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Clarkson's Farm

Dirtyjed said:
I liked how he showed that mixing crops and promoting regenerative farming can actually work.
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Im not sure i agree with that.

He planted it and it took but thats the easy part.

Theyre kind of cheating (on both sides)
They say youll make more $ per ton, and are buying it back at a premium $ to prove theyre point.
at no point yet has any sort soil analysis been done to prove % or improvement other than charlie commenting on the roots of the plant.
 
total newb said:
Im not sure i agree with that.

He planted it and it took but thats the easy part.

Theyre kind of cheating (on both sides)
They say youll make more $ per ton, and are buying it back at a premium $ to prove theyre point.
at no point yet has any sort soil analysis been done to prove % or improvement other than charlie commenting on the roots of the plant.
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Regenerative farming is a thing. Here (US) it is slow to be accepted. Generally lower tonage, but much lower inputs. Bottom lines are similar. Farmers find they spend way less hours in the tractor for the same profit. There is a wide variety of methods of regen, most more complex than just growing wheat and beans together. In my area, it is so dry that the soil biome is delicate. Regen operators do nothing more than seed right into the existing surface growth and harvest what grows. That is alot less diesel, time, chem and whatnot than conventional. Regen is also starting to indicate long term gain on output as the soil health improves over time.
 
clodhopper said:
Regenerative farming is a thing. Here (US) it is slow to be accepted. Generally lower tonage, but much lower inputs. Bottom lines are similar. Farmers find they spend way less hours in the tractor for the same profit. There is a wide variety of methods of regen, most more complex than just growing wheat and beans together. In my area, it is so dry that the soil biome is delicate. Regen operators do nothing more than seed right into the existing surface growth and harvest what grows. That is alot less diesel, time, chem and whatnot than conventional. Regen is also starting to indicate long term gain on output as the soil health improves over time.
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I'll need to get the name of the show from my wife, but there was a great series done about a farm in Southern California I believe. Happy little far or some other such corny name. It was a really good show.
 
clodhopper said:
Regenerative farming is a thing. Here (US) it is slow to be accepted. Generally lower tonage, but much lower inputs. Bottom lines are similar. Farmers find they spend way less hours in the tractor for the same profit. There is a wide variety of methods of regen, most more complex than just growing wheat and beans together. In my area, it is so dry that the soil biome is delicate. Regen operators do nothing more than seed right into the existing surface growth and harvest what grows. That is alot less diesel, time, chem and whatnot than conventional. Regen is also starting to indicate long term gain on output as the soil health improves over time.
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Sounds pretty boutique, like Clarkson's place.

Does it scale? You'd think ADM would already be on it if it makes the same profit for less input...
 
Here's the link to the farm in the show I mentioned. The Biggest Little Farm

www.apricotlanefarms.com

Welcome - Apricot Lane Farms

ALis a farm integrated within a reawakened ecosystem. Our focus is seeing and utilizing the interconnectedness of nature...
www.apricotlanefarms.com
 
subybaja said:
Sounds pretty boutique, like Clarkson's place.

Does it scale? You'd think ADM would already be on it if it makes the same profit for less input...
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It does. But there is a very serious headwind against it in the farming industry. There is serious money in seed/chem/treatment/equip that benefit from the conventional methods, and that is still a big investor in ag research which steers the industry. There isnt much of a business opportunity to help farmers spend less money, beyond a few specialists. Beyond that, there is still the mentality of "my daddy did it this way, his daddy did it this way, so I do it this way" and fear of it possibly failing. There are small/medium size farms are trying it with a single field and if finding success, slowly transitioning over. Big agri-business? yeah, not sure I see them switching anytime soon.

Regen is definitely not a "tidy" way of farming. Farmers have fought for decades to keep weeds out of the fields and promote the monoculture environment. Getting that same guy to not go OCD insane with just seeing weeds/grass/whatever all around his crop... is a challenge. That and peer pressure from all the neighbor farmers making comments on the weedy fields / lazy farmer. The peer pressure is super strong. Someone bucking the ranks and going regen really starts to cause self questioning among the neighbors. These are people who are doing things basically the same way all thier lives and now are wondering if they were doing it wrong all that time. Some can accept that easier than others.
 
What they showed in Clarkson's Farm is intercropping, a messy version of it, but fits the definition.

The wheat will receive minimum benefit from the legumes (beans) during propagation. The nitrogen fixing legumes won't release the nitrogen until termination. Even then it's not instantly plant available. They mentioned spraying a probiotic during drilling, there's some validity to that, and it's sometimes necessary to introduce or re-introduce the nitrogen fixing bacteria for the legumes. The bad thing about the vast majority of commercial "probiotics," is the homogeneity and limited number of microbes in the mix. They didn't mention if it was a commercial inoculant or not, they'd have been better off making their own "locally effective microbial tea" to apply in addition to any legume inocoulant.

What they've showed so far is maybe regenerative farming adjacent.

Clarkson was on the right track with the ruminants grazing cover crops. Get rid of the plow, keep a green cover, use that local leaf litter to make your own locally effective microbial tea, find a carbon source (wheat stubble, soybean hulls, etc.) get that mixed with the cattle manure, ACTUALLY COMPOST it, apply that tea. Now you're getting somewhere.

The best takeaway from their "regenerative farming" discussion was the focus on profitability instead of yields. We'd have a lot more family farms still owned by their families if we'd had that mindset 40 years ago.

If y'all want some actual info look up Adam Chappell, I've had the privilege of doing research on his farm and hosted a few meetings/conferences he was a speaker at.

We don't have 100% buy-in in the Land Grant University systems, but the momentum is changing. We've been called to task about our lack of research and are actually trying to do something about it in AR at least.
 
clodhopper said:
Regenerative farming is a thing. Here (US) it is slow to be accepted. Generally lower tonage, but much lower inputs. Bottom lines are similar. Farmers find they spend way less hours in the tractor for the same profit. There is a wide variety of methods of regen, most more complex than just growing wheat and beans together. In my area, it is so dry that the soil biome is delicate. Regen operators do nothing more than seed right into the existing surface growth and harvest what grows. That is alot less diesel, time, chem and whatnot than conventional. Regen is also starting to indicate long term gain on output as the soil health improves over time.
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I understand the concepts.

I just dont think its fair to say $+ per ton but "we buy it back at premium", so yeah no shit its $+ when the guys selling the concept are intentionaly over pay you for the product.......to sell you on the product.

It will be neat to see analysis at sone point
 
total newb said:
I just dont think its fair to say $+ per ton but "we buy it back at premium", so yeah no shit its $+ when the guys selling the concept are intentionaly over pay you for the product.......to sell you on the product.
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There was alot of information missing. These two dudes are running a business, making money, from some aspect of regen farming, and it wasnt explained. Maybe selling the snakeoil additive, or selling boutique food product to hipster types. Maybe something else. Very likely they are offering premium price purchase simply to entice farmers into regen. The difference in market price could be from a soil conservation district, who knows. There is a good market out there for food product that is "closer to nature" than just organic.

Our local soil conservation district does a yearly conference that mostly is aimed at regen farming. Talking to the bigger farm types, the money is either a bit less or a wash doing regen. They all say it is definitely less effort/hours and the thought of building soil health/biome for the future is why they are doing it. I dont think there is any reduction in crop risk, just a different kind of risk.
 
We started full no till and cover crop a few years back, and are getting more cattle guys to run their herds on the cover crops inside electric fence over winter. The more soil health books I read the more interested I am. Lee, thanks for the recommendation, I have a Chappell podcast cued up for tomorrow.
 
total newb said:
soil analysis
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Santa said:
Here's the link to the farm in the show I mentioned. The Biggest Little Farm

www.apricotlanefarms.com

Welcome - Apricot Lane Farms

ALis a farm integrated within a reawakened ecosystem. Our focus is seeing and utilizing the interconnectedness of nature...
www.apricotlanefarms.com
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That is in Moorpark. They tried to co-open a restaurant in the city with Enegren Brewing but the city fucked it all up with permits and other issues so they pulled out. The owner of Enegren went on to become City Council and then Mayor of Moorpark due to the issues they went through.
 
Endlesstrails said:
That is in Moorpark. They tried to co-open a restaurant in the city with Enegren Brewing but the city fucked it all up with permits and other issues so they pulled out. The owner of Enegren went on to become City Council and then Mayor of Moorpark due to the issues they went through.
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Now that's getting off the porch:smokin:
 
total newb said:
I understand the concepts.

I just dont think its fair to say $+ per ton but "we buy it back at premium", so yeah no shit its $+ when the guys selling the concept are intentionaly over pay you for the product.......to sell you on the product.

It will be neat to see analysis at sone point
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Seems along the same lines of BEVs with heavy government intervention and incentives. If it’s better, then it’ll catch, if it ain’t it won’t.
 
Blacksheep10 said:
We started full no till and cover crop a few years back, and are getting more cattle guys to run their herds on the cover crops inside electric fence over winter. The more soil health books I read the more interested I am. Lee, thanks for the recommendation, I have a Chappell podcast cued up for tomorrow.
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Some of it's tough to get buy-in on, and it's even tougher to make blanket recommendations. There's a lot of nuance for each farm. Our own researchers disagree on seemingly simple things, like cover crop termination. Our entomologists want 4 week minimum chemical burn down prior to planting just to prevent green bridge pest introduction. The diehard Soil Health nuts want you planting green, chemical burn down day of planting, or roller crimping to keep living roots in the soil as long as possible, and use a pesticide to handle insect pressure. Then you've got the real hardcore like Adam, he's got a MS in entomology so he knows a thing or two, he says with enough diversity in his cover crops he can get enough beneficial predator insects in his field to control the pest insects. It takes a diligence and whole new approach to "farming" though, and not everyone has the wherewithal to handle, "that ain't how grandpa did it."

I was speaking at a meeting with a bunch of ecologist type folks a few years back and was "corrected" by some of the diehard folks, I told the audience to take an incremental approach, and don't expect immediate results. One of the hardcore guys disagreed on the immediate results. I wasn't there to argue so I just nodded and went on, but it's an very different approach to farming than most folks have been doing for the past 60+ years. Our retired cotton agronomist had the best advice in my opinion, he'd recommend a single species cover crop, cereal rye works well for most of our delta farms. It's easy to manage, has great root structure, on the cheaper end of cover crop seed, and easy to get. He said it's "training wheels for cover crops." Some of my colleagues across the Mississippi prefer black oats to cereal rye, but same principle.

I've got one farm that's been in heavy covers for 25+ years right on the Mississippi, they've got their own ox bowl lake, beautiful place. They do a variety, grasses, brassicas, legumes, and even leftover crop seed on occasion. I've got a picture of their thick cover crops in late Feb from a few years back I use in a lot of presentations. It's got kale in it, and my joke is always, "best use for kale anyone's found yet." :laughing:

There's some not great stuff with covers too. We've seen an allelopathic drag in yield with corn grown in cereal rye cover, corn is a grass, so it's essentially grass after grass with no crop rotation. It makes a difference.

Another one that surprised us in our edge-of-field water quality monitoring was an increase in phosphorous loss in fields with cover crops. Our theory is that the deep rooted cereal rye is mining phosphorus from the soil, and we're losing it to runoff after termination of the cover. The timing of the loss correlates with post termination decay.

That farm on the Mississippi, has a big problem with slugs during a wet spring. All the slug pesticides are really expensive, so despite being no-till and covers for decades, they've had to go to a minimum-tillage approach on a few of their fields just to manage residue to control slugs.

Sorry I kind of nerded out, I can talk about this stuff all day. All my friends call me a "dirt nerd." :homer:
 
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Provience said:
Lee How do i send you various soil samples to get recommendations on things? :laughing:

And how much would it cost?
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I'm not sure how TX does it, but routine Mehlich 3 testing is free in AR. We've had a fertilizer tonnage fee since the '50s that every one pays kind of like a tax on fertilizer, that covers routine testing. Go to the County Extension office or Soil Test Lab and they'll give you as many sample boxes as you want.

As we've gotten more into Soil Health we've sent some stuff to TX for Haney testing. I forget where, I know the Haney test was invented in TX.

Vast majority of our testing is routine analysis for free, or bulk density and aggregate stability by some underpaid grad students. We had a Post Doc doing soil microbial genotyping for us, that's way over my head.
 
Icono said:
Like you have mud on anything you claim to run.

:laughing:

:flipoff2:
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I need a cover crop in Texas that will choke out whatever grass thing is occurring. This shit seems to thrive on gasoline and I can't be bothered with regular slash/burn here in town :flipoff2:

I've got more time on my rocky mountain place. That's the one I'd like to see if I can improve over the years
 
Arickvan said:
the population and size of the uk always fawks me up

how did he get an 1000 acre farm??

shouldnt there be like 5 people per acre over there? :laughing:
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Same as here

Once you get out of a city , there’s no jobs , and hardly anyone living there .

The UK takes their zoning very seriously and turning a farm into a subdivision of houses crammed together simply isn’t allowed like it is here .
 
TrailTamer said:
I can see that. They went apeshit on him for turning a plot into park lot by the shop.
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When I visited the UK in 2004 even in the rural areas there were villages with houses crammed up next to each other and everything else was farmland .

In most US counties you can just subdivide farmland , most counties I’m familiar with in my state have a minimum lot size of 1 acre if you’re using a well and septic tank , or 3/4 acre if it’s on county water with a septic tank

I know of one county in Georgia that has a min lot size of FIVE acres , but the incorporated cities in they county can do whatever that want .

It may have changed in the last 20
Years but back then , if it was a farm , you can’t just cut it up and start building houses .
We drive through several places where the road went down to one lane because a corner of a building was in one lane , and the building was there a hundred years or more before the automobile was invented so they ain’t knocking down a 200 year old building to widen the road .

It was absolutely the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen , the rural areas , you’d pull up to a intersection that wasn’t in a village , and you’d have to look around for the signs indicating what town was which direction . The signs looked home made , no uniform color or location, it might be in the side of a building or on a tree etc

And there were ZERO billboards or advertising signs , even the businesses had small signs that wernt very tall .

It was just amazing how serene and clean the rural areas were .
 
They have implemented an onerous death tax for farms and the UK government offers to buy farms to "return them to nature". :mad3:
 
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