When I think back on it, it became exciting.
And so this was, this thing was really moving and there was people that were everything from
ecstatic to upset and everything in between. Everything in between.
Welcome to the 354th installment of Ear to the Ground,
the Land Stewardship Project's podcast on family farming, regenerative agriculture,
community food systems, and local democracy. I'm Brian DeVore, editor of the Land Stewardship
Letter. The first time I saw Jay Feer in action, he was tramping through a diverse planting of
cover crops in South Central North Dakota and inviting some 120 farmers to do the same.
They were hesitant to crush such a verdant stand of green plants in a region that often suffers
from lack of precipitation. Take a closer look. Anything you tramp down is just carbon in the
soil, said Feer as he began spading up soil samples. Since then, I've talked to Jay several times
and have always been struck by two things. First, that he's unwilling to accept our soil as a
degraded resource. In his opinion, we have the ability to not just conserve or sustain it,
but to improve it. What's also impressed me about Jay is that he's one of these people who did a bit
of a pivot in his career as a soil conservationist. During the first part of his tenure with the USDA's
Natural Resources Conservation Service, Jay was pretty conventional in his approach. He would
visit farmers, see that they had a problem, and prescribe practices and structures that basically
put a band-aid on the symptoms that were resulting from a farming system based on bare soil,
intense tillage, monocrops, and lack of biological activity. Jay went on to be instrumental in
developing the Burleigh County Soil Health Team. This team, which was made up of farmers such as
Gabe Brown along with scientists and natural resource agency professionals like Jay, played
a key role in launching the current soil health movement we're experiencing in this country and
beyond. Over the years, scores of farmers and soil conservationists have traveled to the Bismarck area
to tour farms that were regenerating their soil and to take a look at the research being done at
the Monocan Farm, a soil health demonstration site operated by the Burleigh County Soil Conservation
District. These days, Jay divides his time between working at the Monocan Farm and providing training
and demonstrations related to building soil health. As part of that latter work, I ran into him this
summer at the northeastern Minnesota farm of John and Karen Stevens. During a Minnesota Soil Health
Coalition field day that Stevens has hosted, Jay described ways of monitoring soil health and took
folks on a pasture walk. It turns out Jay had visited the same farm seven years ago and, as we
describe in Ear to the Ground 353, he was blown away by the improvements the Stevens's have made
to their soil since that first visit. The conservationist says the Stevens farm is a prime
example of an operation that's regenerated its land following the soil health principles of
armoring the surface, minimizing disturbance, increasing plant diversity, providing continuous
living root systems, and integrating livestock. After the field day, I sat down with Jay next to
one of the Stevens's fields to talk about the beginnings of the initiative in Burleigh County
and how it was influenced by history, holistic management, and the latest breakthroughs in soil
science. What's refreshing about Jay is that despite his optimism about the ability of the
soil health movement to revitalize agriculture, he's also quite frank about the realities we face.
Despite the soil health gains he's witnessed by visiting farms like the Stevens's,
the veteran conservationist is quite troubled by the backwards steps we're taking on a region-wide
basis as the current cropping system becomes more entrenched. Jay also shared why on a day years ago
when he first started talking about a different approach to soil conservation with his colleagues,
he ended up eating lunch alone. So I initially started out treating symptoms and I think that's
an easier start because they're from a human aspect, they're so much easier to see and identify,
and we can get really good at that because it's well defined and so you can develop a skill set
to do that. But the the missing item for me was any fulfillment from the the human aspect,
something that you looked at with maybe some pride or maybe some fulfillment that said this
is very satisfying in my life and it feels right. And I was missing that element and so I still
recall the day very vividly. I got up in front of my peers at an NRCS meeting and previously I had
asked for you know if I could speak to the group and I was told we will give you five minutes before
lunch and I said I'll take it and five minutes before lunch I spoke to my peers and I said we're
starting to look at writing descriptions for soil health principles and I said they talk about things
like soil aggregates, they talk about things like carbon and I said they're the things I don't know
a lot about but I'm learning about them and I'm asking others to teach me on them. And so it
started the whole process right there for mentors and so the interesting thing was it got so quiet
in the group. Nobody asked a question, nobody said anything positive or negative. It was just a little
strange and I always end this story by saying yes I did have lunch alone that day but it was it was
the start and you have to start somewhere and for me it was important that it was like I wanted
a beginning line and so that was my beginning line and so I went down kind of a road of
self-education and mentorship education and I learned how to do how to look at carbon cycles,
carbon and carbon cycles, how to look at cropping systems, what builds these aggregates, what moves
a carbon needle, what difference does it make if I tilled or didn't till, what does a bricks level do,
what do all these things, how do they, how do we improve a soil because really at that time the
classical thought was you're not going to build the soil. This is that thousand year scenario
and the thousand year scenario is more sand silt and clay degrading from the rockies. Okay that's
kind of what I look at more as the thousand year scenario but we can impact carbon in a much quicker
time frame. We can bring life in and so I went on a reading quest as well. I've always enjoyed reading
and but I started being a little more selective and I started looking at documents, Lewis and Clark
just an example, but I started looking at documents of what built our soils and it was such a
fascinating adventure and when you start reading about people like Aldo Leopold and all these
different people that looked at nature in a unique manner and so it started my road down this
rebuilding and adding life and it started to be fulfilling. And it sounds like maybe too at the
same time what you were seeing kind of what you were promoting and other people like you were
promoting wasn't really working too. It wasn't kind of what we're doing isn't working no matter
how much more we double down on doing it. Well so at that particular time so I started in the 1980s
I started in 1980 actually and so in 1980s our erosion rates in the northern plains, North
Dakota specifically they they were what I would call sky high and so we also had water erosion
that's why I was building all these these structures treating treating symptoms. When our problem was
we couldn't get the water into the profile and so we had a we had a degraded soil and now we were
trying to make all these different changes by treating the symptoms and so that was kind of
the start of that process of rebuilding and putting life life into the soil and that led me down a
road of meeting some of the most fascinating people and and they were all they were all energized and
and it you felt right about it it felt like the right road so I was always happy I made that road.
You know when you do that I mean you know if I'm just being real honest with you not everybody
that you're working with is comfortable with that okay maybe management's looking at you a
little differently or maybe your peers are looking at you a little differently so it was real
important that I had family support so our children my wife everyone was fully in everyone's
support with me. Speaking of working with folks the other thing that struck me was when I first
started learning what was going on in Burleigh County was it almost seemed like a perfect storm
in that you had a really good team there of farmers scientists other agency folks folks that were just
interested in kind of regenerating that resource it sounds like that team effort was key because
you could if you had just been pushing this on your own or even if you had a couple really all-star
farmers that were really pushing it it probably wouldn't have gone anywhere. It's not the same no
you're exactly right and so we we did form a team and we did self-educate together and so it kind of
evolved around the the Burleigh Soil District Board of Supervisors and then the NRCS office
staff and the SCD office staff we were mingled together you you didn't know one of us from another
okay and we all worked on the same projects together and so we formed this team we self-educated we
would pick out topics and and of course initially it was easier to pick them out because they started
with the dynamic soil properties well these are the ones that you can change with management
and so these are the ones you want to start with when you look at soil health principles and they're
kind of built around those okay and so you so we started in that regard and and you're exactly
right so with the team and the meeting of the team and like-mindedness of the team you you felt you
had a place to sit down and talk about what was and wasn't working and if it wasn't working why
wasn't it and what do we need to change and let's do that so we did like roughly when was this when
was that what year roughly was that things kind of really changing for you and for this you know
when was this team getting together I always was curious about that so I think it was starting to
evolve in the late 80s so the 80s were really the frustration period so really super high erosion
rates and we had a lot of degradation in terms of our resource and so that was that was really the
80s and the 80s set the stage for this and as we got towards the end of the 80s we started evolving
and started putting this team together and so that that was kind of it's it's like they had to get
beat down a bit first and then in order to get traction and and in order to know you were actually
hitting in the right direction you were talking about the so the five soil house principles
did that come out of did you guys invent that where did that get come out of so the principles
I think uh you know if you read Gabe Brown's book I think he probably described it best he said
nature wrote the principles so so what we did and and what I did specifically for NRCS was I
wrote descriptions of the principles because at first we just had the term just the principle
okay well then you ask yourself what does that mean right right and so you you have a vague sense
but you don't know exactly what it all entails and I'm going to I'll give you an example so the one
that really evolved for me uh was the one on disturbance okay so initially disturbance well
that was physical disturbance with tillage okay so that's where it kind of started with it and my
first description is probably centered on that but the most recent one I I wrote on it which was
rather recent it's also biological disturbance which means less photosynthetic time less plant
diversity etc and then it was also chemical disturbance and so we can't you know it's not
realistic thought to think that we can continue to apply real high rates of of all the pesticides
continually and real high rates of a commercial fertility with no carbon in it but a high salt
reference in it and so we have to address these things from that viewpoint and so I think
disturbance changed I shouldn't say changed it evolved and got added to and expanded and we
started to understand that probably the biological disturbance is as big or bigger than even physical
disturbance so so that would be a point but I would say when we got into the 90s we started
gaining traction on it and and so it it became when I think back on it it became exciting and
so this was this thing was really moving and there was people that were everything from
ecstatic to upset and and and everything in between everything in between but yet a lot of enough
enough support and movement that you knew the road was this road was right direction it seems
like that this was very much influenced by holistic management is that true it is very much influenced
by holistic management I took the holistic management course 1986 in Bismarck from Ellen
Savory and so he came to Bismarck taught the class I attended the class and I met some people there
that became lifelong people associates that you could discuss all these principles with and so it
was the first time I attended something where I said to myself well how can that person say that
yeah you know so because it was so contrary to conventional thinking and then later in the day
I'm like right I think you just said it again but but he brought out and and more in a principal
manner which I appreciate it different aspects that we're dealing with started with grazing
systems with them and then 30 years later we brought them back to Bismarck and we had a three
day session with them still a brilliant mind just one of the great thinking minds for sure well and
the reason I bring that up is I remember going on a field day tour there in Burleigh County and the
issue of quality of life was brought up repeatedly by both the farmers and folks like you and I was
like okay this really is starting to smell like holistic management where it's not just the
health of the soil or the health of your bottom line it's also the health of the family and that
kind of that kind of piece all is a part of a whole kind of thing yeah so we ended up adding a
holistic resource management coordinator if you will to our team and so that was Joshua Ducart
at the time and gave us that human aspect and we started thinking about things I'll use the term
purpose-driven life we started looking at that differently and we started seeing the need for
those things and and how you as a human being react differently when you have that in your life
because I had experienced it personally so I knew exactly what he was saying because I could relate
to it and going back a little bit to this because I am just fascinated by this the other thing that
always struck me was and this fit in with a lot of the work Land Stewardship Project's been doing
with farmers here in that instead of taking the old route of you've got the expert coming from
the university or from the government kind of handing down information from on high the farmers
were seen as experts too and they were often leading and it was kind of a real give-and-take
and farmers were coming to folks like you or to scientists and saying I'm seeing this thing go on
and I don't understand why can you help me figure this out and it really was a kind of a team effort
rather than I've got this expertise I'm here's the way it's going to be a cookie cutter solution
kind of thing. I think you're exactly on and that's correct and in one of those items that
that we addressed with farmers on the ground was some what we think of now pretty straightforward
and that is what moves the carbon needle and soil organic matter levels and so as we applied these
principles we saw this acceleration of soil organic matter gains to which we were told
that that's not possible and that is not correct but as we came you know further down the road and
we started getting into understanding the better understanding of the carbon cycle from the viewpoint
of exudates which was kind of a missing portion back in the 80s not that it maybe wasn't known
in some scientific worlds but it wasn't commonly discussed in the ag community at all and so it
was definitely a missing part and so as that came into place all of a sudden the science was there
to support what we were seeing and we and I felt comfortable in what we were seeing because I
I took the tests myself I took those tests and before and after I had that data and so we stood
on that data but it wasn't popular and that's where like you said you needed family to kind
of support you some of those dark nights so you've been involved with this since 1980 you kind of
the late 80s started to kind of view things differently I have been around long enough I
remember the soil quality movement you know and there's been just soil conservation in general
that kind of thing I've been really struck by I think the soil health movement I don't know
if I want to call it a revolution maybe we can call it a revolution I don't know if you're
comfortable with that but kind of this this phase that we're in right now really has legs like I'm
seeing it it's just it is infiltrating so much of the regenerative ag movement and seeing more and
more quote-unquote conventional farmers kind of look into it what are some of the trends that you
have seen over the years and I guess did you think that it would become kind of this movement or or
did you yeah I just curious what you what you're what kind of the trends that you've seen over the
the years so if we if we go back a little bit when I started conservation tillage was the term yeah
and so I started with that and it was always a very difficult term for me because it had very
little to do with conservation it had a lot to do with tillage and different aspects of it and we
micro analyze that to death right and so that was a term kind of a generic term and then tilth was a
big thing yeah the word the word tilt was a big item yep and so you know you had all these things
then after that we moved into we changed terms we had organizations like manitoba north dakota zero
till association show up and they were a big influence in the 80s and early 90s and we came
up with words like no till and so that was a term that was thrown on to a lot of different systems
sometimes it fits sometimes it didn't it probably the weak point on it probably never was well
defined or described exactly what this means because it's rather generically used anymore
it was never really one of my favorite terms either because it was just about the seating
operation didn't talk much about carbon it didn't talk about much all these things didn't when
when nrcs moved into I think we had the name change in 94 if I remember right from scs to
nrcs but the interesting thing I remember was the posters and the poster for no till came out from
nrcs and it had some change laying on a table and it had an hourglass and you as the farmer the
message was you as a farmer we're going to move into no till to save time and money and it had
absolutely nothing to do with carbon or soil aggregates or nutrient density or it had nothing
to do with those aspects and we tried two or three big pushes internally within the agency to try to
make that thing move but it wouldn't move and the main reason it wouldn't move is we didn't understand
diversity and so we had no understanding of that and we had no understanding of how big this topic
was and how interconnected we were just dealing with one small little aspect of it well then from
there we started moving into the term soil health and soil health was a term that worked because no
matter who heard it they knew what it was and so I really think that's the big difference between
soil quality and soil health so quality came out of an aspect that really needed an interpreter
and and it needed somebody to explain what soil quality is how it functioned how it worked and
soil health kind of eventually became that so you you were looking at a scenario then with the
principles and the description of the principles and so that then eventually kind of moved into
more of a regeneration type scenario because because I think everyone by then had a pretty good
understanding that hey we're building back we're going to build this back right and so that that
kind of came in the the whole regeneration thing and so I think terms are kind of inevitable I
think different periods of time have different terms and so I I don't look at them as a pro or
con or anything else I just look at them as that's that term that we're using during this 10-20 year
period here you know and it'll change again. Well I remember sustainable sustainable ag was was the
big thing for a long time and I remember I don't know when this was but a farmer I was at a field
day and a farmer said I'm not I don't want to just sustain the system I want to regenerate it and it
was this idea of I can use soil to improve it rather than just maybe sustaining a certain plateau
that I've gotten to and it's kind of a continuum we can get better and better and better I thought
oh this is a little different viewpoint than what I've been hearing. It is that is it that was the
different viewpoint but it was it was not just in the farming community that was having those
conversations those conversations were happening internally within NRCS too that that right now
you know the people that were working on especially working on symptoms they were looking at conserving
and they weren't looking at rebuilding or regeneration and they weren't looking at it
from the viewpoint of the health of the ecosystem and so there therein lied that dilemma if you will
not just in the farming community but internally within USDA as well and you know initially I think
there was a fair bit of pushback maybe in both entities but eventually I think both saw that
no we're probably not going to stop this we have to understand it and apply it so my my personal
goal has always been to farm forever so if we're going to farm forever you have to put these things
into the best best position that you can adjust and improve upon for sure. So are you seeing more
farmers adapting some of these practices over time and and seeing some the results? So I we initially
saw a lot of adaptation of physical disturbance especially that principle you know we've had
we definitely and I'm talking about northern plains now we definitely have less tillage than
we used to have so that's a positive we have some adoption of covers that's a positive and in terms
of planting green for pintos and soybeans etc so those are those are some positive things the main
the main operating system I feel still hasn't really changed I think that's still there and
so that part I would like to see some improvement upon. How would you describe what is that main
operating system? Main operating system in the northern plains would be limited crop diversity
so corn bean you know be soybeans number one crop now in the Dakotas so we took wheat out and you
say well that's just switching one out for the other but it's more than that because when we
took wheat out we took the high carbon plant out we took the one out that could build aggregates
and give you enough residue to last until you had a green plant growing again and we replaced it
with a plant that might be well meaning to do that but doesn't have the capabilities of a wheat plant
to do that it doesn't have the the plant characteristics necessary and so those are
scenarios that in our environment have evolved into what I would call wind erosion in no-till
systems and that sounds strange at this point in our juncture because at one time I think we had
that quite well stabilized but we had better diversity then we still had some wheat and we
had some beans we had some corn we had some sunflower canola these were all crops and so
we had some pretty good diversity and we had a pretty stable scenario and now the frequency
of the low carbon crop has increased dramatically the frequency of the high carbon crop has dropped
dramatically this has made a difference on our landscape this this is this is significant to me
it's concerning it's something that we need to address because you can't tolerate when you're
when you're looking at erosion this was an item that NRCS and I never agreed on was a tolerance
level for erosion well really that that's a political level that's not a that's not a real
level it no it's not a landscape or ecological level this farm we were on today when I put the
spade in the ground and looked at that particular perennial with livestock it's building it's not
losing and so it it it's way beyond that scenario and that's what we have to be thinking of so that
when we have a crop land field like this corn field that's pretty close by here when you walk
into that crop land field and put the spade in the ground I see soil aggregates I see life because
he's supplied all that and so it's a it's a different environment but if we're if we're
going to have frequency of a plant that isn't capable of building soil aggregates and it is
very low carbon very low amounts of armor on the soil surface that's going to impact us and in our
big scale ag country in the dakotas where the wind is there's nothing to stop it and so we
definitely are going to be impacted and have been yeah so you're seeing more erosion that type of
thing yeah I think we we're seeing more we probably had a golden period maybe coming into the early
2000 to 2010 might have been our utopia period okay and then when we got past 10 and we started
seeing much more frequency change in the cropping patterns that's when I think we really noticed the
erosion and so I also I guess we're just looking at this thing pretty honestly it appears as though
we've also kind of hardened in a bit to it and and so it's not yeah and and uh you know we
it's something we can't tolerate and build the soil and people look at and want to know how to
build carbon levels for voluntary carbon credits or whatever uh well first thing that has to be
addressed is erosion rates you can't have that and so you know if we can bring our erosion rates
down for wind and water and if we can improve our water quality and quantity I think then one time
one of my mentors told me after that get as fancy as you want to well speaking you were referring
to this farm that we're on here and you were here seven years ago and I think that's really
an important insight that you can provide in that you have you were able to then come back today
and you were here yesterday I know and kind of dug up some soil and did a lot a little walking
around what have you seen on this this farm here they're uh they're doing crops they're also have
got life a nice rotational grazing system going here what have you seen how is it different from
seven years ago what I'm really seeing from seven years ago overall uh and I'm talking about the
the farm in general here the bar has been raised on on soil health on this farm so I think they've
done a really good job of connecting the cropping system and the grazing system together and so
they've got multiple species of perennials and they are grazing them with ruminants and then you
are looking at daily moves and so when you're looking at that environment and they're just
topping it right so they're just topping taking the higher protein and energy portion of the plant
trampling up the other portion and so in within a few years you can see some pretty dramatic
changes in carbon and just life in general and then of course now we got fields that are out now
they've come out the other end of that system and they're in cropland and so we had a chance now to
get on those and those are looking remarkable and so what what he has is a nice connection of the
systems and so when you have a weak link right in a in a field or somewhere's on a farm and you can
come in with the perennial aspect that's a huge item and they've really done a nice job on it and
it's just raised the general level on the farm it's it's definitely caught my eye right away.
Kind of on the macro level some of the trends aren't so hot that we're seeing like you said
we're kind of hardened into a certain system but on a farm by farm basis we're seeing some pretty
exciting stuff. I think that I think that's the that's the hope right that's that's the the
shining light at the end of the tunnel tunnel because we have farms like that and those farms
are in every state and so I can't tell you how many have had the opportunity to be on over the
years and these are people that they get the bigger picture they understand that the nutrient
needs to stay on that farm and not leave it on a water course and they they get these items and
they address these items and they care about these items and I think that's that's why we're all
optimistic about it and and I think we should be and I think then it becomes how do we how do we
broaden that out and so that that's a that's a great question but I think that's a very real item
and we we definitely see that. It sounds like you've talked John out of using the mow board plow next
year. Well I guess I guess we'll find out when we got onto the cropland field first year cropland
cropland that was in a managed grazed perennial okay and and we got the spade in the ground and
took a look at that soil and you could see the life in it and the aggregates in it and it definitely
I think caught both their attention at least I hope it did and it appeared to be that way and so
when you I think when you see it and you see it in your own field in your own land and from your own
efforts that's that's pretty significant. Well I overheard him tell a couple of his neighbors
yeah I guess I'm not using the plow next year so I think yeah I think he's convinced a little bit
well and you get to come back it's kind of must be neat to come back to a farm after being here
seven years ago and seeing the changes maybe seven years from now we can look at it again.
For more on building soil health profitably see the podcast page for Ear to the Ground episode
354 at landstewardshipproject.org. There you also find a link to the podcast I did recently
with John Stevens and the original articles I wrote over a decade ago on the Burleigh County
Soil Health Team. If you have comments or suggestions about this podcast contact Brian Davor at bdavor
at landstewardshipproject.org or you can call 612-816-9342. By the way it helps us greatly if
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