 And then they can kind of have total control over that smaller piece of ground and I totally would encourage people to do that I don't want anybody to go out and try some new practice that they're or the rest of their family are not comfortable with on a large scale you can learn as much on 20 acres as you can on a thousand acres but again you have to manage that intensively you have to really pay attention you have to be really good observers.

19:56 I think that that's one of the things that farmers of my generation and the upcoming generations by and large we've lost the power and the ability to observe we've come to rely on technology too much and we don't spend enough time in the field just physically observing and not just observing to this chemical work or these bugs coming in but observing you know hey what's going on over in this road ditch or what's going on over here in this CRP field that hasn't been farmed but it's got all this diversity or what's going on with my neighbors field that's doing this crazy cover cropping thing.

20:35 You know for the most part we're not nearly as good as the observers as our forefathers would have been generations ago because they didn't have the benefit of technology they had to use their own senses to figure out to observe and then figure out what was going on and I think if we can get back to having more of that skill particularly if we can focus it on a small area then we can prove that this concept does work and then the father you know can maybe say you know what I that did better than I thought let's roll that out on a couple of quarters or let's roll that out on the home pivot and kind of scale up and build up from there.

21:19 But Liz one of the coolest things that we see whether it's at a show or when people come I absolutely love it when older farmers

21:26 And you know in their 60s or even 70s and they've got really no great reason to try to learn something new and completely change their system but yet there's some of them out there that do and they're the most passionate about it and they're so excited about being able to change their system for the better even though they know that they're close to retirement age because again they know that they've got other people within their family line that will benefit from the changes that they're employing to make their land better and that's really exciting when you see that happen.

22:04 Yeah I get really excited when that happens as well especially at a larger event and it's not the maybe 25 year old farmer that's going to be taken over soon it's well I've been doing this for 50 years and now I gotta change so that's always exciting yeah you know and there the other thing is there's let's be honest there's a lot of farmers out there that maybe don't have children that want to come back and be part of the operation and so you know the transitional plan is a little bit in flux and unknown and I know some guys doing some creative things there too you know of inviting young couples into the operation and working on a transitional plan to not only teach them how to do the farming techniques and practices but then also putting in place a way to transition not only some of the decision making but eventually some of the ownership over to them and doing that and again my hat's off and I have I wholeheartedly applaud you know individuals who are willing to do that to give young people a chance because we all know you know it's so expensive to start a farming operation that if you don't have that initial capital or that initial family connections to get started it's really hard to break into it if you're going to do larger scale production.

23:28 Now there's a lot of opportunities you know to do some specialty things you know grass-fed beef pastured pork you know vegetables things like that direct to the consumer marketing that you can start out with a pretty low capital investment but if you want to get into the larger scale production that's really hard to do without having some family connections of some sort so we've had we've had people reach out to us and say you know what I'm getting ready to retire but I want somebody to farm my land and this is the way I want it done do you have anybody in my area that would be interested and and we can help connect them and there's there's other there's other websites and software starting up that are going to help it's almost like a dating service for landlords and tenants to want to come together you know people with regenerative mindsets to bring them together to make that transition easier.

24:24 Yeah I think it's great as a community is built out and I do hope that these grants help further that as well you know you mentioned we have some questions in the chat but first you've mentioned a couple of times experimenting y'all started out experimenting on your own land you know I know I encourage and I've heard you and other people encourage people just to try out different things on their own link can you describe how that might look to someone that maybe hasn't used cover crops before or maybe has just used like cereal rye you know what what that would look like to them operationally.

25:10 Sure yeah you know so if you're just starting out you know the first thing I would do is I would look to what are what are my local resources because you can you can get on YouTube and watch you know Gabe Brown videos all day long and Gabe's doing some great things but if you try to take what Gabe is doing and do those same things on your farm I can almost promise you that you will fail because what works for Gabe in Bismarck North Dakota is not going to work for other people now the principles will work but you're going to have to tweak the practices to fit your own environment and that's why you know when we talk about the soil health principles you know the five soil principles that you know USDA has been preaching for many years you know the understanding ag guys Gabe Brown and Ray Archuleta they kind of they put a sixth one in there that is becoming more commonplace and that's the context what's the context of your operation because your context is going to be different than Gabe's or mine or anybody else's and so you have to take what they're doing and then make it fit your operation that's the contextual part of it and so the first thing I would do is I would look locally and try to find out who else is doing something similar it may not be your direct neighbor but more than likely within an hour's drive of you and in a similar type environment in climate somebody's going to be doing something that you can learn about and so I would seek those people out and I would pick their brain.

26:46 People within this space, this community, are very open to sharing, and so my guess is they're not going to mind sharing that information with you. And I would start there. I would start by going okay, will that work on my operation? If you don't know anywhere else to start, near a corn soybean guy, the absolute easiest thing to do is to plant cereal rye after you harvest your corn and plant your soybeans into that. And there's a whole number of agronomic reasons why that's the easiest, the highest chance of having a really positive experience, and we can get into that later if we have time. But I start simple. You don't have to start with a 12-way mix across the entire farm. Start simple, and the way we learned all, almost everything we learned about cover crops is by we planted literally thousands of test strips and test plots every year. We'll plant, you know, 100 to 150 six-foot-wide strips of different things, and then we spend a lot of time out there observing. Oh, that's the difference between a cowpea and a mung bean. So again, dedicate a small area to doing some crazy things, doing a variety of different things. But even beyond that, if you're going to do a cover crop out in the field, the easiest thing in the world is to just skip a pass, leave one pass where you don't plant the cover crop, and then for the next year you can observe: is this past where it had nothing, is it better or is it worse? Does it have more weeds or does it have less? Did I get more rainfall to infiltrate than that or less? There's a ton of things you could observe just by the side by side with and without. And then again, with the equipment that most people have today, it's pretty easy to, you know, okay, I'm planting the majority of my field at 50 pounds of this cover crop seed. Well, I'm going to do one strip at 30 pounds. I'm going to do one strip at 70 pounds, and then again I'm going to observe: is it better, is it worse? Do I need 50 pounds? Is 70 pounds better or can I get by with 30? You don't know unless you do those types of things, and that takes almost no time, no effort to do it. Really, it didn't cost you anything because your average seed with one strip of 30 and one strip at 70, you're still averaging 50. But yet now you've got things that you can look at, observe, and learn from, and then implement into next year. And then share that information with the network of people that you've built, and you can all learn from each other by doing those things. So those are just some pretty simple ways to do it. And then, you know, don't be afraid to get on YouTube and spend time listening to what other people have done. Don't be afraid to get in your car and drive to a field day. Whether if you're close enough to come and, you know, see our plots where we have over 100 different cover crops, great. If you're not close enough to us, somebody in your area is going to be doing something that's worth driving to and observing and picking their brain about.

29:51 Yeah, and if you can't find someone that you know or have direct connection with within driving distance, I know you can reach out to us or Green Cover Seed, or anybody in our network, and we'll help find you someone you can talk to or we'll talk to you ourselves. I know I've asked Green Cover Seeds lots of questions and they've helped me a lot.

30:20 So we did actually, you mentioned corn soy, and we did have a question in the chat: after we harvest our corn crop in Michigan, how soon should we plant a cover crop, and they're going into soybeans next spring? Yeah, so I would, I mean, I would get it going as soon as you can. You know, if you can have the drill in the field chasing the combine, that's great. You know, some places they'll actually broadcast the seed before they harvest to try to get it up and going before harvest. That works well in wetter environments if you're irrigated. And, you know, people all the time say, well, you know, I didn't get my corn harvested till October 25th, and it's obviously too late to plant any cover crops, so I just parked all the equipment and went south for the winter or whatever. And, you know, we really try to stress to people: you know, cereal rye is an amazing plant, and it's literally never too late to plant cereal rye. It germinates at 34 degrees soil temperature, and nothing else does that. You know, it may not get out of the ground and grow a ton, but it's going to germinate. You're going to have a sprout there, and that's enough to make that plant burn wise so that when spring warms up, that thing's ready to take off. And cereal rye never goes completely brown in the wintertime like wheat or the other cereals do. And because of that, if it's 38 degrees and the sun is shining, which for a lot of people describes a lot of winter days, it's 38 degrees or higher in the sun, you know, there's a little bit of

32:01 Cereal rye will actually be photosynthesizing and you may not see a huge amount of growth but if that plant is green and it's getting that sunlight and it's photosynthesizing it's putting carbon root exudates into the soil it's feeding your biology, is keeping your system alive. And so because it has it's almost like a trickle charge on a battery, it's sitting there primed and ready to go so that when it does warm up in the spring it just takes off like crazy. And that's why cereal rye can grow so incredibly fast in the springtime when warmer weather does come because it's been growing a little bit all winter long.

32:41 I would say get it out there as soon as you can even if it's the middle of November. I've got people all the time that tell me oh yeah we planted our cereal rye in December and it was fine. Again you're not going to see a ton of fall growth but it will be there in the spring. So in your situation Tom I would get that going as soon as I could after I harvested.

33:03 Because even though it can be planted later you still take a penalty in how much it grows and how fast it grows and the benefits that you get the later that you wait. So it's always better to go sooner rather than later when it comes to these fall planted cover crops but later is still better than never. And I tell people all the time I would rather plant rye in December than to plant oats in March because most years from a growth standpoint you're going to be way ahead with December planted rye, now that's assuming the ground isn't frozen solid like a rock and there's not a foot of snow on the ground. If that happens well then you have to wait and you know take advantage of the next chance that you have. But if you have the opportunity to get out there and scratch that in I would still do that late planted rye versus early planted oats is almost always going to be better.

34:03 Tom also was mentioning that their farmer has been using Roundup but they wanted to transition to organic. And I want to point out that the organic regenerative farmers that I know especially in the northern climates are all growing lots of cereal rye cover crops to manage weed control because if you don't have that cover out there and that residue cover it's going to be hard if you're not able to spray.

34:35 Making that transition to organic from conventional I mean that's really hard, you know, to be no-till organic. I mean I've always said that's the Holy Grail of soil health. If you can eliminate both tillage and chemicals that's the Holy Grail of soil health. I mean you've got to figure it out and you're doing it and there are people out there that are getting pretty darn close to making it happen and making it work. Liz I know you've had Rick Clark on and he's in my opinion one of the people at the top of that list. But even Rick, you know, doing and knowing all the things that he does, you know, like this year he still had to go out and do some tillage because he simply the year did not give him the weather conditions to allow him to grow enough cover crop biomass to provide the weed control that he needed.

35:28 Don't get hung up on completely eliminating everything because if we're going to farm even if it's regenerative organic we need to have tools. Now for some people Roundup is a tool, for others tillage is a tool. So don't be afraid to use those tools that are in your toolbox. You just use them properly, use them as little as possible because every time you use a tool it's going to cost you money. And too many people are using tools way too often and now all of a sudden they've got so many dollars tied up in the production of their crops because they didn't think about what was the right tool to use, what was the right timing to use it, and how often can it be used.

36:09 Cover crops can certainly be a huge part of that transition over to organic farming, particularly from a weed control standpoint. You know, like Liz said, you know the cereal grains allow you to grow a lot of biomass. You know some of those cover crops can be crimped very well, you know if you get the timing right there. So there's again we don't have time to go into all the intricacies of this but certainly cover crops are going to be a huge part of any type of regenerative organic operation.

36:42 Yeah and I got really excited that you pointed out that we still have tools to use and I'm not a fan of being operationally restrictive for the sake of a name or a label. So I've asked farmers when I have them on these and also privately like do you find it more difficult to be a conventional farmer or a regenerative farmer.

42:32 You can use it. You don't have to buy our seed in order to set yourself up an account and use that thing. In fact, I would say more than half the people that use it aren't necessarily customers, but we're okay with that. I don't have enough seed for everybody anyway. But if we have something that we can help other people with, if there's knowledge, that's why we put money into this, the calculator and all those resources, because we really do want to see the whole movement increase and expand. And we know that we'll get our share of business from it and we'll be okay. And that's why we can give this away for free.

43:09 The calculator can help you put some of these mixes together, particularly some of the more complex mixes where you want to get a lot of diversity in. In order to do that, you're really going to have to be planting those earlier. You know, it's not hard to make a cover crop mix for October because there's like four things that you can choose from that really makes sense. But if you're planning that in August, there might be 40 things that could all be really good in there. So that's where you need a little bit more help and advice and guidance along the way. I would encourage you to check that out. You can just go to our website, greencover.com, and click on the smart mix button and it can help you put those things together.

44:02 A specific example would be like the seed size of, say, rapeseed versus cereal. When we were building that calculator, we struggled over this for a long time because some people say, 'Well, how many pounds per acre should I plant or how many seeds per acre should I plant?' And that varies widely. You know, like turnips, you're looking at 150 to 170,000 seeds per pound. Soybeans, you know, 3,000 seeds per pound. So I can't just say 'you need 50 pounds' because that might be right for soybeans, but it would be a disaster with rapeseed. And I can't say 'you need a million seeds per acre' because that might be okay for a cereal, but it would be terrible for soybeans.

44:55 The way we do things and what's built into the calculator is we go off what's called a percentage of a full rate. We look at each of those species and say, 'Okay, soybeans, a full rate of soybeans for a cover crop is going to be 50 pounds. The full rate of turnips for a cover crop is going to be six pounds.' So if I use two pounds of turnips, well, two out of six, that's 33 percent of a full rate. And if I go to 25 pounds of soybeans, that's 50 percent of a full rate. So now I've got 83 percent of a full rate as I'm building this mix. That's the way we look at it. We really don't pay attention to pounds, and we really aren't super concerned about seeds per square foot. We're more concerned about what percentage of a full rate of the overall mix you're putting into this.

45:48 The calculator will help you through that. It will show you as you're adding additional things to your mix, you know, you're at 80 percent of a full rate or you're at 200 percent of the full rate. We think that 125 percent of a full rate is a good place to shoot for because when you mix these things together, it's a less competitive environment than when you grow them as a monoculture. Thus, in a less competitive environment, you can push things a little harder. We can have more seeds out there to confer more benefits.

46:21 The seeding rate, as you set up your account within the calculator, you tell it where you live and it knows the climate history of your area. So for people in more arid areas, those suggested seeding rates are going to be lower than people in higher rainfall environments. The seeding rates are going to be higher. That's just the way it is. You could plant more seeds where you get more rain. So there's some automatic adjustments in what that percentage of a full rate looks like based on the geography of where you're located. That's the way we've approached it. We just go simply off that percentage of the full rate, and we figure that the pounds and the seeds per square foot, the seeds per acre, that will kind of take care of itself if you have that overall percentage about right.

47:13 Doesn't it also address your resource concerns? Like, if you're not integrating livestock, you're going to have a different plan obviously than you would if you're going from corn to soy, or if you have erosion concerns, or if it's a nutrient cycling concern. I don't remember what everything you have listed on there, but it's nice that you can throw that in as well.

47:44 You cannot go build a mix in the smart mix calculator without telling the software what you want to try to accomplish whether it be erosion prevention or supplemental grazing or breaking up compaction or nitrogen fixation because the system can't help you determine what the best things are going to be if it doesn't know what you want to try to accomplish. So that's one of the first things that you have to tell the system is what are your goals for this cover crop and then it helps you sort through the different options that are out there.

48:17 Yeah, and so that goes back to the principles are the same all over but it's context, context, context for everybody.

48:27 You mentioned, you know, only half of the customers on there or the people on there might actually be buying seed from you and you don't have enough seed anyway. And now that these climate smart commodity grants have come out, a lot of them deal with cover crops. We've got people enrolling in carbon programs, they're going to be implementing cover crops. And just in general, the knowledge base and especially as fertilizer prices go up, people are buying more cover crop seed to make up for those nutrients.

49:00 Is there an opportunity for more people to grow cover crop seed? Do you need that? And if so, how would they go about doing that?

49:09 Yeah, hey, absolutely. Yeah, you're exactly right, Liz. When there's more demand you got to have more supply. And so one of the things that we've long feared is that, particularly when the government steps in and infuses a bunch of money, it no longer allows the market to work the way the markets should work. There's some artificial demand put up on the market without having the supply to come along to meet that. So we're going to have to meet a much bigger demand in a short period of time, so we have to ramp up this supply. And the big companies aren't doing it. You're not going to see the big seed companies developing and growing and marketing these cover crop seeds. They may be selling them but they're not necessarily going to be doing the growing. And I don't want them to. I want this to come from more of a grassroots network, if you will. But so most of our seed that we contract, it's with our customer base because we know them. We know the ones who are not just the best farmers because the best farmers don't always make the best seed growers because growing seed is different than just growing grain. It frankly requires a little bit different mindset. So we look for people that number one want to grow seed and have the patience and have the management ability to be able to do that because you can't approach it with the same mindset because it's a product now that I'm going to put back into the ground so it has to be treated like seed and not like grain.

50:50 So we typically get most of our growers from within our customer network and then we work with them on the agronomics. We provide the seed stock, we provide some training. We'll arrange a lot of the freight and the shipping. We do a lot of the cleaning. So we take care of a lot of those things. If it's certified seed, if it's anything that's a protected variety, we hold the licenses, we do the certification paperwork. We do all of that because, to be honest, it's just a giant pain in the butt and if you don't do it on a daily basis it can be difficult, it can be overcome, but it's much easier when you're doing it on a regular basis and are familiar with the processes.

51:31 So we kind of help people through that. So the biggest need that we have is for people growing cereals, you know, rye, triticale, oats, barley. That's certainly where the biggest acreages are. But we have a lot of acres of things like hairy vetch and winter peas and spring peas and cowpeas and mung beans. And we're even contracting some of the specialty brassicas like our collards and turnips and things like that. And each of these kind of have a different region where they're best suited to be grown. You can't just grow everything everywhere. So we kind of look at people in different environmental areas that might fit well.

52:10 So if you're interested, just shoot me an email. My email address is just Keith at greencoverseed.com. I've got a great guy on staff, Scott Raven Camp, who is our contract production manager. He works with all of our growers. I don't work directly with them because I just don't have the time that it takes to give people the attention that it requires to grow seed well. So I would just get you connected with Scott and he would be able to work you through what a potential contract could look like, you know, what the expectations are. One of the big things is if you don't have on-farm storage to hold this stuff, we're probably not going to be able to.

52:54 Work with you because we can't take your Harvest Right out of the field. We really need to see it tested before it comes in. We have to ensure that the germination is going to be good, that there's not a bunch of noxious weed seeds in it. We need to make sure the moisture is proper. So if you don't have the facilities to store that after harvest, it's probably going to be pretty hard for you to jump into that seed production portion of it, because most companies just can't take that like an elevator does.

53:28 That seems to be a general issue, not just on Farm. That in my mind generally with like regenerative crops. So anybody out there that would like to build that infrastructure out for us, that'd be cool.

53:43 And that's a great point. And to be honest, you know, if you are a farmer and you're interested in doing this, particularly with interest rates going up, you can get some really good loan rates. The USDA has some really good on-farm storage programs. So don't be afraid to go into your county office and talk to them about putting up some green bins. It's not cheap, but it's an investment. And if you can get that at really low interest rates and pay that off in five or seven years, it's a great investment for you. And it gives you the ability to control your own destiny, whether you're growing seed for me or growing seed for yourself and you're going to try to sell it on your own, or even just growing a cash crop, but you want the flexibility of being able to market and deliver on your time frame and not on the co-op's.

54:37 Invest in some infrastructure. And I'd say there's some great programs and great attractive loan rates. I have been working with some different entities to try to get language into the new Farm Bill around some of this about the seed production system. You know, we're going to need more growers, we're going to need more people to haul this stuff, and we're going to need more people to clean it as well, because all the seed that's grown has to go through a cleaner somewhere. So there's going to be more need for seed—everything from seed growing to transporting to conditioning to storing and selling. You know, if we're doubling and 2.8 billion dollars being dropped into this movement, it could easily double the demand in three years, and there's not anywhere near enough seed to do that. There's plenty of people willing to grow it. We just have to get organized enough to do it.

55:34 Well, and that's what's great, I think, even without the commodity grants, but just in general, is that being able to build out this infrastructure, whether we do it from a grassroots movement or using grants or both, all of those things provide jobs in rural communities. And it's building back Rural America. And I think I know that's my goal, even though I grew up in a city, that's still my goal.

56:06 I think it's really great to mention all of those different opportunities. It absolutely is. And as more people can come on and do these things, like Liz said, it just bolsters your local economy. You know, our closest town here is like 200 people, and I have 40 people that come to work here at our building every day. So we're drawn from all the small towns around us, because obviously I don't have enough labor base right in my backyard to do it. We've employed all the kids that we could, our own kids, so we had, but we ran out of them too fast. So then we had to expand our workforce. But we've got a great team. And the things that will attract people to your business are going to be, number one, what's your mission? Particularly with the young, the Millennials—they're very passionate about what they're passionate about. And so if you don't have a really good mission and vision for what you're trying to accomplish, you're not going to attract and hold a lot of people in that generation. And that's a great benefit for us, because our mission statement is to regenerate God's creation for future generations. You know, that's a great mission. And a lot of people can get on board with that. And a lot of people want to be part of that movement. So that's a real attractive thing. And then you just have to develop the right culture within your business that both attracts and holds. Because I can't compete with the co-ops on benefit packages because they're just so big and huge, but I can beat them all day long on the culture that we can provide for the work environment.

57:49 That made me a little emotional.

57:54 Yeah, I completely agree with that. And you can't fake that either. That has to be real, because farmers can smell a pile of poo 800 million miles away.

58:10 We're actually at time right now. I wanted to mention your upcoming events. You have one coming up in southeast Kansas, November 30th through December 1st. Do you want to tell us what that is real quick?

58:27 Yeah, so this is the third year that we're doing. We're calling it the southeast Kansas soil health conference. We have a second location in Iola, Kansas, which is kind of down in the southeast corner. Third year that we're doing it, two-day event. Ray Archuleta is going to be one of our headliner speakers. We've got Paul Jasa from University of Nebraska. If you've never heard Paul talk, he's in my opinion the number one expert, at least in this country, maybe the world. I haven't heard all the world guys yet, but on no-till equipment, he's an engineer, but he's also got tons of practical experience in setting equipment, adjusting equipment for this regenerative type system. So he's going to be really good. Kind of a fun thing, the Peterson Farm Brothers. If you've never heard them, they make agricultural song parodies. They're going to be talking not necessarily about soil health specifically, but about AG advocacy, which is really important because as ag and consumers interact in environmental groups, it's going to be really important that we have a great story to tell. We have to tell it in the right way. We have to be honest, but we also have to be firm in how we tell that. So they're big advocates for agriculture. We're going to have a discussion around that advocacy. And then, you know, Dale Strickler with our organization will be talking, and then we've got a number of local farmers who have had really good successes with implementing these regenerative practices into their operations. So that will be a great way to learn all about that.

1:00:09 And then I did see somebody asked about getting a copy of the soil health resource book. You can go to our website. We just spent a ton of time revamping our whole resource section. So you can actually go on there and you can download PDF copies of all of the old ones, and there's also a place right on that resources section where you can request a copy to be sent out. So just go to Green Cover. You can either go to greencover.com or greencoverseed.com. Either one will get you to that. And then click on resources and there'll be a place there for all the resource guides as well as our past webinars that we've done too.

1:00:52 We will be at the Fuller Field School. Any of the events that we go to will have these at too. We'll be at the Prairie Foods one as well. This is coming up November 14th and 15th in Pratt, Kansas. They did it last year. It was a great event. Keith is a keynote speaker there. If you haven't heard him speak, he does an excellent job.

1:01:26 The carbonomics talk is excellent. I'm sure it changes up as the days go by, but it's great. And then Green Cover Seed will also be with us at the big soil health event in Cedar Falls, Iowa, December 5th and 6th. You can use the QR code there to register. We are going to have some great speakers, including Rick Haney, Lance Gunderson, Russell Hedrick, Adam Chapel, Adam Darby. We have Brian Darby from Iowa State extension research. And we are actually going all the way into more depth with carbon with Dr. Jerry Hatfield, and then into human health with Aaron Meyer. She is a chef and regenerative ag advocate out of Illinois. She's awesome. So we're really looking forward to that. We also have a regenerative beer brewing contest there with taste testing. So if you're into that kind of thing, we'll have that as well. It's going to be a lot of fun, and hope to see you there. And I'll go back to this one in case you want to scan the QR code to join Prairie Foods and Peace.

1:02:50 I really appreciate you being on here, and it was great. I think we probably could have talked for another couple hours. Well, we can always do it again if you'd like. Yes, I would love that. That would be great. And I don't know if you'll be there next week, but at Gail Fuller's at the Fuller Field School in Sudbury, Kansas, that's going to be a great event as well. I'll be there. Green Cover Seed will be there. I think Jess just put the website there in the chat if you're interested at fullerfieldschool.com. And I want to thank everybody for being here today. Especially, I think this is a great conversation. Yes, let's set another one up. I think would be an awesome idea. All right, thanks Liz. Thanks for joining me. Everybody have a great weekend. Thank you.