Interview with Jimmy Emmons, 2021 Soil Health U keynote speaker
Jimmy Emmons is regional coordinator for the Southern Plains Region – FPAC (Oklahoma). Third-generation farmer and rancher Jimmy and his family own and manage 2,000 cropland acres and 5,000 rangeland acres in Dewey County, Oklahoma.
Emmons serves as president of the Oklahoma Association of Conservation Districts and is on the Dewey County Conservation District board. As FPAC regional coordinator for the southern plains region, he serves Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas.
Jessica Gnad: Welcome, Jimmy! You will present the “State of the State of Soil” from the eyes of an Oklahoma Soil Health Steward and your work with USDA Farm Production. You will provide a historical review of soil health related to civilization, taking listeners on a journey up to the present-day status of soil health in the United States. I understand this will be the first time you’ve given this unique presentation, “The State of the State of Soil Health.” This information is pretty crucial; tell me more.
Emmons: Yes, my presentation title models the United States of America “State of the Union” address initially designed by George Washington to communicate the union’s status and the country to the United States citizen. I will bring that same message to the conference next week from the perspective of the status of soil health. I’ll cover where we’ve been, how we got started, where we’re currently at, and where we can go with regenerative agriculture.
And I’ll explain in pretty good detail what we’ve done to our soils over the years and how we degrade them, how we’ve caused water quality issues to the Gulf of Mexico, and try to explain the problem. But I will also highlight the solution of soil health. I will stress that producers can be the solution and not the problem in agriculture.
This would be the first time I’ve done this particular talk, and I’ll try to give a hefty summary of where we’re at, not only here in the middle part of the country, but also with soil and soil health across the United States.
Interview with Kris Nichols, 2021 Soil Health U keynote speaker
Kris Nichols is a soil microbiologist for KRIS Systems Education & Consultation.
Jessica Gnad: Joining me today is Dr. Kris Nichols, who is one of our keynote speakers at Soil Health U 2021 on Jan. 21. Welcome, Kris! Thanks for joining Soil Health U.
Dr. Kris Nichols: Thank you so much for having me.
Gnad: Kris, you are a leader in the regenerative movement to regenerate soil for healthy crops, food, people, and the planet. And currently you hold the position of research director at MyLand Company, LLC in Phoenix, Arizona, and you are also the founder and principal scientist for Knowledge for Regeneration and Innovation in Soil Systems Education and Consulting. I consider you a farmer’s farmer. Tell me a little bit about how you got here, your upbringing growing up on a farm, and how you have worked in so many different geographies, regenerating soil.
Nichols: I grew up on a farm in southwestern Minnesota. My dad purchased the farm the year I was born. So, my whole entire life, my family has been farming the same land. We’re a multi-generational farm family. And, really, when I look at the systems, I’m really focused on the idea that soil is universal. And so, I’ve worked in Minnesota and the upper Midwest. I’ve worked in the Great Plains in the Dakotas and I’ve also worked with farmers in Kansas and Nebraska. I’ve done research and work over in the sub humid Mid-Atlantic region. And I’m now working in the desert Southwest. And, again, what really unites all of those eco regions is looking at regenerating the soil.
Gnad: Absolutely, it’s the soil! So, in your presentation for Soil Health U this year, you’ll speak about regeneration principles and the tool box for producers to regenerate soil. You stress regenerative agriculture needs to be viewed through the lens of a systems approach. So, we’re not necessarily creating a check box of practices do’s and don’ts. Tell me a little bit more about regeneration principles and toolbox and how does that, in your mind, set farmers up for on-farm innovation.
Nichols: Again, it’s really about the soil and the biology within the soil and how we’re going to be able to regenerate that. And we need to use a systems approach. It’s sort of changing the paradigm of how we’ve focused on agriculture in the past, where what we’re doing is really looking at these interactions between the biology, the chemistry, the physics, and the geology in such a way that we’re taking all of the components together.
Interview with Rick Clark, 2021 Soil Health U keynote speaker
Rick Clark is a fifth-generation farmer from Williamsport, Indiana. The main goal on the farm is to build soil health and achieve balance with Mother Nature.
Clark has developed and is constantly improving a systematic approach to regenerative farming. The farm strives to be a low-cost input producer while maintaining an increase in yield year over year.
Rick Clark: Thank you so much for having me speak, Jessica. It’s a pleasure. Thank you.
Jessica Gnad: Of course! In your bio, you have been recognized for outstanding conservation efforts on the farm as well as leadership in advancing sustainable agriculture. And the title for your keynote presentation at Soil Health U is Leading With Soil Health. Tell me what this means to you.
Clark: Yes, Jessica, this is very important. The No. 1 driver of our systematic approach to our farming method is soil health. And I’ve said many times I will sacrifice yield to maintain soil health. And I will most definitely do that because it’s taken us so long to get to where we are today that I am not willing to give that soil health up.
Gnad: Absolutely. And you know, I’ve heard you talk about that before and I know that you’re going to dive into what that means. I know a lot of listeners are probably interested right now, sacrificing yield for soil health. But you also have pioneered an inventive systems approach to soil health. And you’re going to be talking about this a lot, it’s what you call “farming green.” By farming green through soil health, you increase your profitability while dramatically improving environmental outcomes. Tell me more.
Clark: Right, you are exactly correct. Farming green extends the life of the cover crops way longer into the growing seasons. So that cover crop, whatever it was intended to do, if it was a cereal grain it’s going to sequester nutrients, it’s going to give you armor to the soil, it’s going to give you erosion control.
If it’s a legume, you let it go further into the season like past Mother’s Day, and now it’s fixing all that free nitrogen for you that it’s pulling out of the atmosphere. Those are the things that I think are what really expedited our soil health journey, is because by farming green, which what I mean by that is we’re planting our cash crop of corn and soybeans into a living, growing, green cover crop and not terminating sometimes up to 35 to 40 days. We are pulling those nutrients deep from within the profile, recycling them back to the surface, and they go back down through the profile to be then available for the cash crop.
