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The Dakota Lakes Research Farm outside of Pierre, S.D., has been in the very capable hands of Dwayne Beck for many years, but now with his retirement in February 2022, the organization has appointed a new director by the name of Sam Ireland.
Those familiar with Dakota Lakes may already know the name, as Sam’s father has been on the Board of Directors, and Sam spent time on the research farm as part of his graduate studies.
For this installment of the No-Till Farmer podcast, brought to you by SOURCE by Sound Agriculture, we chat with with Sam about his plans for the operation, including long-term crop rotation trials, experiments the farm is conducting on dealing with seed weevil pressure in sunflowers, innovations in livestock feeding, closing the loop on the energy cycle and more.
No-Till Farmer podcast series is brought to you by SOURCE®️ by Sound Agriculture.
Welcome to a better SOURCE of fertilizer. SOURCE from Sound Agriculture unlocks more of the nutrients already in your fields, so you can add less fertilizer while getting the yield you’re counting on. By activating soil microbes, SOURCE provides more of the existing nitrogen and phosphorus to your crops. It’s such a solid backup plan, you’ll probably find yourself wondering why SOURCE wasn’t the plan all along. Learn more at www.sound.ag.
Full Transcript
Julia:
Welcome to the No-Till Farmer podcast brought to you today by SOURCE by Sound Agriculture. I'm Julia Gerlach. I encourage you to subscribe to this series, which is available on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, Stitcher Radio, and Tune In radio. Subscribing will allow you to receive an alert about new episodes when they're released. Thanks to SOURCE by Sound Agriculture for sponsoring this No-Till Farmer podcast series. Today, nutrients cost more and can be hard to get when you need them. Thankfully, there's a better source of plant nutrition. It's your soil. SOURCE from Sound Agriculture, unlocks more of the nitrogen and phosphorus already in your fields so you can add less while maintaining the yield you're counting on. It's such a solid backup plan you'll find yourself wondering why SOURCE wasn't the plan all along. Learn more about SOURCE at www.sound.ag.
Julia:
The Dakota Lakes Research Farm outside of Pierre, South Dakota has been in the very capable hands of Dwayne Beck for many years, but now with his retirement in February 2022, the organization has appointed a new director by the name of Sam Ireland. Those familiar with Dakota Lakes may already know the name as Sam's father has been on the board of directors and Sam spent time on the research farm as part of his graduate studies. For this installment of the Not-Till Farmer podcast, I have visited Dakota Lakes and chatted with Sam about his plans for the operation. Including long-term crop rotation trials, experiments the farm is conducting on dealing with seed removal pressure and sunflowers, innovations in livestock feeding, closing the loop on the energy cycle, and more. Here's Sam with a bit about his background.
Sam:
Grew up on a family owned farming ranch in Martin, South Dakota, which is the Southwest part of the state. And I was always pretty interested in agriculture and very involved in it and 4H as well. I went to South Dakota State University and did my undergrad in civil and environmental engineering, actually. I was about three years into it and started to realize I wanted to get back into the agricultural side of things. And graduated with my degree in engineering and then started a master's right away in agronomy and did that actually out here at Dakota Lakes.
Sam:
Dwayne was my advisor and Cody Zilverberg was also on my committee and worked with some folks in ag engineering and also in the plant science agronomy department at SDSU. And worked on some cover crop research. And that's what my masters was in. Graduated a year and a half ago and moved out to Moccasin, Montana and was out there for a year working at a ag research farm for Montana State University. And was their farm operations manager out there, and that was a good experience for me and this opportunity came up to apply for this job and so I did that. Started in January and we got the wheels on the ground, I guess.
Julia:
Just tell me a little bit more about your master's thesis that you did with the cover crops.
Sam:
In central South Dakota, we've struggled to get our cover crops to some years after cover crops that would follow wheat our corn crop would struggle and we've had that documented. We were looking at putting in cover crops after wheat harvest and following that through with the next corn crop and seeing what the impact to yield was there and what we found was that on some of our soils, depending on your water holding capacity, and the year, your precipitation that you're getting, we think it might be a little too water use intensive for some of these dry land systems that you're going to see a bit of sacrificing corn yield there but if you're going to graze those cover crops in the fall, maybe you're okay with a little hit to that corn crop. But that's what we were looking at with that master's program.
Julia:
And were you studying particular cover crops?
Sam:
We had just a mix of different warm season and cool seasons. There was an eight way mix that was going in and followed that behind. It was in coordination with Anthony Bly who you might have heard of, he's at SDSU there. Worked alongside with him on some of that as well. They were doing some nitrogen studies with those same cover crops and tracing that through. Did some different mixes of low carbon, heavy broad leaf mix with some heavy grass mixes and then 50/50 split blend there.
Julia:
Did you end up targeting any particular blends or anything that were more conducive to having a better corn yield in the end or soil types that were more conducive to this?
Sam:
In this study we just looked at the same eight species and they were in differing amounts, but we didn't do much with that. We did observe that some of the higher broad leaf residues, those went away a little quicker and we evaporated a little more water off and actually we saw a little bit of a yield hit due to that as well. In this area, the higher grass mix, although your carbon and nitrogen, you're raising that up a little bit. You got more carbon relative to your nitrogen with the higher grass mixes, but we think that sticks around a little better and keeps your soil covered a little longer, reduces evaporation and moisture is what we're typically limited on in the central part of the state and on our dry land acres so that was what we were seeing there.
Julia:
I did mean to ask, what is the annual precipitation here?
Sam:
It'd be about 17, 18 inches. And then with the irrigation, obviously that gives us an artificial environment that's a little closer to the East River South Dakota, Eastern part of state there.
Julia:
And then I heard Dwayne mention something about a PhD. Is this something you're working on now?
Sam:
Yeah. It's actually written into my contract. I got to do a PhD. I'm locked into it, but I wanted to do a PhD. That was something I was interested in doing. I'll be starting. I guess I'm starting that now, working on some of that research and then this fall, I'll be doing some back and forth to Brookings and taking classes. I'll be away from the farm for some time in the fall and winter when we're hopefully done harvesting.
Julia:
And he was talking about, you might be studying something having to do with mycorrhizal fungi.
Sam:
Our phosphorus project. The anorak nutrient research education council funds a phosphorus study that we've been working on here since 2014 I believe was when that first round of phosphorus was applied to the fields there.
Sam:
We're looking at trying to draw down your soluble phosphorus levels, although our total phosphorus levels are very high in our soils. We think if we can get by with low soluble phosphorus, you can run less to the water bodies and still maintain high yields. And that's what we're looking at now and I'll continue that project on here for a couple years. And then I'll take that on to some producer's sites and see how that translates. We see that we can do it here and make it work here, but we want to make sure that it's working on other soils as well. Those mycorrhizal fungi are gathering your phosphorus so on the long term no-till fields. We think that's one of the reasons why we're able to get by with these low phosphorus soil test levels that you wouldn't have been able to get by with in conventional tillage.
Julia:
The mycorrhizal fungi, there's more of them in the no-till fields?
Sam:
There's that relationship, that mycorrhizal relationship that they're exchanging that phosphorus with the plant and they're exploring a larger road area. And we're not exactly sure why, and that's part of my research and we'll be involved with that. And we have another master student that is actually from Martin as well. Same hometown as me. And he just started here a couple weeks ago and back in May, so he'll be working on more of the biological aspect of this study and working with Mike Layman, who's USDAARS out of Brookings. And he'll be taking on that aspect of this study. Hopefully we can get quite a bit of work done. It's an exciting project and pretty impactful for what's happening right now in the US.
Julia:
We just went all around the farm and saw lots of different things that are going on. I'm assuming this is legacy stuff that basically everything you're doing this year is basically continuation of what Dr. Beck has been doing for all these years.
Sam:
Mostly this year's been getting me up to speed. I've done a couple things that have been my wants, I guess. The sunflowers. We haven't grown sunflowers here in quite some time and guys in the area are struggling with some seed weevil red seed, weevil pressure. We're trying to do some stuff there where we can get by with less insecticide and maybe try to do some cultural practices there to manage that but for the most part, I'm just trying to get up to speed on everything. There's a lot of moving parts here. It's a lot to try to learn in one year, so I'm taking all the help I can get with it.
Julia:
With that sunflower project, for instance, what are you hoping to find that will help with that?
Sam:
There was some past research done in the eighties that looked at early seeding dates. And we tried to seed pretty early this year, we were in I think May 15th is when we got all our flowers in the ground. And then the other thing that we... So we're trying to avoid that late season pressure from the red seed weevil there, but... Red sunflower seed weevil. The other thing that we're trying is we planted a mix of hybrids around the borders of our field up there. And they're earlier flowering hybrids than our ones in the center and we're thinking if we need to spray and insecticide, we can hit those borders and we'll have a mix of flowering dates. We should catch them in those borders. And those are our sacrifice borders, but we'll spray those and hopefully not have to spray the center of the field is the theory, but we'll see what happens.
Julia:
Any other things that you're hoping to accomplish here as the new manager of the research farm?
Sam:
The zero net energy is a big thing that we're talking about right now and is a hot topic around. And we're pushing towards that. Like you mentioned, continuing on some of the long term rotation studies, those are really big aspect of Dakota Lakes, in my opinion, and pretty impactful to show producers and anybody else that wants to come see the farm. We'll continue those on, but the zero net energy and just pushing forward in that direction. We got a goal by 2026 to be zero net. We got a lot to do but hopefully we can get there.
Julia:
That includes all of your equipment. You anticipate having enough electric equipment running so that you're not-
Sam:
It'll offset anyways. And our oil press, we could either sell our oil or use that as fuel as well in a gen set and there's places in Europe, you can run that in a tractor, but we can't do that. Hopefully that'll change sometime. We'll hopefully get there one day with that as well. We could do a gen set and that's something we've discussed, but the solar panels we're hoping to get those up this year as Dwayne talked about, and we'll have a Ford Lightning hopefully before, too long as well and transitioning side by side over to electric and making some of those steps.
Julia:
And what's the idea with the solar panels, they'll be on the building?
Sam:
And they'll power the building and we may have to put in an additional array down at the bins. But that's another thought is we will have those run our bins. It's a different phase so it's a little more challenging down there, but we'll hopefully get those set up as well and be able to three phase on the bins versus single phase. And run our dryers and anything else down. Dryers and blowers.
Julia:
And I assume that there's input from the board of directors?
Sam:
Yeah.
Julia:
Dakota Lakes. Tell me about that process. How does that work for you?
Sam:
We meet with the board and get their input and a lot of those guys have been on or involved with Dwayne from the start of this so a lot of experience, and even this morning, Dave Newhart's the guy that's been involved for 30 years. He had a meeting with NRCS, talk about our proposal and he comes in and sits in on that and gives his input and having a board like that's pretty valuable for a young, inexperienced guy like me to step in and have that right there at my disposal. That helps a lot too.
Julia:
Your dad's still on the board?
Sam:
Yeah. He's still on the board so that's nice to have his input as well and visit with him once a week too, and get his input on stuff.
Julia:
We'll get back to the podcast in a moment, but I want to take time once again, to thank our sponsor SOURCE by Sound Agriculture, for supporting today's episode. Today, nutrients cost more and can be hard to get when you need them. Thankfully, there's a better source of plant nutrition. It's your soil. SOURCE from Sound Agriculture, unlocks more of the nitrogen and phosphorus already in your fields so you can add less while maintaining the yield you're counting on. It's such a solid backup plan. You'll find yourself wondering why source wasn't the plan all along. Learn more about source www.sound.ag. And now back to the podcast.
Julia:
Growing up on that farm in Martin, did you do a lot of hands on work at the farm?
Sam:
Yeah, we were farm kids. That was what we grew up doing. And didn't really, probably appreciate it like we should have when we were out combine until 10 at night, but sure do now. It was a good upbringing and I learned a lot just being on the farm and having that upbringing. And I think, in the area, and I'm not sure if it's quite as much so now, but we're a pretty progressive operation at the time, running stripper heads and no-till from the early nineties there. Have the cattle livestock integration and doing things that we thought were the right thing to do anyways and still think are working so learned a lot from that place and eventually down the road at some point I'd like to go back and work on the farm there too. That's the long, long term plan down the road.
Julia:
And technically this is East River, right?
Sam:
Yeah.
Julia:
And you're West River?
Sam:
I'm a West River boy.
Julia:
Is there any conflict of interest or anything like that? I don't know.
Sam:
Just animosity from the people west, but no, we're close enough that I can just cross quick so I can get back if people start screaming at me or throwing rocks.
Julia:
How far is Martin from here?
Sam:
Martin's about a two and a half, roughly, two and a half hour. Not too bad for South Dakota to drive around.
Julia:
Is your planting environment back at home fairly similar to this?
Sam:
We're higher elevation. We're about 3300 feet and we are probably roughly same precipitation, little warmer. Really sandy soils down in that area. We're on the north end of the sand hills. And then just on the south end of the badlands so pretty marginal soils of what most people would classify, but mostly cattle country out there at the central part of the county does have some pretty decent farm ground as well. The sands are a little different than the clays for sure. The equipment, they got their own challenges, but they're a little easier to deal with in terms of planting, but you do run out of moisture. Don't hold the water that the soils up here do.
Julia:
And with the animal integration, you're running animals on your crop ground?
Sam:
Yeah. And that's what... My family's been doing that for, I don't know how many years, but a lot of years where just running on crops and corn stocks and done some cover cropping down in that area, not as much behind wheat, but more of the full season stuff.
Julia:
What do you mean by that?
Sam:
Full seasons where you'd just plant it in spring and graze in the fall or hold off to later spring and then new warm season mix.
Julia:
I see. You're doing that in rotation with other crops?
Sam:
Correct. Other annual cropping systems there would follow it with corn. Another, I guess, come back to your question about things that we're excited about. Cody Zilverberg's our livestock integration guy. Really good. And he's interested in this. We've talked about our field finishing aspect or field finishing idea, and we're trying to get these automatic feeders that Dwayne talked about I think some today, outfitted, which has been a bit of a hurdle to get those up and running and functional, but-
Julia:
Why is that a hurdle?
Sam:
Just with the technology that we're trying to use collars to feed each animal individually, and there's a lot of different technology involved there. We're working with a few guys at SCSU and trying to get all of the... And we're also trying to gather a lot of data from it research wise.
Sam:
And we're trying to just make sure everything's in order before we get them out there, but we're hoping to have that done relatively soon. And I think this field finishing idea is really big in terms of cycling our nutrients back on the fields and keeping them out of a confined area. And we think that they just announced a big slaughter plant in Rapid City that's likely to come about here right in the next couple years. And it's supposed to process 8000 head a day. That's going to be pretty big for this area. I think that could make a big impact. Hopefully we can make some strides with this field finishing idea and hopefully pass that on to some producers.
Julia:
I'm not sure if I completely understood that whole...
Sam:
Maybe I should explain that a little more.
Julia:
Yeah. Exactly.
Sam:
The field finishing ideas that the animal would drop on the ground on our land and we'd send it to the slaughter plant from our ground. It would never be in a confined feed operation. And we might feed some grain and we will be feeding some grain and we had some discussions on just how much grain we ought to be feeding versus forage, but always keeping those nutrients cycling back on your land versus sending those off. And making that system, Dwayne will talk about it a lot, but the system more cyclical than linear versus shipping your nutrients off. If we ship a cow off, we lose carbon nitrogen and water, which we can fix carbon and nitrogen and then sometimes it rains. But anyways, we think if we send our cows off, we feel pretty good about that. But shipping off our nutrients from the land and some point we'll have to replace those so we'd rather cycle it. It's less energy as well.
Julia:
And then just talk about the things that you're trying to get going with the collar and the feeding.
Sam:
These automatic feeders will... And our animals will have collars that'll recognize each specific animal. And based on that, we'll have scales in the feeders. And we can develop an individual feeding plan for each animal.
Julia:
It would be like a little stall that it would go into or something?
Sam:
Correct. And those would be out in the field and they'd walk in there and it'll recognize which animal. And we'll probably do some research with those as well, where we're looking at different supplements or feeds there for different animals.
Julia:
It'll recognize the animal and it'll give it's prescribed amount of nutrients, whatever it needs.
Sam:
Correct. Like I said, we might do some research with that and we probably will do some research where we're looking at given different supplements, but based on an animal's frame size, we could push one animal a little further or a little harder.
Julia:
Genetics, as well.
Sam:
And we're trying to do a little more smaller frame, moderate size framed animals to get them to finish a little earlier is the idea. Whether or not that is the right thing to do, we're not sure yet, but that's the idea behind it.
Julia:
Because they do that feeding in dairies. Don't they?
Sam:
Yeah.
Julia:
Is the technology different between the dairies and here?
Sam:
No. Nothing new about that. Just our idea of having it out in the field makes it a little more challenging than having a stationary feeder. And it's something that we want to drag around. We'll have to have a solar panel on it to get some power out there. There's some obstacles with it, but I think we're not too far off of having those out there. We're excited about it. And like I said, with Cody, we got a pretty big strength here, having him. Around. He's a really sharp guy and we're hoping to keep him around for a while.
Julia:
It's you and Cody and we've got that guy, John who's like a-
Sam:
John Neff. He's been a ag research technician, but out at the farm for over 25 years in March. And then Gary Walk, who's been another alongside of John technician in farm manager and he's also been 25 years. Those two guys have a really big wealth knowledge and a ton of experience here. That's been really good having them help me get up to speed. And then we have Miranda Troutman. She's our senior secretary and she started here over a year ago and really good job there. And Wyatt, he's our mechanic. Him and Miranda are married there and that works pretty well, having them both out here and they're really good too. We got, like I said, strong team out here, I think right now and that helps a lot.
Julia:
Thanks to Sam Ireland for this glimpse into the future of the Dakota Lakes Research Farm. To listen to more podcasts about no-till topics and strategies, please visit no-tillfarmer.com/podcasts.
Julia:
Once again, we'd like to thank our sponsor SOURCE by Sound Agriculture, for helping to make this No-Till Podcast series possible. If you have any feedback on today's episode, please feel free to email me at jgerlach@lessedermedia.com or call me at (262) 777-2404.
Julia:
If you haven't done so already, you can subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, or Google Podcasts to get an alert as soon as future episodes are released. You can also keep up on the latest no-till farming news by registering online for our no-till insider daily and weekly email updates and dryland no-till or e-newsletter, and be sure to follow us on Twitter at no-till farmr with farmer spelled F-A-R-M-R and our Not-Till Farmer Facebook page. For our entire staff here at No Till Farmer I'm Julia Gerlach. Thanks for tuning in.
