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“We don't have any agrochemicals used on this farm and we don't use tillage. So the two tools that I have for managing vegetation are fire and animals. And the timing of moving those animals and that fire through these different fields is really important as far as getting the cash crop established. I'm not interested in completely eradicating the plant community from my field. I want that plant diversity out there. And I can weather a hit, a yield hit because of that, because I'm growing higher value crops. I'd rather grow things by the pound than by the bushel.” Jonathan Lundgren.
Formerly with the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, entomologist Dr. Jonathan Lundgren left the ARS in 2016 and started up Blue Dasher Farm and the Ecdysis Foundation to promote the expanded use of regenerative agriculture practices across the country.
In this episode of the No-Till Farmer Influencers & Innovators podcast, editor Frank Lessiter talks with Jonathan about his motivations for making this move and how he hopes to remove barriers to the adoption of regenerative agriculture. In addition, Jonathan explains how he sees no-till as the starting point for the regenerative movement, the role livestock plays in a resilient farm, what’s at stake in converting — or not converting — to a regenerative mindset, and much more.
No-Till Influencers & Innovators podcast series is brought to you by The Andersons.
A nutrient management program is essential to maximize crop productivity and yields. Providing the right nutrients at the right time throughout the growing season is key. The Andersons High Yield Programs make it easy to plan a season-long approach for many row and specialty crops. Visit AndersonsPlantNutrient.com/HighYield to download the High Yield Programs and get instant product recommendations for corn, soybeans, wheat, potatoes, and more.
Full Transcript
Brian O'Connor:
Welcome to the latest episode of the No-Till Farmer Influencers & Innovators Podcast. I'm Brian O'Connor, lead content editor for No-Till Farmer. The Andersons sponsors this program, which features stories about the past, present and future of no-till farming. I encourage you to subscribe to this series, which is available in iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and TuneIn radio. Subscribing will allow you to receive an alert about coming episodes as soon as they are released. I'd like to take a moment to thank The Andersons for supporting our No-Till Farmer Influencers & Innovators Podcast series. A nutrient management program is essential to maximizing crop productivity and yields. Providing the right nutrients at the right time throughout the growing season is key. The Andersons high yield programs make it easy to plant a season long approach for many row and specialty crops. Visit andersonsplantnutrient.com/highyield to download the high yield programs and get instant product recommendations for corn, soybeans, wheat, potatoes, and more.
Brian O'Connor:
Today's podcast is a rebroadcast of one of the most popular Influencers & Innovators Podcasts, originally uploaded in December, 2019. Formerly with the USDA's agricultural research service, entomologist Dr. Jonathan Lundgren left the ARS in 2016 and started up Blue Dasher Farm and the Ecdysis Foundation to promote the expanded use of regenerative agriculture practices across the country. In this episode of the No-Till Farmer Influencers & Innovators Podcast, editor Frank Lessiter talks with Jonathan about his motivations for making this move and how he hopes to remove barriers to the adoption of regenerative agriculture. In addition, Jonathan explains how he sees no-till as the starting point for the regenerative movement, the role livestock plays in a resilient farm, what's at stake in converting or not converting to a regenerative mindset, and much more.
Frank Lessiter:
Today, we're talking with John Lundgren from Estelline, South Dakota. And John, give us a little background. Did you grow up on a farm?
Jonathan Lundgren:
No, I grew up in the suburb of Minneapolis, St. Paul, but back then it was all agricultural areas, which is pretty strange. It is now urban sprawl.
Frank Lessiter:
So what led you into becoming an entomologist?
Jonathan Lundgren:
Well, I guess I've always had a real interest in animals. And I took some entomology classes in college and decided pretty early on that that's the area of biology that I wanted to specialize in.
Jonathan Lundgren:
So you went to the University of Minnesota and then you got your PhD from the University of Illinois, right?
Frank Lessiter:
That's right. Yep.
Jonathan Lundgren:
And what'd you do after you got your doctorate degree?
Frank Lessiter:
I got a job with the USDA Ag Research Service, moved to Brooking, South Dakota, and spent 11 years with them. And in 2016, I quit, and we started Blue Dasher Farm and the Ecdysis Foundation.
Jonathan Lundgren:
When did you first get hooked up and get excited about no-till?
Frank Lessiter:
Probably while I was with the USDA. I was kind of integrated in with an interdisciplinary team, studying things from weed science to soil, cover crops, things like that, before cover crops were really known. And that's where I was first exposed to this whole concept of no-till and why it was so important to the whole system.
Jonathan Lundgren:
So you did a lot of work at ARS. We had you as a speaker in, I think, 2014 at our national no-tillage conference in Springfield. What led you to leave ARS and go out on your own?
Frank Lessiter:
Well, I started to meet farmers that were really driving a revolution in agriculture and food production. They're now being called regenerative farmers, but I don't think that we knew quite what was going on at the time when it was first starting. I tried to change the system from within USDA, trying to recognize and devote resources and meaningful time and effort into helping to fuel this revolution. But it became really clear that the farmers were just way, way ahead of the science, way, way ahead of the government and the universities on this. And it required a different approach to science and how science fits into that to really help to solve that problem. And so we started a grassroots, very applied science foundation that was specifically devoted to removing hurdles from regenerative ag.
Jonathan Lundgren:
So tell us a little about the research farm, the name, and what you're doing, et cetera.
Frank Lessiter:
Well, Blue Dasher Farm is located in the middle of kind of nowhere, Deuel County, South Dakota. It's on an operating farm. It's a regenerative farm itself.
Jonathan Lundgren:
I was surprised. I looked at what you have on the website. You got a pretty good size staff and got some acreage and you're hoping to expand, right?
Frank Lessiter:
That's right, yeah. Who'd have thunk, huh? If you had told me four years ago when we got this started that I'd even still be around, I'd be a little surprised. So there's not much of an instruction book for what we're trying to do, but I think it speaks volumes that we are still here and even expanding, that this is a real need right now. And really our research, our science, everything about us is funded by the farmers themselves and the gatekeepers and the ranchers, right? So I think we're in the right place at the right time.
Jonathan Lundgren:
The other research farm that's done very well with farmers financing and everything has been Dwayne Beck at Pierre, South Dakota. So are you similar to what he's doing, getting farmers involved in this?
Frank Lessiter:
Yeah. So Dwayne is a good friend. And we have very similar mindsets on what's going on. Our farm is different, though. I mean, yes, we have the research facility that's here. We don't do a lot of actual on-farm research here at Blue Dasher. Blue Dasher is a demonstration in one system that we are developing to make work. Most of our science is actually done out on area or regional or even nationally on farms themselves. So that really increases the relevance of what we're trying to do.
Jonathan Lundgren:
So since 1972, we've done no-till farmer. And our farmers have been innovators. They've been involved with no-till. They've been really involved with cover crops. I mean, you look across the country and maybe 7% or 8% of farmers are using cover crops. And our no-tillers, it's close to 80%. I argue sometimes that we had the word sustainability for a while, and I would argue that no-tillers are as sustainable as they are. So tell me where the no-tillers are in regards to what you're doing with regenerative. And are they close, or they got to do some more things, or way behind?
Frank Lessiter:
As I look at the history of what this regenerative movement is, I think it started with no-till movement, to be honest with you. So I mean, I watched it as it was going on. No-till reached a plateau in what you could achieve on your farm with no-till, and then suddenly people started to talk about cover crops and how those two elements really go hand-in-hand to maximize the productivity of your system. And so we saw this cover crop movement, and then, man, it just opened the flood gates, didn't it-
Jonathan Lundgren:
Yeah.
Frank Lessiter:
... as far as how to incorporate biology, how to incorporate that complexity within your farm and ecological complexity, plant diversity, all of these different insects, animals. It's really woken us up, but it started with no-till. Where's it going? I think the next phase of this is certainly getting livestock back into the operations. We need to have plants and animals growing in the same place at the same time, at least on some element of the farm. And that increases the farm's resiliency. I mean, suddenly you're not beholden to market perturbations and grain commodities, and things like that. You can weather those storms. It's built right into your business model. I think farmers need to start taking more than one revenue stream off of a piece of ground. Farmers that are only extracting one revenue stream, like one crop off of a piece of ground, that's dumb. They've got to be stacking enterprises here. You've got to be thinking about how to farm that smarter, much smarter.
Jonathan Lundgren:
Give me an example of that.
Frank Lessiter:
Well, you could grow two crops in the same place at the same time. Intercropping is really starting to pick up. Thinking about the type of crops; maybe it's perenniality within that system, strips or something along those lines, orchard systems, integrating livestock in there so that you're grazing pieces of ground so that if a crop fails, you're still taking meat sales off of that, egg sales.
Jonathan Lundgren:
Right. One of the things that I see is a concern in Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, most of these no-tillers have taken their fences out because they don't have any more livestock. And then at the same time, they're so dependent on corn and soybeans, they don't get a more diversified rotation.
Frank Lessiter:
Yeah, that's huge. Those are both important problems or opportunities. And I think that's a really important thing that people need to be thinking about is they need to be turning problems into opportunities. I look at weeds on my own farm. And I had a tour group that came in and they're like, "Oh, you got some weeds out there." And I looked out there and I'm like, "I don't see any weeds. I see forage." And so we graze that ... I mean, we use sheep as our vegetation management tool. And I'm making money off of my weeds.
Jonathan Lundgren:
Yeah. Well, I think this year with all the preventative planting acres, weeds were practically a cover crop, probably not the best, but it was something and covering the soil.
Frank Lessiter:
Darn right it was.
Jonathan Lundgren:
In your work, you're working with everything. So you've got above ground insects and you've got below ground. You're working on both of those areas?
Frank Lessiter:
That's right, yep. We're really focused on the soil right now, but that's connected to everything else, isn't it? So we have a strong pollinator research program, honey bees, managed honey bees. So we're trying to help save the bees. We are working on how to diversify crop land along regenerative principles and what that means and how farmers can make those transitions in every different system that we can get our hands on. And then we've got a really strong rangeland focus too, thinking about how managing that herd of animals in the best possible way to increase soil health and biodiversity and profitability.
Jonathan Lundgren:
So how does someone make a decision on whether they ought to be running sheep or beef cattle?
Frank Lessiter:
Well, I don't know why you'd stop with one or the other.
Jonathan Lundgren:
Okay. There you go.
Frank Lessiter:
I think having both is a good idea, really is the solution. I think it depends on what works for your farm and what you want to do. I think you can make either of those work real well. I don't have any beef on my farm, but I'm thinking about starting to incorporate in maybe some Belted Galloways out there. I just like the way that the two species work together as far as their foraging and their plant utilization. Each animal has a specialized group of plants that they prefer to munch on. And then I like the idea of having more than one market for my product.
Jonathan Lundgren:
Yeah. So how are you marketing your lamb?
Frank Lessiter:
A lot of it's direct market, so we'll sell directly to consumers. We're not large enough where I've saturated that market at this point. And we're developing those markets even more.
Jonathan Lundgren:
From what you've said, I assume your cover crops, you're using a mix. So how do you pick what goes into there, and what are you using?
Frank Lessiter:
So, I don't plant cover crops. I plant my annual crops into perennial warm season grass mixes. We never have bare soil. I'm farming in the prairie itself. And so that's a little bit more unique than what a lot of our farmers that we're working with on. We're looking at diversity of cover mixes across the country right now. The more species you can get in there, the better. But certainly having your different classes of cover species in there would be a really good deal. There's functional groups that you need to be considering, things like grasses, warm and cool season grasses, maybe having something from each of those, having something from your brassicas, from your legumes, from your pea family, things like that, so that you're hitting those key functional groups. And those plants all work together to fill specific niches on your farm and help make you the most productive you can be.
Jonathan Lundgren:
Right. So when you're seeding into these grasses, what crops are you planting?
Frank Lessiter:
We plant weird stuff. So the biggest money maker on my farm is honey. I'm growing honey. So everything on my farm can have more than one revenue stream from the standpoint of if that crop fails, I can take a honey crop off of it. So I'm growing things like borage, I'm growing things like annual sweet clover, I'm growing things like Canada wild rye that has a very high value as a seed crop. All of these are seed crops, but they're also really important honey crops. The Canada wild rye is a good pollen source for the bees. But we also have an orchard system here. We also have half of the farm is devoted just to natural prairie, unbroken prairie, that I can graze.
Jonathan Lundgren:
What widths are you planting these crops? And then are you using any herbicides or controlling the grass at all, or not?
Frank Lessiter:
We don't have any agrichemicals used on this farm and we don't use tillage. So the two tools that I have for managing vegetation are fire and animals. And the timing of moving those animals and that fire through these different fields is really important as far as getting the cash crop established. I'm not interested in completely eradicating the plant community from my field. I want that plant diversity out there. And I can weather a yield hit because I'm growing higher value crops. I'd rather grow things by the pound than by the bushel.
Jonathan Lundgren:
There you go. Right.
Frank Lessiter:
We seed it directly in with 7.5" rows, by the way.
Jonathan Lundgren:
Right. Is this a traditional spring seeding, or not?
Frank Lessiter:
Yeah, that's what we try. I guess it all depends. Good Lord, we haven't had much of an opportunity like that in Eastern South Dakota for the last two years; been underwater.
Jonathan Lundgren:
We have a lot of places. I mean, we got a lot of really good [inaudible 00:15:22] that hardly got anything planted this year. And how does a farmer value a honey crop? I mean, what kind of returns can you get?
Frank Lessiter:
Well, I figure I can ... off of this farm in, yeah, it's 2019. I took 1,000, 1,500 pounds of honey off. I sell it for about eight bucks a pound. So yeah, almost all of that's return, once you have your initial investment in the hive equipment. That's with a hundred hives and that's on the 19 acres or whatever that we actually crop. So you can pencil it out as far as the math is concerned. It's a pretty good return.
Jonathan Lundgren:
We have a grandson who lives in a suburb here in Milwaukee, but a little bit out in the country, FFA member. And he's been taking care of, for two years, the honey plots that the FFA chapter has.
Frank Lessiter:
Oh, great.
Jonathan Lundgren:
So he's learned a great deal about beekeeping. Pollinators, no-tillers that are even more ... not so much in the regenerative ag, although they ought to be, but they're more traditional, what happened. What do they got to do for pollinator strips, and what should they be doing?
Frank Lessiter:
First off, stop using insecticides and fungicides on your farm. Once you do that, that means seed treatments too. We found that even if you plant flowers for these bees and other pollinators out there, that if you're using these seed treatments, that they're getting into those conservation strips, and that's a real problem. Next, think about, once you're establishing these things, pick any land that you can spare and plant it in flowering species. Diversity matters; colors, different flowering times of the year, different floral heights, different flower architects, different types or shapes of flowers. And then realize that what you're doing by doing that isn't just feeding native species or helping the environment. It's helped you. I mean, most flowering crops that we have experience up to a 20% yield bump just by having beehives. So by feeding these pollinators, you're actually increasing your yield. Even self-fertilizing crops like soybeans and sunflowers benefit. It's a bigger yield bump than you're going to see at a [inaudible 00:17:51], I guarantee it.
Brian O'Connor:
We'll come back to Frank and Jonathan. Before we do so, I'd like to thank our sponsor, The Andersons, for supporting today's podcast. A nutrient management program is essential to maximizing crop productivity and yields. Providing the right nutrients at the right time throughout the growing season is key. The Andersons high yield programs make it easy to plant a season long approach for many row and specialty crops. Visit andersonsplantnutrient.com/highyield to download the high yield programs and get instant product recommendations for corn, soybeans, wheat, potatoes, and more. Before we get back to the conversation, here is Frank Lessiter with a little-known no-till farm fact.
Frank Lessiter:
Someone recently asked, "What's the value of residue under no-till conditions?" Well, University of Nebraska has done some studies that show there's a total value per ton of fertility of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, sulfur of $17.85 per acre with a 200 bushel corn crop, where five tons of corn residue per acre is produced. So that $17.85 was for each ton. So if you have five tons of corn residue per acre, multiply that by 17. And you'll see what the value is of leaving it on the fields. Or if you're going to take it off, then you've got increased costs for lime value, yield loss, soil loss, increased irrigation needs, raking, bailing, transporting. And so your total cost could be as high as $75 per ton to harvest the residue. And like many no-tillers, they'd rather leave it on the ground.
Brian O'Connor:
And now, back to the podcast.
Frank Lessiter:
I pulled up the article we did on ... It was a summary of a number of speakers from the 2014 no-till conference at which you spoke at. And one of the things coming in there is you did a study on seed treatments. And you found there was no really differences between treated and untreated soybeans in many instances, right?
Jonathan Lundgren:
We replicated that study in sunflowers and in corn. We see the exact same results. I mean, we're not for sale. We're not selling you anything. What we're trying to do is no strings attached research and looking out for the farmers themselves. You guys are being sold a bill of goods here, and it's not helping you. It's hurting you with these [crosstalk 00:20:25]-
Frank Lessiter:
Yeah, they're getting more attention than they ever have from companies.
Jonathan Lundgren:
Sure are. Yep. That's right. It's a great way for them to make money.
Frank Lessiter:
There was some talk a few years ago that butterflies were having a problem with Bt hybrids.
Jonathan Lundgren:
Yeah, monarchs.
Frank Lessiter:
Yeah. Was there anything to that?
Jonathan Lundgren:
I don't think that the risks associated with Bt hybrids is necessarily a toxicity one. I think that what the cost to the non-target species has been with Bt hybrids is simplification of the landscape. It supports people abandoning rotations and devoting additional acreage to a single species like corn or whatever other Bt hybrids down south, cotton or whatever, or even soybeans now. So the toxicity angle isn't really the problem. The environmental harm of genetically modified crops has been the simplification of our food system. And that gets beyond non-target species. That's making farmers much more brittle. It may be easy in the short term, but we've really sacrificed diversity and resilience of our farms as a result of that.
Frank Lessiter:
How about the underground animals that no-tillers and you are probably working with? What do we need to be doing better there?
Jonathan Lundgren:
Well, I think we need to be making sure that the only thing that we're feeding some of these below ground critters is our crop, in the case of pest management. So if we put other species out there, things like covers and things like that, then that's really going to help with any soil-borne pest issues. The other thing that we need to be thinking about is that really we create our pest problems, and a lot of that stems from how much diversity that we have in our farming operation. We have to be getting more species into our farms. A lack of species is where most of our pest problems end up coming from. And a lot of that diversity is in the soil. In corn fields in Eastern South Dakota, we've discovered 492 insect species living in these corn fields, most of which live in the soil.
Frank Lessiter:
Wow. That's amazing to me. Where you are in South Dakota, and South Dakota and North Dakota, have seen a big increase in corn and soybean acres in recent years. Is that a good move or not so good move, or it doesn't matter, or what?
Jonathan Lundgren:
I don't think it's a good move. I'm not against corn and soybeans. Please don't think that, okay? [crosstalk 00:23:02]-
Frank Lessiter:
We got to feed people and the animals.
Jonathan Lundgren:
Well, there you go. I am pro-farmer though. And I think that as we have simplified things ... I mean, how many people are going to ... It's like, "Okay, I want a business opportunity. I'm going to go into a small town in Iowa that has seven McDonald's. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to build a McDonald's. That just makes good sense. Doesn't it?" No, we got to be thinking outside of the box here a little bit. A farm is a business, and you've got to be growing things that are worth money. Corn and soybeans aren't worth a whole lot right now. [crosstalk 00:23:39] They're in the tank. And that means stacking enterprises, that means diversifying out, that means thinking about your community and working within that community. So I see corn and soybeans as one part of a bigger, bigger puzzle. And until we start to embrace that diversity, farmers are going to continue to lose.
Frank Lessiter:
Off the website, I see that you're pushing the food system concept. And you talked about soil health and farm biodiversity. And you talked about nutrient dense food. Tell me the whole concept you got here.
Jonathan Lundgren:
Well, right now, we need to be growing food, things that humans eat. That's really important. And we need to be growing things that are nutritious. And the soil is directly related to the nutrient density, the nutrition of the farm products, be it animals or grain or vegetables or fruits, whatever. Honey is in there too. As we have diminished the biology in our soil, we're starting to very, very quickly realize how much of the nutrition of a plant is derived from biological interactions with microbes and mycorrhizal fungi and bacteria and insects and other plants under the soil.
Jonathan Lundgren:
And so we've seen this decline in the nutrition of our food over the last 40 years or so, 30% of the protein content of different foods; in that case, goldenrod pollen for my bees, I've seen that starting to go down. And we've seen the nutrition of most other crop species starting to diminish on the same level. It just seems like there's this consistent trend. And a lot of that is either we already know that it's related to the biodiversity, the life and the soil, or we're about to discover it. We need to have that.
Frank Lessiter:
Right. We have some insect and disease problems in corn and soybeans. And we see these things probably somehow needing to be controlled, but then we got natural predators. Talk a little about natural predators and how a farmer can help this ... how a no-tiller ought to think about how this fits without having a chemical bill.
Jonathan Lundgren:
Well, certainly, predators are part of that equation, but what we've ... And I entered into this whole world of regenerative ag thinking that it was a predator, prey interaction, that we could use predators as sort of these biological pesticides, almost. I now realize that I was thinking too small, that really what we need is species out there. And what we find is that the more insect species that we have, that affects the entire environment in so many different ways. Number one is it improves the health of the plant, so the plants are healthier and they can resist pests and they can tolerate or [inaudible 00:26:43] pests.
Jonathan Lundgren:
Number two, you've got predators that start to become more abundant in these fields, and those eat your pests. And then you've got things that we can't even predict, things like symbioses among different organisms, the microbial fauna and how that interacts with both plants and insects in order to make these plants more resistant to insect pests, and then also reduce the pests themselves. So really what we find is that the farms that are increasing biodiversity, the life on their farms, do not have pest problems. They just don't. They're gone. Pests aren't an issue for them to think about. They saved so much more money. The regenerative corn farms that we studied, they had twice the profits of their conventional neighbors. The insecticide treated corn fields had 10 times more pests than the ones that hadn't used insecticides. They'd replaced their insecticides with diversity.
Frank Lessiter:
So when you mentioned these 400 and I think 90 pests or so that you had found, the majority of them good, there's some bad ones, or what?
Jonathan Lundgren:
480 species in corn. Almost all but three or four were either neutral or beneficial, that we cannot function without these things.
Frank Lessiter:
Right, wow. So if somebody comes to one of your talks, a no-tiller who's pretty progressive, corn, soybeans, using cover crops, everything, and he looks at regenerative agriculture and he thinks, "My gosh, do I really want to go all that way or do I go all at one time," what should be his first couple steps? Or what could he do even if he didn't believe he's going to go total regenerative yet?
Jonathan Lundgren:
I don't think that a farmer should entirely change his operation all in one fell swoop. I think he or she needs to practice. I think devote 40 acres to this and then develop an entire system, one that has animals and plants in the same place at the same time, and no-till cover crops, plant diversity in this 40 acres. I guarantee that he or she is going see so many benefits from that, that the whole farm will be devoted to that or similar systems within a few years. The other question that I get is, "Geez, all this regenerative stuff owns great, but what's it going to cost me to change?" And I think that's really the wrong question. I think that at this point in farming, the question is, what's it going to cost you not to change? It's going to cost you your farm. It's going to cost you your grandkids. What's it worth? What's it worth not to change? We need to wake up.
Frank Lessiter:
Well, there's some practitioners of the regenerative movement who have done really well. Gabe Brown in your own state has been a big proponent of it and really made it work. When you talk and when he talks, it's got to open people's eyes to what might be going on. The interesting thing is that you talked about 40 acres is ... most of these no-tillers are already doing test plots. They're doing test plots on varieties or hybrids. So it's not out of the question that they just don't know-
Jonathan Lundgren:
Perfect.
Frank Lessiter:
... they could do this easily.
Jonathan Lundgren:
I think farmers need to understand that their future is dependent on them starting to think outside the box. There's a lot of money being made off of farming right now, but it isn't necessarily the farmers. It's time to wake up. Let's keep more money in our pockets.
Frank Lessiter:
Do you see organic no-till growing?
Jonathan Lundgren:
Sure. Yeah, absolutely. I think that'll be a huge part of it, but I don't think the organic label is necessary. If you can make more money off of it, then great. But I think you're going to make more money by direct marketing your product, no matter what you do.
Frank Lessiter:
Right. There's no doubt. I mean, and some years, organic people have done very well, and some years there hasn't been that much price difference. And if everybody starts organic, there won't be the premium that there is now anyway.
Jonathan Lundgren:
I mean, we're far from saturating the organic market, but I think that as we go that route, farmers are just going to realize how much more profitable their operation is, even at normal prices or conventional prices, when they're farming regeneratively. And that's going to keep them afloat much quicker than an insurance check is from the government.
Frank Lessiter:
So you mentioned orchards. What do you have in your orchards?
Jonathan Lundgren:
Well, we have a pretty diverse stand. It's small still, and the trees are about two years away from bearing fruit. But we've got apples, pears, peaches, plums, apricots, Saskatoon berries. Elsewhere on the farm, we've got raspberries, strawberries, grapes, elderberries. We're really trying to get diversity onto the farm. And all of those are great pollinator plants, by the way.
Frank Lessiter:
So something like apples, are you going to be able to get ... going to work for you without fungicides?
Jonathan Lundgren:
Yeah, yeah. What we're doing is we've got ... I sowed the prairie underneath the orchard. And I've got pastured pork and sheep and chickens that are living under there. So fruit trees abort fruit that's sick, right?
Frank Lessiter:
Right.
Jonathan Lundgren:
And the problem is that we've separated the livestock out of that system, and so the pests end up cycling underneath the trees and reinfecting the trees. You get these huge pest blooms. The reason that the trees abort the fruit is because normally in an ecosystem there's animals that go under there and eat that up. The trees are trying to heal themselves, but we've screwed it up by getting that out of there. So we've put that back in.
Frank Lessiter:
So when you're using these animals, are you using rotational grazing?
Jonathan Lundgren:
That's right, high intensity rotational grazing. And then we just keep them moving.
Frank Lessiter:
So how often would you move them in some of your typical acres?
Jonathan Lundgren:
For sheep, we move them every day or two, and then we graze them real tight. We hit it hard and then we move them. And then the pigs, maybe every four days or so we try to move them. They're real destructive. So no-till is absolutely necessary, right? We've got to stop disturbing that soil. At some point, though, to maintain diversity in our systems, we've got to have disturbance, right? Otherwise, you're going to attain a late successional system. That's not what we want. That's a pretty undiverse system, actually. And so punctuated disturbances become really important after a certain point. We're far from that point in most cropping systems. What that disturbance does, then, is it allows additional diversity to maintain itself within your farm. There is no better punctuated disturbance than pastured pigs. I mean, they hit the ground. You come in afterwards. They prepare the seed bed real well for any cover crops you might want to grow. And then it's a great way of increasing the diversity and adding a revenue stream under your operation.
Frank Lessiter:
Right. Well, it's the same thing with beef cattle. The hoof movement is a form of tillage. Gets [crosstalk 00:33:43]-
Jonathan Lundgren:
Absolutely. Yeah, you're darn right.
Frank Lessiter:
Right. One of the things that you mentioned was fire. How are you using this?
Jonathan Lundgren:
What we'll do is we'll do a spring burn every few years on our crop ground. And then we get right in there afterwards and get the crop in. And those are some of our more successful crops. But you don't want to over-burn, otherwise ... We have a weird farm. I'm not going to [inaudible 00:34:04]. So fire works really well as a tool for us because of that perennial cover.
Frank Lessiter:
My son and I were down in Moline yesterday at the John Deere archives on a different project. And we were looking through old farm equipment magazines from the 1910s, 1915. And one of the things I saw were they had manure spreaders, but on the top of the manure spreader, they had a straw spreader. And they were going out and taking straw and spreading it on their bare ground. So even as early as 1900 or something, my God, there were machines for spreading straw, which got them some residue on the soil surface all winter long.
Jonathan Lundgren:
Yep, sure did. They were thinking. We've got things we can learn. We've got things we can teach that previous generation too, but we also have things we can learn from them.
Frank Lessiter:
Yeah, I'll give you a chance for a commercial spiel. How can a farmer get involved with you, help you with research or financiers or whatever?
Jonathan Lundgren:
Right. Well, right now, we are run off of donations. And so our science, you're not going to see anything like it out there. This is something that is driven almost entirely by the farmers themselves. And so if you want to see that continue, people have to start standing up for it and help us out by donating.
Frank Lessiter:
So give me an address or how we could donate.
Jonathan Lundgren:
Go to our website, ecdysis.bio. That's E-C-D-Y-S-I-S.bio. And there's a donate page there. Otherwise, you can mail a check to us at 46958 188th Street, Estelline, South Dakota 57234.
Frank Lessiter:
So earlier, you said that when you left ARS and you had this idea, you weren't sure it was going work. And if it hadn't worked, what would you be doing today?
Jonathan Lundgren:
Oh boy, I think I'd have focused entirely on the farm or I'd have focused entirely on the research, but doing both at the same place at the same time has really been important for us to shape the kinds of questions that farmers actually need answers.
Frank Lessiter:
Well, I looked at your website and under your listing, dream job, you had monk.
Jonathan Lundgren:
Oh, there's a lot of days a nice, quiet existence is very much desired, but for right now, that's not where I'm supposed to be, I think.
Frank Lessiter:
Well, there's probably days that you have to pray for good weather or rain or something.
Jonathan Lundgren:
[Crosstalk 00:36:37]. Yep, or sanity.
Frank Lessiter:
Right, right. Hey, this has been great. And so I appreciate this.
Jonathan Lundgren:
Thank you so much. I really appreciate you giving us some time.
Frank Lessiter:
All right, John, thank you very much.
Jonathan Lundgren:
Thank you. Bye-bye now.
Frank Lessiter:
Okay. Take care.
Brian O'Connor:
That was Jonathan Lundgren and Frank Lessiter in a discussion originally uploaded back in 2019. Before we wrap up today's episode, here's Frank Lessiter one more time.
Frank Lessiter:
As we get bigger acreages and bigger equipment, we see more people using 24 row and 36 row no-till planters, but that's not even close to what the biggest unit might be. Down in Australia, there's a grower, Gavin Zell and his son, they farm 47,000 acres of no-till wheat, barley, and chickpeas. And they've got an air seeder that's 212 feet wide. And on a good day, they can seed 2,500 acres with this rig. It's a unique rig. It's a drill. Doesn't have any fertilizer on it. It's just getting the seed in the ground. So we got a ways to go to til we match the Aussies in the wide equipment with drills that they're using down under in Australia.
Brian O'Connor:
Thanks, Frank. Thanks also to our sponsor, The Andersons, for helping to make possible the No-Till Farmer Influencers & Innovators Podcast series. You can find more podcasts about no-till topics and strategies at no-tillfarmer.com/podcast. That's no-tillfarmer.com/podcasts. If you have any feedback on today's episode, please feel free to email me at boconnor@lessitermedia.com, or call me at (262) 777-2413. And don't forget that Frank would love to answer your questions about no-till and the people and innovations that have made an impact on today's practices. So please email your questions to us at listenermail@no-tillfarmer.com. Once again, if you haven't done so already, you can subscribe to this podcast to get an alert as soon as future episodes are released. Find us wherever you listen to podcasts. For Frank and our entire staff here at No-Till Farmer, I'm Brian O'Connor. Thanks for listening.
