Sustainable, regenerative, decarbonized—no matter what you call it, Nebraska’s farmers are increasingly being asked to produce enough food, fuel, and fiber for a growing global population, while reducing their impact on the environment. How do farmers incorporate practices that are proven to be good for the land as well as their bottom line, and what supports are in place to help them make the transition from conventional practices to more sustainable ones?
These questions were the topic of a recent regenerative ag conference held in Seward, Nebraska. More than 300 people attended the event, which was hosted by the Little Blue, Lower Big Blue, Lower Platte South, and Upper Big Blue Natural Resources Districts. The event featured keynote speakers Keith Berns, co-owner of Green Cover Seed, and Mitchell Hora, founder and CEO of Continuum Ag, as well as a local producer panel. The conference drew attendees primarily from the eastern half of Nebraska, but also saw participants from Iowa, Kansas, and Colorado.
Topics covered included soil health, cover crops, no-till, soil microbes, erosion prevention, carbon intensity scores, and potential funding for producers moving from conventional practices to regenerative ones. In addition to the speakers, attendees had time to visit with event sponsors representing a broad spectrum of products and services in the regenerative ag space.
“Carbonomics”
Keith Berns challenged the audience during his introductory keynote address with a thought exercise: Imagine if you went home today to find that half of your land was gone, and you suddenly had to make do with a lot less.
While no one is coming to steal your fields, American farmers are already in this scenario, due to soil degradation. “We’ve lost half of our topsoil from water erosion and wind erosion,” Berns said, showing a dust bowl photo of billowing clouds of soil. “Of the soil that we have left, we’ve lost more than 50 percent of the carbon, the organic matter that’s in our soil,” which leads to a significant decline in soil productivity.
Changing weather patterns with heavier rainfalls punctuated by longer periods of drought make it more essential than ever to have a healthy functioning soil system that can take in and hold moisture, he said. How do we restore the soil to maximum productivity and increase water holding capacity? By treating the soil like a country’s economy. Berns went on to describe in detail “Carbonomics,” the economy of the soil with the currency of carbon.
Plants, animals (soil biota), and the soil each have a distinct role to play in this economy, whether they are producers or consumers. When producers and consumers are balanced and everyone is ‘working’, then you have a ‘low unemployment rate’ and a healthy system. Plants capture sunlight and use it to produce carbon. In that way, a farmer’s success is tied to how well they convert sunlight into something of direct value, like a bushel of soybeans. To improve soil productivity, you must add more carbon into the system via photosynthesis. An easy way to do this is to make sure there is something growing on the soil year-round through the use of cover crops.
When we provide a plant externally with what the soil system should provide for them naturally, you make the soil economy less functional, Berns explained, likening this scenario of increased inputs to “agricultural welfare.” When the soil economy is working, there should be enough nutrients and plant defenses occurring naturally that there isn’t a need for large quantities of fertilizer or herbicides.
“Your biggest energy expense on the farm isn't diesel. It's nitrogen,” Berns told conference attendees. While the atmosphere is full of nitrogen, it isn’t directly accessible to the plants. To access the nitrogen, farmers need to support the “nitrogen factories” in the soil, including legumes as well as soil microbes like azospirillum and azotobacterium.
What kills these nitrogen-fixing microbes?
Products like pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, and strong chemical fertilizers, as well as practices such as excessive tillage or monocropping.
In this way, conventional agricultural practices are reducing the natural nitrogen fixing bacterial activity of the soil.
“Tillage is an act of war on your soil,” explained Berns, as it takes out the transportation and communication infrastructure of the soil.
“There’s a lot going on under our feet out there,” Berns said.
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Categories: Nebraska, Crops, Sustainable Agriculture