Missouri Delta Soil Health Alliance

Two-time academy-award nominee, Woody Harrelson, headlines and narrates the 85-minute movie, Kiss the Ground, that puts the spotlight on regenerative agricult...ure as a solution to ecosystem health and climate problems. The movie also stars Understanding Ag’s Ray Archuleta, Gabe Brown and Kris Nichols, Ph.D. It streams on Netflix beginning Sept. 22. https://kissthegroundmovie.com/ See more

This is it folks! This is what you can accomplish with Regenerative Agriculture. These photos were taken the same day about 10 minutes apart. Soil armor is so i...mportant especially in the heat of summer. You achieve that soil skin with cover crops and no-till. The first picture of my neighbors corn was planted two months before my corn in the second picture. That means his corn has received 10+ more inches of rain over my corn. This is not a difference in soil type or a geographical issue. This completely has to do with human interaction management as I like to call it. Which corn has a better chance to be sustainable? Also, my corn has received far less nitrogen in the form of nitrates and ammonium. I prefer to receive 100+ units of N from proteins being converted from my cover crop residue, past residue, and legume nodules. This system can work anywhere in the world folks! The common denominator here is soil. Biology works everywhere. We just need to feed that biology with exudates released from plants. Keep a living root as long as possible. Use diversity, don’t just use cereal rye as a cover. Integrating cover crops will vastly increase fertilizer utilization for your cash crops. In return you will be far more profitable and productive. In the comments, I will leave two more pictures of what our soils look like right now. Please feel free to reach out to me to go observe my corn and my soil on this farm. See more

The four principles of soil health management: Cover, Living root 365, Limit Disturbance and Diversity. I believe this field checks all those boxes! Diverse covers and a crimper roller - soil health is improving here!

The cover crops on this 30 acre field sequestered at least 233 metric tons of carbon dioxide over the winter and spring. That's the equivalent of taking 50 cars... off the road for one year. I know I post a lot about cover crops and sustainability and some of y’all are probably tired of seeing it. But I believe that as a farmer, I have a responsibility to educate the public about my profession, especially since there is so much negative, false information propagated by many groups. Sustainability is a popular catchphrase nowadays and is attached to a lot of products you find in the store. However, sustainability begins at the producer level and farmers have a tremendous potential to drastically improve our environment. Farmers plant millions of acres to cash crops every year that sequester millions of tons of carbon from the atmosphere. But just think how much more carbon could be sequestered if all of these acres had plants growing on the land in between cash crops. A cash crop is typically grown on the land for about 4 months out of every year. That leaves 8 months that something could be growing that will not only improve the environment, but will also improve our most valuable resource, the soil. I’m not saying global warming is true or fake. But the bottom line is that humans ARE putting more and more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. I believe that as farmers, we need to use all the tools available to us to leave our soils and our planet in better shape. And we need to show the world how much we do care about the land we farm.

Planting in the drizzle in Scott County. Crimped rye wheat vetch and peas make a nice matt to help suppress weeds, maintain moisture and moderate soil temps...all to help support yields. These guys got it going on!!