How one farm on “the wacky side of Indiana” is making organic no-till work
Rick Clark is a fifth-generation farmer based in Warren County, Indiana, but he’s been spreading the organic no-till gospel far and wide for the past few years. His enthusiasm is infectious. He’s definitely not hiding his light under a bushel.
In fact, big food brands have started taking notice of Rick’s production methods. He was named Danone’s Sustainable Farmer of the Year in 2017, and Land O’Lakes recently recognized his work with an Outstanding Sustainability Award.
Why is Rick getting this attention? Because he’s proving that an obsessive focus on soil health can work at a commercial scale. He produces organic corn, soybeans, wheat, alfalfa and more on 7,000 acres. He’s quick to point out that his farm was historically among the worst offenders in terms of excessive tillage and toxic chemistry. But over the last several decades that’s all changed. Today he is proving that organic no-till production methods can lead to both a profitable business and a healthy, balanced ecosystem — all at a commercial scale.
Rick is passionate about cooperating with Mother Earth to create self-sustaining, closed-loop, ecological systems that are teeming with biodiversity and fertility, and with collecting data and using technology to his benefit.
What he’s not obsessed with is yield. To him, it’s almost a five-letter word. The most important consideration for Clark is the long-term health of his land. And his vision might just be the future of agriculture.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
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Acres U.S.A. You’re a fifth-generation farmer, and there’s a lot of received wisdom and assumptions that go along with that. But you’ve really established a new path for your no-till organic farm in Indiana over the last several years. How has your approach to farming changed over time? And what was the baseline — where did you start out?
Rick Clark. As a farmer, when you think about the first time you tried a cover crop, or the first time you tried to do no-till, and you think about the reason why you did that, it tends to be a defensive action. What I mean is that we’re playing defense against something that happened. For us, it was erosion. We were viewing cover crops as a defensive mechanism to stop or slow down erosion.
As you evolve over time and become more comfortable with what these cover crops can do for you, and you become more comfortable with how far you can let them grow, they become offensive juggernauts.
That’s what they are for us now — they’re an absolute offensive juggernaut. We’re heading into our eighth year of no synthetic inputs on this farm. Conventional input costs are just out of control right now — they’re skyrocketing. I’m not in that game anymore, but I’m hearing that there’s no guarantee you’ll even get nitrogen this year. For some farmers, that’s scary.
We were some of the worst tillers and mass destructors of soil in our community. We did it with the best of them. If it wasn’t black after you tilled, you did it again until it was. That’s just how we did it.
Here’s the moment when my mind began to change: We were in a situation where we were prepping a field like we always did in the spring. We ran it first real shallow, because we were too early to be out there. It was too wet, so we were trying to open the soil up and let Mother Nature’s beautiful sun and breeze dry things out. Then we’d work it a little bit deeper the second time. Then we’d come back the next day and plant that field.
Well, that evening, after that first shallow tilling, we got a 1-inch rain event. I could not believe how much soil moved off the farm into the ditch, and onto the road even. That’s when it hit me like a Mack truck. I realized that we had to do something different. That’s really when the journey started.
Acres U.S.A. You were seeing this large soil erosion event happen as a result of rainfall, and the initial idea was that you had to do something to keep your soil in place, so you started to consider cover crops. Or were you thinking big picture — like going organic and getting rid of all your inputs? How small was that little inkling that you had at that moment?
Clark. Right then it was, “How can we do this differently and not have this happen again?” Luckily, we had the beginnings of the internet. It was slow and cumbersome, but you could do some research.
I discovered that tillage radish was probably what we needed to start with. I know that tillage radish is not great for stopping erosion. But the reason I picked a tillage radish was because it mitigates compaction. I don’t care how good of a job you do — everybody’s got compaction.
It has a deep taproot that goes down and gathers nutrients from far below our feet and brings them back to that tuber on the surface. Probably the most important thing for me at that point in time was the fact that it winter-killed. That means that when the temperature drops, the cold will terminate that species. I didn’t have to worry about dealing with it the next spring, because I didn’t know what I was doing — that’s why I picked tillage radish.
It is extremely important that a farmer who tries things that are out of the norm — or, as I like to say, since change is good, “tries something different” — has success the first time he does something.
And we had success. That’s why I got hooked so quick. We only did one field — a 200-acre field. That one field that we no-tilled those radishes into — the next fall it was the best-yielding field on the farm. Now, I’m talking just flat-out yield. I don’t mean return on investment — ROI — because we had no tillage expense. We didn’t do any passes of tillage in the spring because I thought, “You know what? If we’re gonna do this, let’s go ahead and no-till the corn into this field. Let’s just try to do it all like I think I might want to do it one day.”
Not only did that blow the doors off the whole farm in terms of ROI — it also was the best-yielding field on the farm. That’s all I needed. I had success, and I was hooked. Then I started to think, “How quickly can we move this across the farm?”
Acres U.S.A. Can you take a moment to describe your farm? Whereabouts and how many acres are you farming?
Clark. We’re in west-central Indiana, right on the Indiana/Illinois line. We’re in line with the border between Missouri and Iowa, so all of Iowa is north of us and all of Missouri is south of us. We are farming around 7,000 acres, and we have transitioned about 90 percent of the farm to organic. The last remaining acres will be certified next spring.
If you look at where we are today on this farm, I am way off to the side of the conventional-regenerative spectrum. We are doing things that not many other people are doing. This is hard. We’re doing organic with zero tillage. We’re not even using any products that are OMRI approved. We’re trying to be as holistic and symbiotic with Mother Nature as we possibly can.
I cannot stress enough how hard this is. But here’s what I want to say about this: Yes, I’m way over on one side of the spectrum, and over on the other side of the room are the folks who do nothing. There is all kinds of room on this curve for folks who want to start to implement the six principles of soil health. We can start to slow down the use of chemistry — slow down the use of synthetic fertilizers. We can do this. Anybody can plant soybeans into cereal rye. I just wish there was more happening at a little bit of a quicker pace. Now, it’s gaining every year, but we really need this thing to move forward.
Acres U.S.A. So, you’re growing certified organic corn and soybeans?
Clark. We are. We’re up to seven crops now: corn, soybeans, wheat, alfalfa, milo, peas and cattle. I throw a little twist on it, and I call it “seven plus one.” The “plus one” is what I call “regen.” We’ve taken an acre out of production — which I know seems crazy — and we focus on a massive cover crop cocktail package.
Now, context is important here. Someone who’s in a much different climate than mine is not going to be able to do the same things I am. We have to understand that.
Where I’m located, you can get these cover crops established, and you then get success. It becomes an appetite — you have to have more. How can I regenerate the next 500 acres? How do I go from a four-species cocktail to 12? When you look at everything we’re trying to do here, it’s all about building soil health and building human health.
I’m the first generation who farmed with chemistry from day one. My dad had chemistry, but he didn’t get it till he was in his late 40s, early 50s. I’ve been exposed to the chemistry ever since I was 14 years old and couldn’t wait to get home from school to help Dad in the field. That’s a long time I’ve been exposed to this chemistry. I do not want to let my children be exposed to that, and I don’t want my grandchildren to be exposed to that.
We’re doing things here that are way different than how most people think. We don’t talk about yield. Please don’t ask me any questions about yield, because I don’t talk about yield. Unfortunately, a farmer’s success is based on yield. That’s too bad, because there’s so many other things you could base a person’s success on. Were they socially accepted in the community? How’s their family life? Are they building soil health? Are they being a good steward? Are they being conservation minded? None of these things have anything to do with yield.
When you start to get down this road that I’m on, it becomes a quest to think of things to do that no one else has thought of. Maybe someone’s thought of them, but I’ve never heard it spoken in public or read about it.
Acres U.S.A. Talk a little bit more about cover crops. For those who maybe aren’t as familiar with using cover crops on the farm, what benefits do they bring? Also, talk about different strategies and different approaches you can use with cover crops to accomplish different objectives.
Clark. I have always viewed a cover crop as a mechanism to make things better than what they were before we started. Mother Nature has forced my hand many times and has guided me and humbled me on where to go.
Here’s what I mean by that. If we’re going to spend $25, $35, $40 on a cocktail, the last thing I want to do is burn it all to the ground with chemistry on the first warm day of spring. Has it done us some good? Yes. But there’s so much more potential that was left on the table. How are we going to build an armor to protect the soil? The only way to build that armor is to let that cereal rye grow to be 5 or 6 feet tall. Then, when you terminate it by rolling it down, like we do, you are laying down 8,000 to 10,000 pounds of biomass that now serves as soil armor, feeds the microbes and limits evaporation. That’s huge. We’ve done all this work to build organic matter, build aggregate stability and increase water infiltration rates. We’ve got this thing running on high gear.
But what if we terminate the cover crop earlier, so that there isn’t any armor covering the soil in the middle of July and into August? It’s the dog days of summer and the heat is bearing down, and that moisture that we’ve tried to save in that profile is going straight up to the atmosphere as evaporation. That’s what I’m talking about — we’ve got to have the ground covered as many days as possible.
That cover is also mitigating erosion. I don’t care where you live — you have erosion. If you think your topography is a 0 percent slope and you don’t have erosion, you are wrong. You have wind erosion, and you have water erosion. Keep that cover crop covering the soil the maximum amount of time.
Let me go another step on that. Let’s talk about a cocktail we planted ahead of a corn crop that’s going to be planted next spring. We planted a cocktail that has a legume in it. Those legumes are going to fix nitrogen. So, the last thing we want to do is go out and terminate that cover crop early in the spring, because it won’t maximize what we put it out there to do — to fix free nitrogen.
We test here all the time. Two years ago we planted some FIXatioN balansa clover and a little bit of volunteer hairy vetch, and we topped out at about 265 pounds of nitrogen that that cover crop fixed.
That’s not all available immediately. I understand that. But I’m gonna take half of that credit now and leave half for later. When I talk with farmers who aren’t doing any of these practices, I tell them to plant legumes. And let’s say they get 120 pounds of credit. Take half of that for the crop you’re going to plant. That’s 60 pounds of N. I’m asking them to spend $25 to reduce their synthetic load of nitrogen by 60 pounds and to use the rest of the credit from that cover crop later.
Let’s put this in economic terms. Nitrogen right now is almost $1 per unit. If you can save 60 pounds of N, that’s $60 an acre that you’re not going to spend on synthetic N, and the cocktail you planted cost $25. So, you’re $35 ahead an acre on just the N. Then, consider all the other nutrients and minerals that cocktail is going to sequester — you’re bringing in P205, K20, sulfur, boron, manganese, magnesium. All these things are also coming along with that same $25 cocktail that’s already offset your nitrogen expense.
You don’t have to join me way over here on the wacky side of Indiana. Come in partway and take advantage of cover crops, and start being less dependent on synthetic fertilizers.
Acres U.S.A. You mentioned the six principles of soil health. What are the necessary components of soil health, in your mind?
Clark. I am a firm believer that you can go out and determine soil health with the spade that’s in the back of your pickup. I hope every farmer’s got a spade in their truck bed. I’m not kidding — that’s all you need. You can go out and you can measure aggregate stability with a spade. You can measure water infiltration rates with a hammer, to pound a ring into the ground, and then you pour some water in.
My point here is that you don’t need a lot of fancy equipment — which honestly hasn’t been perfected and isn’t accurate and repeatable every time you use it.
You need to minimize or reduce tillage. In my opinion, you have to stop tillage. I think that when you are truly trying to build soil health, the number one thing you have to get jumpstarted and working are the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. They are the communication backbone of the microbial bionetwork. There’s not a transaction of nutrients that takes place underground unless it goes through that arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi network.
There are two good ways to wipe that network out: chemistry and tillage. When you till, that fungal network has to spend time building its community back up — starting to get its feeders back out and making connections — just in time to have another pass of tillage come through and wipe it out again.
If all that network is doing is repairing itself, it’s not doing anything toward building soil health. So, number one on my list is that tillage has to stop.
Number two is keeping the ground covered as much as you possibly can. Number three is keeping a living root. Number four is diversity.
Diversity is critical here. I have to truly respect and honor what pests can do to me now, because I no longer have an easy button that I can push — to go out and spray a chemical that will target a pest. Let’s just pick on the army worm for a moment. There are products out there that kill army worms, but they will also kill thousands of other beneficial species. I can’t have that. I have spent the last 17 or 18 years of my life building soil health. I cannot jeopardize that. I will sacrifice yield to maintain soil health. I do it every single day.
That’s why it’s so hard for people to understand what it is I’m trying to do. If you’re looking in on our operation from the outside, you’ll say, “That guy is nuts! What is he thinking?” But I’m trying to build this symbiotic relationship with Mother Nature. Eventually, when I’m ready to hand the reins off, this farm is going to be in cruise control — because we’re listening to what Mother Nature is telling us. We’re trying to do what she wants us to do.
The other two principles of soil health are context — that’s important — and the integration of livestock. Now, this is not for everybody. But if you truly want to build soil health, the most efficient way and the quickest way is to incorporate livestock onto the operation and do rotational grazing.
I am not a grazing expert. There are many people out there who can teach you how to graze. I graze in ways that probably aren’t totally approved by most people, but I’ve got so much going on — I don’t have time to move cattle every two hours. So, I build paddocks that last about six or seven days. But I still follow the principles of grazing — no more than 50 percent of the growth eaten down, and so much is to be left alone and not taken off. Once you reach those marks — if you thought you were going to be in a paddock for seven days and it winds up being four — so be it. You’ve got to move to the next paddock. I’m trying to do this in a way that fits better into the time that I have available.
Now, I would like to add a seventh principle: commitment. Like I mentioned earlier, there’s a spectrum from doing nothing all the way to where I am — organic no-till. If you are going to go down this road, and you want to land on that curve somewhere, you have to be committed and stay with it. You may not see the kind of change you want in year one; there’s going to be change, but it may not be at the speed you want. That’s what I mean by being committed — this takes a lot of time and a lot of patience.
Acres U.S.A. It also seems to grant you a certain level of independence. You mentioned how high input costs have gotten recently; since you’re incorporating animals into your operation, you also have a homegrown source of fertility. Is that the goal — to be as independent and autonomous as possible?
Clark. Yes. I’ll tell you how I like to phrase this: I like to call it “closing the loop.” That’s what we’re trying to do here. We’re trying to do vertical integration. We’re trying to add all of these extra things to this farm. We’ve got our own meat that we’re raising now. It’s naturally raised; it’s being done in our regenerative system. The animals are treated in a humane manner. We’re trying to market that meat as retail natural beef.
We’re going to start milling our own grain. We’re going to take the milling from that regenerative grain and sell it as five- or ten-pound packages. These are the things that, yes, make you more independent — not quite so dependent on the system. I do not want to be dependent on the system.
I have gone so far now that I’m heading into year four without crop insurance. I’m heading into year three of no longer being involved in any government programs, period — ARC, PLC, nothing. I took no CFAP subsidy payments in 2020. This is how dedicated and committed I am to doing this. My point is that I am in this for the long haul. There is no other way for me to farm.
Acres U.S.A. You have become a bit of an evangelist for this kind of regenerative farming that you’re describing. You’re very enthusiastic about the subject and you want to spread the word. What is it that you want other farmers to know? It’s not just the techniques — it seems like there’s a philosophy that underlies what you’re doing. There’s also, maybe, a joy in what you’re doing, and you want other people to know about it.
Clark. There aren’t a lot of things that bother me. I don’t sit up at night worrying. I sleep very well. But one of the things that probably weighs on me more than anything is how good of an ambassador I am to my local community.
That bothers me because, honestly, when you look at our farm, I have no one else to call. I don’t have anybody to ask, “Hey, have you tried this in organic no-till?” “Well, no, Rick, we don’t do that.” Then my neighbors drive by and they look at me like, “What is wrong with that guy? I don’t even know what he’s doing out there.”
That bothers me, because unfortunately, in the world we live in today, too many decisions and opinions are based on perception. I just wish they would stop their truck at the end of the road and climb in with me, and say, “Rick, you’ve lost your mind. You’ve got to explain to me what’s going on here.”
What I’m afraid of is that they’re sometimes seeing fields that didn’t do what I thought they would do, and they look at those fields and say, “I’m not doing what that guy’s doing.” That’s the kind of stuff that bothers me.
I no longer use the word “failure.” You have to take negative thoughts and negative words and negative people out of your life. There is so much going on with this system that we’re trying to make better every day. You have to take the negativity out. It’s no longer “that field failed.” It’s “that field had an outcome that I did not expect. How are we gonna learn from this? How are we not gonna do it again?” That’s how I view this.
We’re a long way from perfection — a long way. But this is the type of stuff that we have to do so that the people coming behind us will have success and will be able to take it to the next level. Then, the next thing you know, we’ll have 20 percent of our acres being farmed in some fashion of what we’re talking about.
Acres U.S.A. You’re looking at Mother Nature as a teacher. What are you observing every day as you’re walking your fields? It seems like you’re a pretty deliberate and intentional guy; you must have a system for how you gather all these observations, all these experiments, and then take that data and you make it work for you long term.
Clark. You’re striking on a very important aspect of this success: data. You cannot collect enough data.
My advice to anyone who wants to get started — the first thing you do, right now — is to get a piece of paper and a pencil out and just pick one field. Try to list all the things you did in that field, as many years back as you can. Then, eventually, do this for all the fields on your farm.
Now you’ve drawn a baseline. How do you know where you’re going unless you know where you’ve been? Baseline where you are and then see if these things that I’m talking about are going to work on your operation one year, two years, three years down the road. You may lose five bushels of yield of corn, but your ROI went up by 25 percent. That’s all I care about.
That’s how businesses are run. Businesses are not run by the amount of product they sell — they’re run by the amount of profit they’re making. Farming is no different.
There’s a young man in Iowa named Mitchell Hora who has a platform called TopSoil through a company called Continuum Ag. This is a way to track everything I just described. It’s encrypted. He’s not going to sell your data to anybody. You can pressure-test your operation — you can do what-if scenarios. I would recommend that farmers get started on Mitchell’s platform.
The other thing I like is an app called Evernote. Evernote is like a daily journal. When I’ve got all the combine data and I’ve got all the planter data, and I’m sitting down looking at it, I may see something different between Field 1 and Field 2. Go to Evernote and take a look at your notes. Field 1 was planted two-and-a-half weeks before Field 2. If you look at the amount of rainfall that then occurred between the day Field 1 was planted and the day Field 2 was planted, you may see that Field 2 is short on rain by 3 inches, or something like that.
I try to collect the answers to about ten questions before I even start planting corn. I write down the ground temperature. I take a picture with my phone of what I’m getting ready to plant into. All of these things can get uploaded to Evernote. When you upload a picture, you can add text to that picture. Say it’s 75 degrees, it’s a calm day, and the ground temperature is 63 degrees. Take a picture of your seed tag. By the way, we have to do all of this for organic certification anyways — you have to keep track of everything you do.
So now you’ve got everything documented. It’s tucked away in Evernote. By the way, you can do this on Mitchell’s platform as well. And good data leads to good decisions, which then put you in positions of strength. This is important. When these markets rally, like they did last spring and summer, if you have the data behind you to show that your system is resilient enough to average X amount of yield, you can comfortably take a percentage of that yield goal expectation and sell into that rallying market. Having the data behind you makes you a little more comfortable to do those things.
Data is critical to the success of this system. If you’re going to participate in the up-and-coming carbon markets that everyone’s talking about, you’re going to need to collect data and you’re going to need to abide by the six principles of soil health. Well, at least five of them. Data is so critical across this whole spectrum.
Acres U.S.A. You mentioned the importance of establishing a baseline with data, so that you can know where you started and where you’re heading, and how far you’ve gone. For your farm, what was the baseline? What was the baseline back then? What are some of the metrics of success that you’ve seen over the last few years?
Clark. I’m very fortunate. I’ve had great people ahead of me who understood the values of buying land and collecting data and storing it. We’ve got data that goes back almost 25 years. We can look at fields and what we did to them, and what we didn’t do to them.
I really started to pay attention to this when I incorporated the Haney test. The Haney soil health test is a definite must for everyone. We no longer use the old traditional soil test. The information you get from the Haney test is so important. You get Solvita, you get CO2 burst, you get PLFA, you get the gram positive and the gram negative, you get predator to prey, you get fungi to bacteria. It’s endless — the number of things that test can give you. We track them all.
I no longer look at single snapshots in time. You have to look at trends. We could go out tomorrow and test the soil, and wait three weeks, and go test the exact same spots, and not get the same results. You have to understand that, and you can’t just react to a one-year spike. You’ve got to pull that back into the average of the last umpteen years — however far back you can go.
My dad always put on 500 pounds of 9-23-30 on every acre. Think about how expensive that would be today. So now, with soil testing and the advancements that we’ve made in how to look at these tests, why do we broadcast fertilizer? Let’s use VRT — variable rate technology. You can’t do that unless you collect the data.
Acres U.S.A. Aside from data collection, what other tools are you using on the farm? You mentioned using a roller crimper. What are the mechanics of implementing this no-till organic system across a wide swath of acres?
Clark. Number one is patience. The cover crops we plant have to be either winter-killed or mechanically terminated. That’s all we’ve got.
So, this becomes even more complex, because I preach very loud on diversity. You have to have diversity. I look at diversity in three different ways.
First, a farmer is probably going to start off with just one or two species of cover crops. But as they become more comfortable with the system, they should try to diversify to up to 16 or 18 different species in their cover crop cocktail.
Second, I look at diversity within a cover crop cocktail of annuals to perennials. Too many times, all we plant are annuals. If you still farm with chemicals that can terminate cover crops, please plant perennials with your annuals — your chemistry can take care of them. I can’t do that anymore, because I cannot mechanically control or mitigate a perennial. I can’t control anything — I suppress it — but I cannot suppress perennials mechanically.
The final way I look at diversity is from a cash crop perspective. To gain maximum diversity, we need to start raising different species in the same field and harvesting them at the same time. For example, peas and wheat. Plant them together, let them work off their symbiotic relationships, let them help each other, let them build that microbial community, and harvest them together. Separate them at the end of the day and you’ve got two products to sell.
I can do that kind of diversity. It’s getting perennials in with annuals that’s difficult for me. But please, if you’re using chemistry, throw the kitchen sink at it and let these cover crops grow further into maturity next spring before you go out and terminate them. At least pick one field and try it, and just see what happens.
We cannot jeopardize the livelihood of the farm. Inputs are so expensive. Equipment is expensive. Everything is going up in price. Please do not jeopardize the livelihood of your farm by trying these practices. Start small, get comfortable, and then move into bigger acreage.
Acres U.S.A. You mentioned that you don’t think of things in terms of failures. But what are some learning experiences that you’ve had since you’ve started this process? What are those moments that stand out to you, where you gained insight through challenges or difficulties?
Clark. Number one, I didn’t realize how critical the timing of fall cover crop planting was until I took the chemistry away. Consider cereal rye planted on September 1 versus cereal rye planted on November 15. The parts of the farm that got planted on September 1 are going to have a tremendous growth of cereal rye. It’s going to tiller. The biomass will be more than the cereal rye planted on November 15.
If you’ve got that easy button of chemistry to push, what does it matter if there’s a hole out there — if some ground isn’t covered by rye in the spring? You’re going to kill everything anyways. Then you plant your cash crop, and away you go.
I cannot have those holes anymore, though, because I have nothing to take care of that hole with. If you had a hiccup with your drill, or you planted on, say, November 14 and some of the field was wet and some of it was dry, and that cereal rye got waterlogged and it died, and the other didn’t — now half of your field next spring is an out-of-control weed mess, and part of it is in okay shape. So, that’s number one. I didn’t realize the importance of the timing of planting the cover crop in the fall.
Earlier I gave you the seven crops that we have in rotation right now, plus one. For folks in the northern part of the country, where it gets cold, I get it — you have difficulty getting these cover crops established in the fall.
But in those seven crops plus one, I’ve given you three ways to overcome the cold. First, a cereal grain. Do not double-crop soybeans behind that cereal grain. Take it off in the middle of July and plant a cocktail of cover crops on that acre.
Number two is livestock. You can either plant your cocktail into the cattle, where they’re standing — they’re not going to hurt a thing — or you come behind them as they’ve grazed across that field.
The third way was the regen year, because you’re not going to have a cash crop on that field.
So it is possible to do this in a colder region. It just goes back to what I said earlier — if I was going to add a seventh principle, it would be commitment. You’ve got to be committed on how to continually look at creative ways to do this.
It requires patience, and also validation. For example, we haven’t applied any synthetic fertilizers on our farm for eight years. We haven’t applied any ag lime on our farm in eight years. Our soil pH is 6.8 and rising. This is a validation that what we’re doing is correct, because we’ve taken away the salts and the acids that affect pH and that then require you to add lime to get the pH back in alignment.
Acres U.S.A. What’s your long-term plan? What do the next ten years look like for you?
Clark. I’m 57 years old. I’ve got 13 more tries at this. That takes me to 70. But I think I’ve got 18 more. That’ll take me to 75. So, in these next 18 years, we’re obviously going to continue to make the system better. But I think what needs to happen now is we need to figure out what stimulants we need to find in nature that will turn on certain microbes that still have not been turned on. Because I’m telling you — when you come through hundreds of years of tillage and about 40 years of chemistry — we have absolutely turned off the microbes.
Because they don’t have a job, they’re just sitting back and doing nothing. You always hear people say it takes three or four years to see a field start to react. It’s because I think those microbes that have a job are lazy, and they’re turned off because they no longer have a job to do. Once you start applying the principles of soil health, though, those microbes all of a sudden have their job back. But it takes time to get everything kickstarted. So, my next quest is going to be to look for how to introduce stimulants to the system that help promote that microbial activity.
Now, I didn’t say add microbes to the system —we have to be careful here. There’s a lot of things being sold out there — I call them “bugs in a jug” — that if you look at the label, there’s not anything in that jug that’s alive. It’s all dead. So, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about those stimulators that we can put in.
Do you realize that there are microbes in the soil profile that fix nitrogen? If we could turn them on and have them working at peak performance, we wouldn’t need any more nitrogen. Those are the kind of things I’m talking about. There are people out there who are working on breeding corn that fixes its own nitrogen. Who would have heard of such a thing?
There are all kinds of smart people out there; we just have to stop and listen, and pay attention. But Mother Nature is trying to tell us that something needs to change.
In our area we have a disease called tar spot. It affects corn. I saw a lot of tar spot in neighbors’ fields. Those corn fields were sprayed multiple times with fungicide, and they still had tar spot. I go out and I scout our fields and I don’t find any. None. Again, that’s a validation that we have health. That is why we can overcome some of these pest issues.
I don’t want to say we’re immune to them. I’m just trying to say that I think we’re building a system that is not going to have those pests be prevalent and cause mass destruction to our farm.
