Keith Berns of Green Cover Seeds discusses hybrid cover crops, seed-microbe interactions, crop insurance and cover crops, the nutrient-chelating effects of glyphosate, and more
Acres U.S.A. You’re practicing what you preach as we’re recording here — looks like you’re in the tractor seeding some cover crops.
Keith Berns. Yeah, I’m trying to finish up drilling some rye, planting into corn stalks. I’m planting hybrid cereal rye that we’re going to try to grow for seed production. We’ve got a license through KWS to grow their hybrid rye and then sell that second-generation into the cover crop market. They’re trying to be a disruptor in the market because hybrid rye will yield up to twice as much as regular rye. That’s going to be a big deal for the supply of rye. They’re really pushing on it as a livestock feed. They’ve done a lot of research on using rye in hog and cattle rations, but now they’re making a push into the cover crop seed market as well. We’re fairly new with the hybrid stuff and are trying to get a feel for it.
Acres U.S.A. It yields twice as much in terms of just the grain, or also in terms of biomass?
Berns. Mostly grain. In terms of biomass, it’s probably a little shorter than open-pollinated rye. From a standability standpoint, that’s good. It doesn’t lodge as bad, especially since it can make 80 to a hundred bushels per acre. It’s definitely taller than wheat but not as tall as an open-pollinated Elbon or Hazlet rye or something like that.
Acres U.S.A. How many of different cover crops have hybrids these days?
Berns. Well, rye is coming on. There is a hybrid triticale on the market, but it doesn’t have significant advantages over the open pollinated, so we’re not really looking at that. The biggest place where you would see hybrids would be in the warm-season grains or warm-season grasses — like hybrid pearl millet. And almost all of your sorghums are going to be hybrids.
Beyond that, there’s a lot of the brassicas that are crosses. It might be a rape seed cross with kale, but it’s like triticale when they crossed rye and wheat — it becomes a stable platform, so you aren’t having to do male-female crosses every year like you do in seed corn or even like this rye. It’s a true male-female cross every year to get your hybrid seed, and then with everything that comes after that, you start having performance fall off because it doesn’t breed back true, like triticale would. Or the hybrid brassicas — once you get those stable, they’ll breed back true every year, and you can just continue to grow them for seed production every year. You don’t have to redo the crosses.
Acres U.S.A. How many acres of your own are you growing cover crop seed on?
Berns. We farm about 1,700 acres here in southcentral Nebraska, and what we devote to cover crop seed production varies from year to year. It’s a fairly small percentage of the total. There are only certain things that are really well adapted to our environment, the equipment we have, and the labor we have to put toward it. It probably varies between 10 to 20 percent, depending on the year, on our own ground.
Now, we contract with our grower network, and most of the growers are customers of ours too, so we know them well. We know they’re using regenerative practices. We’ll contract probably anywhere between 6,000 and 15,000 acres a year within our grower network. That’s where the majority of our crops are going to come from, and we can select the regions that we know are going to do best, and we can select the growers that we know are going to do best. And then we always provide the seed stock so that we know what genetics we’re starting with as well.
Acres U.S.A. We commonly think of seed as mostly coming from the Willamette Valley in Oregon; what’s the economic advantage, or feasibility, of growing cover crop seed in Nebraska or Kansas?
Berns. The biggest advantage is going to be the logistics — the freight cost. They can grow great triticale and oats out there, but I can’t afford to pay 10 cents a pound to ship it all the way back to Nebraska for such a heavily-used product. But 10 cents a pound on a turnip or radish, that I’m using one to two pounds an acre of, well now that’s not a big deal, and they’ve got the perfect climate for that kind of a thing.
We can grow pretty good cereals in this area. We can’t really grow great brassicas or clover or ryegrass. The ideal seed-growing location is either a place like the Willamette Valley — where they get a lot of rain for about nine months and then have a three-month period where it’s very dry, very consistently, so they have a good growing season and then an excellent harvest season — or where we grow a lot of our stuff — eastern Colorado, western Nebraska — places that are typically pretty dry but have the ability to irrigate.
Acres U.S.A. What percentage of your seeds come from those relatively local areas?
Berns. Locally as in Nebraska, South Dakota, Colorado, Kansas — probably 50 percent by volume. That’s going to be almost all of the cereals. The more expensive seeds are grown in a place like Oregon.
Acres U.S.A. Can you talk a little bit about the value of having these seeds grown on a regenerative operation? What kind of benefit does that provide?
Berns. Sure. I think the biggest benefit is going to be in what we call that onboard biology. The microbiome of the seed is partially coming from the genetics that it started with, but it’s largely coming from the environment that it’s grown in.
When Christine Jones was out here this summer, she gave an absolutely stunning statistic — she said that a single seed grown in a highly regenerative, biologically rich environment can have up to 8 billion microbes in and on that seed. That’s just an incredible number, but it tells you that seed was designed to be in association with a rich biologic environment.
I just got done editing an article from Walter Goldstein with the Mandaamin Institute. He’s breeding nitrogen-fixing corn, and he’s got all these pictures and videos showing how the microbes are not just in the root, where we know they’ve always been, but in the stalks and in the leaves and in the silks and in the flowers, and then in the grain and in the cob. As the plant matures and as the grain forms, many of those microbes are pulled from the plant and are stored in the seed. It’s not just on the seed coat — it’s also inside the seed.
That kind of thing gets us really excited. It gives us confidence that seed grown in a regenerative environment is going to be better seed simply because of the biology that it’s bringing with it.
Acres U.S.A. Is anyone testing yet to be able to show that to seed customers? I mean, Christine Jones has that number somehow.
Berns. Yeah, I don’t know. I know that the testing is going to not only prove this and help quantify this, but it will also allow us to say, “If I do this practice, how will it change the microbiome of the seed, both in the richness of diversity of the species as well as the quantity?”
That’s going to be the DNA testing. That’s really the only way you’re ever going to know that. It’s come a long ways in the last few years, and it’s making great strides. It’s going to get it down to a price point that’s going to make it much more affordable for the average person to do. Right now, a good DNA test might be $300 to $400 — which sounds incredibly cheap compared to what it would’ve been five, six years ago. But we need to take a zero off of that — so we can run lots of samples and can say, “OK, if we put this product on, or we grow the seed in this rotation, or with this crop history, how does that change the microbiome of the seed?”
DNA testing will show us not only what’s in the seed or in the plant or in the soil, but it’s going to help us make really critical decisions about how this practice or this product changed either the seed, the plant or the soil.
Acres U.S.A. Do you have any inclination about the difference between growing a seed in a regenerative environment as opposed to taking whatever kind of seed and then adding a biological amendment and/or nutrient amendment?
Berns. I know that in James White’s research, he put a chlorine wash on the seed to essentially sterilize the microbiome and then tested that, and then he also tested the same thing with added biology — putting microbes back on through products. I know he’s seen definite changes and improvements by doing that.
We can add biology to the seeds. Will it ever be as good as the natural biology that a seed could and should come with? I don’t think so, but as far as having a way to quantify that, I really don’t know. I think the best answer is you do both. You have your natural native stuff that comes from the production process, and then you add an inoculant. Seed treatment biologicals are very inexpensive.
For example, we know you probably have native rhizobia in your soil from having grown legumes there before, but for a buck an acre, are you going to not do it? To me, the best way is to do both. We want to have the best quality seed that we can, but we’re probably still going to spend a little bit of money putting a seed treatment on, just because it’s going to be good insurance, and we know specifically what’s in the seed treatments. We don’t know exactly what’s in the seed microbiome — at least not yet. It allows us to make sure we’ve got mycorrhiza or azotobacter or azospirillum — whatever we want — we can make sure that those are there.
Acres U.S.A. You mentioned that these seed treatments are good insurance; can you talk a little bit about a different kind of insurance — crop insurance — and what that does to change the calculus for farmers in terms of using cover crops?
Berns. Oh boy. Well, I will say this: it’s better than it used to be, and it’s not as good as it needs to be.
It used to be very restrictive. I think that it has loosened up a little bit, and it’s going to vary — and it should vary — from region to region. More arid regions are going to have more stringent plant-back requirements — where you have to have something growing within X number of days after harvest.
Some of that makes sense, but there’s still some factors they’re forcing farmers to follow that are pretty restrictive. I think that as we get more data, it will become better. I really hope that the RMA and other people in the crop insurance industry are becoming more willing to work with farmers who are doing some of this — to diligently collect data to actually see whether using cover crops helps or hurts.
I get the fact that they don’t want to allow a practice when they have no idea how it’s going to affect things. And there’s a big difference in how these practices are done. Say you’re interseeding corn, for example — there’s a big difference in how it’s done. Timing is important. There’s just lots of factors that go into it. It’s like anything — it’s not just the practice; it’s the system and it’s the management that’s used to integrate that practice into the system. To just have a blanket “yes, you can do it” or “no, you can’t,” I think it’s going to be difficult, and it may not even be practical or realistic. Somehow they’ve got to start collecting research from the people who are doing some of these practices — the Rick Clarks of the world who are implementing a lot of these things and seeing some good results.
So, yeah — crop insurance is still an impediment. I don’t think it’s as bad as it used to be. It needs to get better, and they need to diligently work with these top producers to try to collect that information.
Acres U.S.A. It seems to me like, even if you’re a libertarian, you’re not that outraged at the amount of money the government spends subsidizing crop insurance. It’s actually not that much money, even if you look at the total value of the farm bill. It’s really the incentives and disincentives it introduces that are the problem.
Berns. I told somebody this earlier today. I was doing a webinar, and I said, “Farmers are smart people, and they’re going to make decisions based on economics and profitability. However, the economics and profitability are no longer based on sound agronomics, because the crop insurance system has skewed it so much.”
If a farmer looks at the bottom line without the government programs, he thinks, “A corn-soybean rotation isn’t going to be as resilient as if I had a small grain or a grazing component.” But when he factors in the crop insurance guarantees, he thinks, “I have a good guarantee for corn and a good guarantee for soybeans, but I don’t have a guarantee for cover crops or grazing — I’m just going to do the things I have the guarantees on.” The system is shifting the agronomics, which fundamentally changes the economic analysis of what a farmer’s going to do.
Acres U.S.A. Do you have a strong opinion in the tilling-versus-spraying debate? What’s worse for soil microbes, in your opinion?
Berns. Well, they’re both tools, and any tool should be used as little as possible in order to maximize your profitability.
I don’t know that there’s a hard rule. It’s going to depend on the system that you’re in. If you’re an organic producer and you’re commanding a premium for your product, then obviously the herbicides are no longer an option, unless you’ve got an organic-approved, naturally based option of some sort; there’s some out there, and I think there’s others that will be coming. And there’s some exciting technology that I think is out there and will continue to come as we learn how to leverage biology better.
I will say this: 10 years ago, I would have said that tillage is always going to be worse than a herbicide. I probably would’ve been very vehement about that. We’re very strong proponents of no-till, and that was the way to go, and anybody who was tilling the soil, well, shame on them.
But that was before we had as much understanding as we do now about soil biology. I’m not saying we have a great understanding of biology, but it’s better than it used to be. I’m not talking about the industry as a whole — I’m talking about myself personally. Understanding more about biology, seeing how resilient some of this stuff is, and even listening to people like Dr. Jones talk, I think that a well-timed tillage pass can be no more harmful than a herbicide pass.
A big part of either one is going to be mitigation — because they’re both going to do damage. What do you do after using the tool? What do you do after the tillage? What do you do after you spray the herbicide to help the system recover — to help mitigate that damage? Are you getting something growing after you till? Are you using some biologicals to help that recovery after an herbicide application?
Regardless of which tool you use — and there’s going to be times where each of them is appropriate — I think a really important part is what are you doing afterwards to help offset that damage.
Acres U.S.A. With no-till, how concerned are you about nutrient stratification — not getting nutrients moving up and down and cycling?
Berns. Not very concerned. I don’t think that’s nearly as big of a deal as a lot of people think. When you have good earthworm activity and a healthy soil ecosystem, the earthworms will be moving a lot of the nutrients up and down.
Nutrient stratification is a big deal in bare soil. In bare soil, those top few inches are going to be hot and dry, and you’ll have very few living, active roots there. If your nutrients are all at the top, and there’s no roots there, they’re not going to cycle up and down, and that’s going to be a problem.
However, in a system that’s holding the moisture in, where you’ve got active, living roots right at the surface of the soil, those top two inches are filled with roots, and stratification won’t be an issue.
Acres U.S.A. With the use of glyphosate or other herbicides, to what degree are you concerned about its chelation effect on nutrients — that the herbicide is going to prevent nutrients from being available to the plant?
Berns. That’s definitely a legitimate concern. I think that it’s probably doing far more nutrient tie-up and having a more detrimental effect on the system than what most people would want to think or admit.
There are some things you can do to offset or counteract the detrimental effects of that. We know that certain minerals are going to be chelated by glyphosate, so we can add more of those in, or we can add biology to make more of the nutrients that are already there available to the plant.
Does glyphosate need to be used? That’s a philosophical discussion for another time! Certainly there are alternatives, and the more we can get away from using it the better. But when you do have to use glyphosate, there are strategies to minimize the detrimental effects.
In our own operation, we have been doing everything we can to move away from using glyphosate, and I would say we’ve cut our use by 80 or 90 percent. Now we’re switching over to mostly non-GMO crops. Simply growing non-GMO crops forces you to utilize other tools that are still out there that we used to use, that a lot of people have forgotten how to use it. Some of it is just rediscovering things that we’ve forgotten.
Acres U.S.A. It’s hard to find a straight answer about how much herbicide is used in non-GMO crops. What’s your experience — not just for your operation, but in general, are farmers who grow non-GMO crops really using significantly less herbicide?
Berns. I don’t know if they’re using significantly less. They’re definitely using different herbicides. I think that when you start seeing significantly less herbicide use it’s not necessarily because of GMO or non-GMO crops, although that may have something to do with it. It’s probably more because of changes in the whole growing system.
If I have a big cover crop, I can roller-crimp that down. Or even if I have to do one chemical termination, I’ve got 8,000 pounds of dry matter biomass out there now, and I may not have to spray again. That’s way less herbicide than other systems, simply because I integrated that cover crop and utilized it as part of the weed-control system.
I do think GMO versus non-GMO is part of it, but there’s a bigger part — how the whole system is set up.
