Regenerative Agriculture Practices (On a Small Scale)

Melissa: Hey, Pioneers. Welcome to episode number 431. I'm just going to preface and say as I am introducing today's episode, we have a power outage right now, and my generator is going in the background. I'm hoping this little microphone does its work and you're not hearing that. But the good news is, for the interview part, I had full power that day and you will not hear any background noise of the generator. However, I wanted to get this episode out for you because it's got a lot of fabulous information.

Soil regenerative and regenerative farming, it's fascinating to be able to see the difference, especially once you're aware and start paying attention. Where I live in western Washington, Northwestern Washington state, we have down down the mountain downriver, as we say, down below, down in the mountain area. We have a lot of agriculture in Skagit County where I live. And last month, they were, of course, plowing up a lot of this as mono crop. Right? Old type farming, but not really. Only old farming, I should say, that really has been like the last century. So if we go back to the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression, a lot of that is because we are tilling everything up, then the topsoil is getting blown away. We are losing topsoil faster than it can be made. There's a lot of issues with mono cropping and farming that way.

However, that's just what a lot of people know. Myself included, that's what I always saw. People always just tilled up their gardens. You saw large fields being planted, harvested, et cetera, and tilling was the way to do that. But I was down and they were doing that for the spring planting, and we happened to have a pretty decent size windstorm come through, and we hadn't had rain for a few days. So of course, this meant that that soil was drying out. And this windstorm came through and people were sharing on Facebook like they were taking pictures because the dust was moving across the interstate and the roads and creating these little, not tornadoes, but look like that. Right? Like these little whirlwind dust devils all up the street, and that is all the topsoil that was just being blown away from these fields. And when you magnify that across, at least the whole US and that type of farming, oh goodness, that can be alarming if you really start to think about that and you compound that over the years.

So I am very excited for today's guest, because we are talking about and walking through the principles of using regenerative agriculture, regenerative ranching. That's probably a term that you're starting to hear. There's becoming more and more awareness, and the good news is there is more and more people who are adopting the regenerative type farming practices, both in agriculture, ranching, and those kind of go hand in hand.

My point being with both agricultural crops, growing things as well as livestock, and I am super excited to be learning more about it myself. We have been implementing these practices now for quite a few years on our farm, but so that more and more people can become aware of it. Because the more people are aware of it, then the more people can help solve it and support it in different ways. So today's podcast guest is Jim Johnson, and Jim serves as a senior regenerative ranching advisor at Noble Research Institute, and he has worked there since 1999. After receiving a bachelor's degree in soil science from the University of Illinois and a master's degree in agronomy from Oklahoma State University, he worked in various plant breeding programs in Nebraska, Texas, and Oklahoma. His interests are helping ranchers use soil health principles and ecosystem processes to improve their land. And he has 28 years of ag industry experience, specializing in cover crops, no-till and soil testing. At Noble, Jim's focus is on soil health.

And I was first introduced to Jim when I went to and spoke at White Oak Pastures, who's a huge advocate of regenerative agriculture and ranching, and we started talking about soil and improvement, and then Jim started sharing with me about soil testing. He's like, "Well, what type of soil testing are you using?" And I'm like, "I've got to have you on the podcast." So you get to hear that conversation, the continuing of it and learning right along with me. Without further ado, here is my interview with Jim. Well, Jim, welcome to the Pioneering Today podcast.

Jim: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Melissa: Yeah. Well, as I mentioned, I was telling Jim right before we started actually recording, that I have been waiting for this episode ever since I got to meet him at White Oak Pastures back in March when we were there for a regenerative agriculture conference because he has some interesting things about soil health that we're going to be diving into today, including some different methods or different ways of looking at testing for soil fertility in comparison to what most of us know when we think about soil testing. So I don't want to give too much away at the beginning, but I've just been counting down my calendar until today to get to pick your brain. But back it up just a little bit for folks as we get into this. So Jim, if you could tell me a little bit about your background, what you do with the Noble Research Institute and exactly what the Noble Research Institute is and how that relates to agriculture.

Jim: Sure. So my background was very conventional. I grew up in a small rural community in central Illinois, worked for a family farm. They raised corn and soybeans and wheat hogs and some hay, and I went and got a very conventional soil science degree at the University of Illinois, got a plant breeding degree at Oklahoma State University. Right after that, I worked in Nebraska for a corn breeder and I worked in Texas at Texas A&M for a forage grass breeder and came to Noble in '99 and started in their ag research operation. In 2000, I became at that time what we called a soil and crops consultant. And so, at that time we had multidisciplinary teams that worked directly with farmers and ranchers on their property to help those farmers and ranchers achieve their goals.

Fast-forward to today, I'm now a senior regenerative ranching advisor. I facilitate one of our courses, our Noble Land Essentials course. And what Noble's trying to do today is we've built these courses because our goal is to influence, to help regenerate and to regeneratively impact 164 million acres of grazing land across the US. And so, while there's nothing wrong with working with folks, one at a time like we used to do, to reach that many acres, and that's going to be about 84,000 producers. If you do all the math, we need to have a larger audience than that, than just one producer at a time. And so that kind of brings us to where we are today and some of the courses that I help facilitate.

Melissa: Yeah, awesome. So I think probably what would be great is we hear a lot of times thrown around and used regenerative agriculture, and so some folks of course know what that is, but others, you hear the term, but what exactly does regenerative agriculture, regenerative ranching, what does that mean and why then does that matter?

Jim: So for us, it's a philosophy about improving soil health. And so, we use practices based on soil health and ecological principles. So we really focus more on the principles rather than recipes or prescriptions. We focus on these principles and the ecosystem processes and how we can manage those so that we can restore carbon to the soil and improve wildlife habitat and have more nutrient-dense food and healthier land, cleaner water, cleaner air.

Melissa: So with soil health, and this is where I'm really excited to get into this, because you and I were chatting when we were at White Oak Pastures, and that's why I'm like, "Okay, I just need to have you come on the podcast because I know I'm not the only person that's going to be interested in this, and I think that it can help a lot of people." So the way that we measure soil health, a lot of people will do soil tests like myself included there, and looking at basically your major micro macro nutrients. So of course, nitrogen, magnesium, potassium, go on down the list, pH levels, which is not a macro nutrient, but that's kind of what we typically see in our soil tests. And then, you kind of have this range that's considered to be acceptable or average. You want to fall into this range based upon these different ones. So you'll get your soil test back and it will show you all of these and it'll say if it's too high, in acceptable range, or obviously too low.

And so, my understanding is a lot of that was based upon in the 1930s from considered the Albrecht, if I'm saying that correctly, Method. And also, looking at that ratio. Like you want to have this much calcium to this many parts potassium, for example, or magnesium, et cetera. And so, that seems to be the majority, at least in my experience, of the basis of how we look at soil testing and then applying amendments or not applying amendments, et cetera. But what you were sharing, and it actually made me dive into it and actually see how a lot of these levels that we came up with based on that 1930s, but a lot of it actually is kind of lacking some research. There was a lot of assumptions or it was for one area of the country where that would be true on certain crops, but not necessarily for others. So I thought it would be great for us to dive into that a little bit because I found it very fascinating, and I know I just hit the tip of the iceberg on that.

Jim: Sure. A lot of the old, standard conventional soil tests use strong acids to extract all those nutrients from the soil, and then they've done research and correlations and make assumptions that based on that result, you need X amount of nutrient. There's a newer test that we use, and it's called the Haney Test, and it was developed by Dr. Rick Haney at the USDA ARS research station in Temple, Texas. And he uses weak acids that mimic the root exudates of plant roots. And so, plants are leaking sugars and acids and hormones and things, and so it mimics what the root actually encounters and also he uses a water extractant. And so, using those two extracts, a water extractant and a weak acid extract, we believe probably more accurately represents the nutrients that are actually available to the plant in the soil rather than using those strong acids and creating conditions that plant roots never encounter in the real world.

One step further than that, he also measures nutrients that are available in the soil organic matter and microbiome. We know that there's lots of bacteria and fungi and ZO and all kinds of microscopic things that are in the soil. Well, those things a lot of times live very short lives and die and recycle their nutrients. And those nutrients from those dead microorganisms are available to plants. And so he is able to measure the nutrients that are available in that way that a conventional test doesn't measure. Conventional test only measures the chemistry, and he measures the chemistry as well as the biology with that Haney Test.

Melissa: Okay, if I'm taking my soil sample and sending it off to the lab, I'm assuming industry standard still is probably using the Albrecht Method, or are they moving over to using the Haney Method? Is that something you need to request, or where do you find a place that's using the Haney Method versus the Albrecht Method?

Jim: There are more labs all the time doing the Haney Test, and so you can just inquire wherever you send your samples normally. Some university systems, university testing labs are now offering it, so you can inquire if they do, or you can just get on the internet and search for, "Soil testing labs Haney Test." And you'll see if they offer it or not, and then you can request that Haney Test.

Melissa: Okay. I love the idea that it's testing based upon what the plant roots are actually going to be experiencing. I think that's so key. And so, I'm very excited to, one, inquire of the lab I've been using to see which method that they're using, and if not, ask if they can use the Haney Method. And if not, then I'll be on the hunt for a new one.

But going back to soil health. Now, I know a lot of my listeners are familiar with soil health, something that I've been talking about, and they're very much interested. They're already interested in a lot of cases in permaculture for backyard and their homestead, and using regenerative agriculture principles themselves. But I think that a lot of times people don't realize, especially with the larger grown crops when you're not raising yourself on a small homestead, but the majority of our modern industrial food system and industrial agriculture, that the soil health has been so depleted in really a short period of time. If we could just go back a hundred years. But what that means to people, to our actual food, and of course then overall the planet. So if you want to talk just a little bit about the importance of soil health, because I know people think like, "Oh, well, if I have poor soil health, then my plants aren't going to grow very well." But there's a lot more to it than that.

Jim: Sure. I think the basis of healthy soil is having the carbon in the soil and having the organic matter, and so then that leads to more nutrients that are also available to the plants, which leads to more nutrient-dense plant food for us to eat, or more nutrient-dense plant food for our livestock to eat. And that makes our livestock healthier for us. That carbon also leads to more water infiltration and water holding capacity. So it makes our land more drought and flood resilient. It makes more cleaner air, cleaner water. Having healthier soil typically will be correlated with more plant diversity, which is beneficial to wildlife and all the wildlife habitat that it provides.

And so, there's just so many benefits to that soil health, but really I think the key is the carbon in the soil that we've lost through practices that we've done in the past doesn't mean that we were wrong. We did the best we knew how to then. But we know some better practices and better principles to apply now so that we can rebuild the health of our soil and restore the health of our soil and restore the carbon of the soil and the organic matter and the water holding capacity and the nutrient holding capacity and all of those good things that come with it.

Melissa: Yeah. So what are the six soil health principles that are involved in regenerative ranching? And I know we loosely touched on carbon and whatnot here, and especially in regards to obviously with the Noble research as well.

Jim: Sure. We use six soil health principles. You might hear some use five or some use four, but they should sound very, very similar. Number one is context. So you have to operate within your context and know your context. Number two is cover the soil. That's a super important soil health principle is keep the soil covered. Three is minimize unnatural soil disturbances. Four is increased living roots. Keep living roots growing in the soil as many days as possible. Five is increased plant diversity, excuse me, increased plant diversity. And number six is properly integrate livestock. Those principles are what we try to base all of our actions on the farm or ranch around is implementing those principles.

Melissa: Okay. For the first one, which was within context, can you explain a little bit deeper what that means?

Jim: Context is everything about your situation. A lot of times we need to think about the historical context of the land to begin with. For instance, if land was prairie and we want to grow rice, well, rice may not be adapted there. If our land was hardwood bottoms and we want to grow grass, well, it might be hard to grow grass in land that the context for that land is something else. But then, it's also our own personal context. It's our knowledge base, our skill set, our financial resources, our labor that we have available, our tools that we have at our disposal. And so all of that makes up each individual ranch's context and every person and every piece of land has a different context. So again, that's why we focus on these principles and implementing the principles to fit your context instead of recipes or prescriptions, because there are just too many contexts to have a recipe or a prescription.

Melissa: Yeah. So one of the things we talked about a lot, and this is probably going to fall in a bit to context as well as some of those principles in our soil, but carbon. It's funny, when I first started looking into soil health and even gardening, a lot of your basis, or at least the information that I found at that time, was really talking about, oh, nitrogen. And we see so much of synthetic and you can even obviously natural forms of nitrogen like composted chicken manure, et cetera. There was really this concentration on your NPK, nitrogen, all of that.

And so, when I started hearing about carbon, it was like, "Oh, this is really interesting." Because I mean, yes, you do need to have elements. If you don't have nitrogen, then you're going to have some trouble with plant growth. But the carbon specifically was so different when I first started hearing more talking about carbon and the importance of it in the soil than from I guess a more conventional learning system of what I had. So when it comes to carbon, and again, this is going to be textual, I know to what you have available to you, but what are some of the favorite ways in a pasture example, to introduce carbon into that soil or to increase the carbon in that soil? When we're talking about pasture for ruminant animals.

Jim: Probably the best way to increase carbon is through plant growth. Through the miracle of photosynthesis, plants can take carbon out of the atmosphere and turn it into sugar, and all plants leak sugars out of their roots. And so, even though that plant could grow and die and recycle the carbon into the soil when it grows and dies and gets incorporated back into the soil, we can be putting carbon into the soil every single day that a green plant is growing through the sugars that it leaks out of its roots. And so, that's again, why plant diversity and living roots are so important to building soil health is because they're putting carbon in the soil every day that they're photosynthesizing.

Melissa: Okay. So probably looking at, we're moving into summer here, and I live in the Pacific Northwest, so western Washington up in the mountains, northern area, western Washington state. But what's really interesting is we get about 78 inches of rainfall a year here. However, typically from July 5th, we laugh and say summer here starts the day after the 4th of July because we usually have rain on the 4th of July. But really from July 5th until about the end of September now, so you're going for about three months, we can go and maybe have only one or two days of rain. So it's like we get this weird three month drought and then it's just tons of moisture.

I would say probably the past four summers, that has actually been where we're starting to warm up in June and even then in May and decreasing our rainfall, we're still getting about the average same amount of rainfall, but it's in a different period. So I've been trying to look at, because a lot of my grass in an area of the pasture that when we did get rain all the way through July, they would do pretty good. I might have some areas that would turn brown in August, but then they'd perk right back up again once we hit September. But what I've noticed the past few years is I have bigger and bigger sections that are drying out faster and going into dormancy, they're totally brown. We don't have irrigation set up because in the past, we never really needed it.

I'm assuming looking to introduce some type that would be more drought tolerant, that would grow well in drier conditions. Because one, I want to have more pasture growing for the animals during the summer months. Because in the winter months we've got snow and just we're so cold and decreased daylight hours, we don't have a lot of winter forage, that type of thing. Do you have any, and I know I'm asking very specific to my area, which you've not researched, but when you have really different climates like that, but obviously at the same location, almost looking for dry, drought-type species to introduce into the pasture that would grow during the summer and then having almost a different subset that would also grow throughout the winter months?

Jim: Sure. Having plant diversity spreads your risk. The more diverse plants you have, that helps compensate no matter what the weather is, whether it's hot and dry or cold and wet. That's one thing that we can do. But another thing that works really, really well is how we manage those plants the rest of the year. The more we can develop those plant roots, the more drought resilient they'll be, the deeper they'll grow and the deeper your soil will become and the healthier your soil will become. And so, we like to really focus on managing our grazing to leave ample residual and to never take more than half of the plant any time that we graze. Never take more than half of the leaves. And so, that allows that plant to continue to grow roots.

When we do take more than half of the leaves at any one grazing event, roots stop growing. And so, by always focusing on taking less than half, we can keep those roots growing all the time. And they're obviously, if they're growing all the time, they're just going to get deeper and more volume so that they will be more drought resilient when it does get dry.

Melissa: Okay. So grazing practices, using the mob grazing where you're putting them on a section and then you're moving it off of it at a frequent base once they've reached that grazing so that they're not taking all the way down, and then continually re-grazing is going to help with that root growth?

Jim: Yes, absolutely it will.

Melissa: Awesome. So using these principles, because I know a lot of what you guys do is with regenerative ranching and probably larger operations, but the majority of my audience is homesteaders. So anywhere from a half acre to a couple acres. We do have some urban and suburban who are homesteading as well, but those with smaller acreage, anywhere up to maybe 55 to 100, there's a few outliers, but kind of general. So which of these principles do you feel like are the most important for a homesteader that's looking to implement regenerative practices on that smaller acreage type situation?

Jim: Sure, they're all important, but I think maybe some of the key on would be the diversity. So the more plant diversity that one can have, the easier it would be to stack enterprises. Maybe it's stacking chickens and cows in your garden at certain times of the year when you're not growing your vegetables. So diversity is super important there. Another one would be those living roots. The more we can keep living roots growing as many days as possible, the more produce we have to consume ourselves or the more forage we have for our livestock to consume. And then that integrating the livestock, that gives us such an opportunity there to build our soil and create a product, a healthy meat for us to consume. And so, it might be that with the smaller land area, a person might need to look at a different species of livestock. We focus a lot on beef cattle here in the southern Great Plains, but maybe small ruminants would be better adapted to a smaller acreage, or again, poultry, bees. There are lots of other livestock opportunities that people can take advantage of on small land areas.

Melissa: That's great. Coming back, not just plant diversity to your point, but also species diversity as far as animals is important. And so, we do beef cattle with chickens. Poultry is our two main right now. Sometimes we run pigs, but we haven't the past few years, just capacity of time and resources. As I shared with you, we bought a forty-acre farm that had been really overgrazed, the pasture land and have been rebuilding infrastructure and just doing a lot of repair. Almost two years ago at the time of this recording. And so, our hope is to bring pigs in probably hopefully next year is kind of our goal, but the species part and having our variances there. But when you're looking at plant diversity for beef operations specifically, are you looking at just different types of grasses or also putting in some perennials, all of the above, or how are you looking at that? Are you just trying to create better soil conditions, so more of the native grass and different plant species like that will just come up? Are you ever seeding? Walk me through what that would look like in a pasture situation.

Jim: Well, diversity can include all of those things. We could be looking at perennial grasses and annual grasses, well perennial plants and annual plants. They don't even have to be grasses. We'd want to be looking at grasses and broadleaf plants and woody plants. We'd want to be looking at legume plants to incorporate in there as well. Those are plants that fix nitrogen for themselves. We'd be looking at potentially native plant species as well as introduced plant species. We'd want to look at warm season plants, plants that grow in the summer, and cool season plants that grow.

For us, it's the winter here in Oklahoma, but for places farther north, it might be early spring and late fall. And so, we'd want to look at all of those different ways to add diversity, all of those different functional groups that we could have. And then there may still be some plants that you mentioned. You've got some beef cows. You may have plants that your beef cows don't consume, and that's all right because they're providing habitat for other organisms that are doing beneficial things for your ecosystem. We give an analogy a lot of times of that ecosystem being like a community, and I may not need a mechanic, but my dentist might need a mechanic so that he can get to the dentist office to work on my tooth. And so that's the same way with our plants and all the species that we have.

Melissa: And then say you have some pasture that is been really run down, doesn't have a lot of topsoil, dries out, just doesn't seem to have very much fertility there. Once you start implementing these diversity of species, not overgrazing, making sure, all of those things. Is there you'll see a little bit of progress right away. Is this something where it's going to take multiple seasons? And I know there's a lot of factors there, but kind of just giving an idea of like, okay, if you're doing these things, expect in five years to see an X amount. I know I'm kind of asking for formulas, but just so that people have an adequate idea of how long it can take to actually really truly start to rebuild this soil and then to see the benefit of that.

Jim: We think that three to five years is probably typical. You should hopefully start to see changes in the first year. But again, a lot of our soils and pastures have been treated a certain way for decades, and so it is going to take time to recover the health of the soil or the health of that pasture. Three to five years. A lot of times, the worse condition it is a lot of times the longer it takes. Sometimes it's soil dependent and weather dependent. If you get a drought in the middle of that, it might take longer. But change is slow. We're measuring things in terms of years, but we do start seeing changes generally the first year and generally by three to five, we can really tell that things are going the right way.

Melissa: Yeah. I heard a statement somewhere, I'm trying to remember, that for every inch of topsoil that it took about 100 years to get. Have you heard that before? Do you think there's truth to that?

Jim: I've heard that and that's geologically speaking. I have seen folks implementing all six of these soil health principles and really maximizing their ecosystem processes. And I've seen them have a lot more topsoil develop a lot faster than that. What we typically see, they may not actually be creating new soil, but what we see is the layer of deep, dark, rich, top soil gets thicker and thicker. And so what I've seen in a lot of places across the country is that we can build about an inch of that dark rich layer of soil in about a year. And so, I've got folks that have been doing this for 10 years that now have about 10 inches of that dark rich layer. Folks have been doing it 30 years, have about a 30 inch layer of dark rich black soil that is healthy and productive.

Melissa: Well, that's exciting. I'm really glad that it doesn't take a full 100 years.

Jim: It doesn't take that long. It doesn't take that long.

Melissa: Oh, that's fabulous. So where can the audience, where's the best place for them to get connected to learn more about the regenerative ranching and other resources that Noble has and the things that you are doing?

Jim: Sure. There's several places. Our website noble.org, W-W-W-dot-N-O-B-L-E-dot-O-R-G. Also, we're on all the socials at Noble Research Institute. Noble Research Institute on all the socials. Good way to find us.

Melissa: Yeah, fabulous. Well, we'll definitely link to those in the blog post that accompanies this episode as well as the video description. We have our podcast up on our YouTube channel as well, so we'll definitely put those links there. But thanks for coming on and chatting with me about this, Jim. As I said, I'm really excited to get some soil testing back using the Haney Method and just seeing the differences there on what it reports. And I'm really excited to get all this put into action and I'm hoping that a year from now I can report back and say that I've got an inch of that nice dark soil.

Jim: That sounds great.

Melissa: Yeah, right now she's pretty sandy and pale looking, so that nice dark soil sounds really good.

Jim: That sounds great.

Melissa: Yeah. Thanks for coming on.

Jim: All right, thank you for having me.

Melissa: Today's podcast is sponsored by Azure Standard. Azure is a company that I used and purchased products from long before they ever became a sponsor of the show. But one of the things I personally love about Azure Standard is their commitment to supporting small farms, regenerative agriculture, organic non GMO, all of the things that we advocate here for on our homestead and how we raise food. And I want to be supporting companies and buying from companies that have those same standards on the products that I'm not able to provide for myself and my own family. Azure Standard not only has food products, we get a lot of our things in bulk from them like our wheat berries, flour, sugar sources, a lot of the grains, I get my chicken feed from them. I also get the organic alfalfa pellets that we don't use grain with our beef herd, but we do supplement with alfalfa pellets occasionally, especially during the winter months.

And they support not only the house and the pantry and the baking, but they also have garden supplies. They have garden starts right now. So if you didn't start your garden starts, you're able to get that. And I can get, as I said, my livestock things as well as some of my livestock supplements, herbal supplements from them as well. So really the entire compassing part of the homestead and the barnyard together, they are my go-to source. If you go to Azure Standard and you are a brand new customer and place your first $50 order, make sure that you use coupon code MELISSA10 to get 10% off your first time order of $50 or more. Again, that coupon code is MELISSA10.

Well, I hope that you enjoyed today's episode. I find it fascinating. I'm going to be sharing more and more as we adopt these principles and learn more about it, the impact that we see them having here on our farm. So excited to share that journey with you. And just to dive further into and understanding all of the different nuances of raising crops, our soil health, and how that supports our bodies, our animals, and the planet at large. So thank you so much for joining me for today's episode. Reminder, you can always find the blog post with links to everything that we're talking about and the written up if you want to share that or go and read more about that at melissaknoris.com/431 because this is episode number 431. I can't wait to be back here with you next week. Blessings and mason jars for now, my friends.