Everyone right now is talking about regenerative agriculture. What does it look like when major cash crops work to improve their practices? How can the Department of Agriculture and agricultural science programs at universities support the changes so that major commodity operations can derisk their transition?
In today's episode of Reversing Climate Change, Nori Cofounder Ross Kenyon is joined by Nori Supply Account Manager, Jada Dormaier, to discuss Nori's partnership with the Texas Climate-Smart Initiative. Dr. Julie Howe, Project Director of the program and Soil Scientist at Texas A&M, joins the show to talk about her work trying to understand nutrient cycling and change the way we farm.
The conversation delves into Dr. Howe's background and what led her to focus on soil chemistry and eventually agricultural sustainability, which is a hot topic even in places some might not expect. It isn't all about yield!
They explore the complexities of agricultural research within an open system with countless variables, which hurts Ross's brain, before moving into a discussion about carbon credits and how farmers can consider these opportunities and additional government programs for ecosystem services.
Dr. Howe emphasizes the importance of implementing climate-smart farming practices, not only for the environment but also for the sustainability and profitability of farming operations. Listen in to get a glimpse inside Nori and the Texas Climate-Smart Initiative.
Timestamps
00:00 Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:38 Dr. Julie Howe's Journey into Agriculture
02:09 The Intersection of Agriculture and Environmental Sustainability
03:34 The Challenges and Risks in Farming
11:20 The Role of Climate Smart Initiative in Agriculture
16:53 The Process and Benefits of Joining Climate Programs
24:52 The Science and Challenges of Agricultural Research
37:27 Encouraging Farmers to Join Climate Programs
40:42 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
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Resources
Texas Climate-Smart Initiative
Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: It’s the thing that I most strongly associate with that particular area of Texas, and always the thing that I’m looking for. You go to a Buc-ee’s, you get a kolache. The thing — you know, you’ve been there. Anyways. So Jada, we didn’t even start the show properly. Jada Dormaier, Supply Account Manager here at Nori, co-hosting with me today. Hi, Jada.
Jada Dormaier: Hi, Ross. Thanks for having me again. I’m excited to have a supply partner on with us today.
Ross Kenyon: So we’re talking with Doctor Julie Howe, the Project Director of the Texas Climate-Smart Initiative. Hi, Julie. How are you doing?
Julie Howe: Hi. Thank you all for inviting me. Yeah, I’m doing great.
Ross Kenyon: Good. Can you give us a little background about you, how you got here? Did you grow up in ag, and how did you come to get to this point in life?
Julie Howe: Hopefully it won’t be too long. It’s, it’s a long story. So, I grew up not too far — I’m currently in College Station, in Texas. I grew up in Temple, which is about an hour and a half from here. The kolache capital, in my opinion, although there’s a couple of other people that claim that. And I really didn’t grow up ag, but my grandparents — one of my grandparents, they had cows and land, ag land. And, you know, I kind of grew up always really interested in environmental problems.
And I guess when I went to Texas A&M to do my bachelor’s degree, I took a soil science — well, I started in engineering, and then I took a soil science class. And I was like, oh my gosh, soil is like the answer to all environmental problems, because it touches on air, it touches on water, it touches on, you know, contaminants and things in the ground. And so that’s where I kind of started, and then I did my graduate degrees in soil chemistry to try to understand the chemical processes going on in the soil. And I really didn’t do — I did more environmental, more so than I did agriculture.
So then I actually did a post-doc in human nutrition, which is really different, and worked on vitamin A for a while, because at some point you get through your PhD and you’re like, what am I doing with my life? And, you know, you kind of freak out. And then I got my first faculty position at Auburn University, and I worked there for 10 years, and that’s where I really got into ag, because they have a lot more ag programs. And so I did some environmental stuff, but I was really trying to do projects that would make farmers profitable but also environmentally sustainable. And that’s kind of where I got into that ag slash environmental sustainability thing.
And so, since my family’s from Texas and there was a job opened and my parents were getting older, I thought maybe it’s a good time to come back to Texas and take care of them. And so that’s kind of where I got back to Texas A&M, and then had the opportunity to do a lot of grants and research that are designed to get sustainability and profitability back into the farm. So trying to figure out ways to do things that’s both economically beneficial for the farmer as well as sustainable for their operation long term.
Ross Kenyon: War Eagle. I spent time down there too, actually.
Julie Howe: Oh yeah. Yeah, War Eagle. It’s a great area too. I loved — I love my time at Auburn. That was — they’re great tailgaters, for sure, if you like football.
Ross Kenyon: Oh my God, the tailgating there is — I’ve never seen anything like it.
Julie Howe: Although I thought we did it here — we don’t. We don’t tailgate compared to what they do.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I’ve heard it described in explicitly religious terms, and I frankly can vouch for that; that is how it feels there.
Julie Howe: That’s cool.
Ross Kenyon: I think people don’t really associate — I think farming, especially farming at land-grant universities’ big ag programs, as being ones that are focused on sustainability. Is that knowledge just wrong, or are people just assuming that that is not something that large ag programs care about?
Julie Howe: I think it is kind of wrong. I would say about half of the people that I work with have at least one or two projects that have to do with improving some sort of sustainability thing. Maybe it doesn’t sound environmental — like maybe it’s about drought tolerance, improving drought tolerance with plants, or maybe it’s looking at fertilizer efficiency. But again, if you’re reducing fertilizer inputs, you’re improving the pocketbook part, but you’re also improving the environment. So there’s both sides of that.
I think a lot of people think that big ag just wanna dump as many chemicals and resources into farming as much as possible to get things to happen. But the reality is, that’s what hurts your pocketbook, right? And so trying to figure out ways to reduce the amount of pesticides and reduce the amount of chemicals and things is actually an environmentally positive practice. And I think a lot of our researchers work on it, and maybe people don’t realize that.
Jada Dormaier: Do you think that’s because, like, ag is sometimes, especially in maybe more conservative states too, you don’t necessarily see farmers talking as much about sustainability? Do you guys kind of run into that too, and having to maybe, like, convince farmers that these are the ways to go? Or how does that work for you guys?
Julie Howe: I definitely think that there’s a lot of different types of — and I hate to use the word, maybe farmers is the wrong word for producers, because, you know, they sometimes produce multiple things. I think that there’s different groups of people. I think there are people that — I mean, just like in anything. There are people that, man, I’m going to do it just like my granddad did it, and we’re just going to — there’s a lot of traditional practices out there.
But there’s also a lot of people out there that are like, hey, you know, I see my land kind of blowing away with the wind, or, you know, it’s eroding, and this doesn’t look sustainable for me, and what can I do to make it better? I think there are some people that, you know, really listen, and then some people who, you know, you’ve got to prove it to them and show them. And that’s the one reason I really kind of like this Climate-Smart Initiative project that I’m on. Because I think the biggest problem is, I can tell you all day, but until you try something and see for yourself whether it benefits your operation or not.
And at a way where you don’t have to — it, maybe it doesn’t cost you very much, or it’s very low risk for you financially. This is how you’re going to figure out whether it fits in your operation or not, and makes you more sustainable or not. Because some of the practices, maybe they’re not initially sustainable in year one or two — like, let me say that again: sometimes the practices may not be financially beneficial to you in the first couple of years, but maybe later on they are.
But farmers — usually, I mean, to me, they’re the biggest gamblers I know, right? So you’re putting all your eggs in one basket to get this crop to get in. And you’re assuming the weather’s going to be good, and the water and the rain and, you know, all of these things are going to — that you’re not going to get a herd of those grackles come and eat your sorghum crop, which happened to me once. You know, these strange things are not going to happen, because, you know, crickets, army worms, disease — they can just wipe you out.
And so if your whole yearly income is tied to that one thing, you don’t want to gamble, and I get that. So sometimes you want to make sure that you’re going to make that profit. And so we need to figure out ways to show that you can make that profit, or get through that couple of years where it may not make as much money, so that in the five years down the road, 10 years down the road, it will make you that money.
Ross Kenyon: I’ve never heard it put that way so explicitly, with the gambling analogy, but it is a parlay, essentially. You need to win both the bet that regen is going to work for your farm, and also the bet that the crop itself that you planted won’t be destroyed, eaten, rained out. So — everyone, I don’t know, I’m not like a sports bettor, but I know people who are. But, you know, winning parlays is — you’re essentially multiplying the risk of those two things together, right? So you just increase the risk a whole lot. I can see why people are maybe hesitant.
Julie Howe: Right, exactly. And so I really think that I don’t really blame people for being hesitant. And when their whole livelihood is dependent on something they’re not familiar with, it’s scary to go into it. I don’t blame them. I mean, you know, people are — when you start talking about your income and what you’re trying to do, you get a lot more conservative real quick, you know? So especially when you’ve got kids to go to college, and food for the table and clothing and, you know, cars to pay for and things like that.
Ross Kenyon: Farmers are often carrying huge amounts of debt. Are many farmers just one year away from being bust?
Julie Howe: Well, I don’t know if I can answer that question, but I think there are farmers that are in that situation. That’s one reason why they have farm insurance. And I think that’s one thing that we’re trying to work on with our econ team, is to see, you know, is there some sort of insurance policy or something — if you add these practices, how would this, you know, is there insurance for some of these things? ’Cause I think that we’ve not changed our farming. We keep putting money into saying that these are the practices you should do, but we’re not really changing how we do farming.
And a lot of farmers are on contracts, or, you know, have crop insurance for certain things, and some of these practices could influence those rates and how they do those things. I’m not an economist, so you’ve got to talk to our econ team about these things. But they’re very much more complicated than what you’d ever think from a layman’s perspective.
Jada Dormaier: I actually am a former crop insurance agent, so I can speak to the fact that there are farmers that are one year away from going completely bust. And I’ve paid out, like, $1,000,000 crop insurance claims. For instance, I had a client that had several alfalfa seed fields, but one of them, while he was swathing it, the wind started blowing and blew all of the windrows out. And so he’s, like, taking a video and sending it to me and he’s like, what am I supposed to do? So for that circle he got, you know, several $100,000.
But most of the farmers that I’ve talked to in those situations, they say, like, if I don’t get this payment, I can’t pay my operating line back, I can’t farm again next year, I’ll have to potentially, like, sell the farm. So that’s definitely something that’s on the forefront of farmers’ minds, I think, too. So I think these are really important things to talk about.
Julie Howe: I mean, where are you going to gamble if your operation could just go belly up next year? No, you’re not going to gamble. And that’s why programs have to be, you know, low risk to get into them, because nobody wants to try something if it’s worked for them for 25 years. Why should I try something new if I’m barely making ends meet, you know, as it is?
Ross Kenyon: Maybe you could give us a nice overview — and maybe, you know, maybe you don’t — but we’ve been hearing about the Climate-Smart Commodities program over at the USDA. I imagine there’s a whole bunch of programs that are intended to help farmers change practices. Could you give us an overview, and then zoom into which part of this you’re working on specifically?
Julie Howe: Perfect. Yeah. So the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities is a great program that funded, if I can remember, it’s like $3.1 billion of projects, and all of them have three main objectives. One is to directly pay farmers as an incentive to adopt climate-smart practices. And that could be something — if you’re a row crop farmer, maybe that’s no-till or cover cropping or something like that. If maybe you manage pastures and cattle, maybe you’re controlled grazing management or nutrient management or irrigation. If you’re maybe horticulture, and maybe you’re forestry, and it’s how you’re managing your forest. So those are kind of those practices that you would do.
Then the second objective is to quantify those benefits. So, you know, over the course of the project, did we add carbon to the soil, or did we reduce greenhouse gas emissions? And while most farmers are going to be like, OK, well, why do I care about climate smart? Well, because adding the carbon to the soil is actually making your farm probably more sustainable. And reducing greenhouse gas emissions probably means your fertilizer is being a little bit more efficiently used. So those are things that, while it sounds like it’s a benefit just for the climate, it’s also a benefit for your farm or your operation.
And then the last objective is to develop markets and create pathways to take those products that were created or generated with climate-smart practices and give them added value in our markets, to be able to have the market actually pay back some of those costs of climate-smart production. So in the long run, I really hope that some of the practices will make the farmer more productive as it is, without even needing that money to come back. But if we can actually have money come back to the system through, you know, some sort of branding or supply chain tracing, so that maybe you can get climate-smart jeans or climate-smart T-shirts or something like that, then that goes back and pays back to the farmer.
The other thing we’re looking at is carbon credits as well. That would be another thing — if you can add the carbon to the soil and you can keep it there, carbon credits are another way. But there’s a lot of, at least in Texas, there’s a lot of concern whether that’s actually going to work. And there’s parts of Texas where we’re saying [unclear] production can maybe maintain carbon levels, as opposed to causing them to decrease over time. And so that’s not the same thing as adding carbon to the soil. So I think different regions are going to have different abilities to generate carbon in the soil, if I made sense on that.
Ross Kenyon: So some regions may be better suited to storing carbon in soil than others, just because of their climate and their region and their soils.
Julie Howe: Yeah, I was trying to — and that’s, I guess that gets on to the Texas Climate-Smart Initiative. We’re trying to focus on Texas, and we try to say that no farmer, no person, no commodity producer in Texas is the same. There may be somebody that has trees and cows, or maybe somebody that — in fact, I just talked to somebody the other day, they have trees, cows and row crop operations. So they had all three. And if somebody else, maybe they just run a cattle operation; maybe somebody else just runs row crop; maybe somebody has vegetables and row crops. So we don’t think all the farmers are the same.
So what we’re trying to do is create a climate-smart plan, figure out what the best thing is they need to do on this property, and then go through all of those practices. Some of the other Climate-Smart Commodities programs are focusing just on cotton, or just on sorghum, or just on rice, or — I mean, that’s just to name a few. Just on beef cattle production. I mean, there’s some that are really specific on, you know, specialty crops. But we are focusing specifically just on anything in Texas, because we want to look across the state and figure out what is going to sequester — I use the word sequester, but store is a better word — what’s going to store the most carbon, so that we can identify where to put those carbon credits.
You know, or where to put those efforts for getting carbon credits, because I think that would be a good thing, or where we can make these crops more sustainable. I’m sorry I talked too much, but that’s what our goals are on this program. We want to answer some questions. What we would like to be able to provide is better recommendations.
So if you’re a farmer in Lubbock, in that area, in the north, in the Southern Plains, in the Panhandle of Texas, you know, we want to give you the best advice on what that’s going to be. Is it going to be doing no-till cover cropping of your cotton, or is it going to be something else? Is it worthwhile to do carbon credits, should you — you know, those types of things? Or maybe we compare that region to another region and see where our best efforts are. Yeah. Sorry, Jada.
Jada Dormaier: Oh, that’s OK, Julie. How are you guys doing that? Are you saying, like, these are the programs that you qualify for and try them out? Or how do you let them know which ones you think they’re best for?
Julie Howe: That’s a great question. We have an application that we fill out that kind of teases a few of those things out. And so, you know, what kind of operation do you have? What kind of practices are you interested in? And then we’re going to send what we call a climate-smart planner out to kind of talk to them about what the practices are, and really sort of see, you know, what are the best options for that, and develop a four-year plan and talk about what we’re going to do in the next four years.
And if the participant is agreeable, we’ll sign an agreement and then they’ll implement that plan over the next four years. And we pretty much looked at almost any of the — not all of them, but most of the NRCS recommended practices are part of our plan.
Jada Dormaier: OK. So once the farmer, over the four years, they get into — let’s say they’re getting into carbon credits with Nori. Who is handling that? Or is the farmer working with Nori, or are you guys taking that information in for the farmer? How is that part working?
Julie Howe: So what we have set up with Nori specifically is that Nori is going to work with — we’re going to pick, I think it’s one participant from each region, if I remember correctly. And Nori’s going to do it like a case study, and if the farmer’s interested, they can participate wholeheartedly. It’s completely — we’re not going to mandate that the participant be part of Nori’s program; that’s a totally other level of voluntary.
But we will pay them to do all the stuff that they would go through if they were going to the carbon crediting programs, and give them a chance to sort of evaluate it over the course of the project and see if, you know, hey, I did everything I was supposed to do — what is that experience like, and then did I make a benefit or not?
And we’re hoping that if we do five of those — and I believe BCarbon is going to do five too — so that’s two different carbon crediting programs that are going to do that. That’s 10 different people with kind of case study experiences, and then they can talk about what their experiences were. And then, you know, we can look at those different regions, we can look at different commodities, we can try to get an idea if this is what Texas farmers need to do or not.
Jada Dormaier: Nice. So when do you expect farmers to start implementing? When does the application period —
Julie Howe: So the application’s open right now. Would love for anyone who wants to apply to apply. If they have questions, I have two people that’ll answer it. If it needs to be in Spanish, I can find somebody to talk to somebody in Spanish. But the application’s on our website, and we’re going to start reviewing applications sometime in February — maybe it may be March by the time we actually get it going, but sometime end of February, beginning of March, we’re going to review applications and start looking at where we’re at. And then we’re going to start adding recruitment in areas where we think we’re seeing low enrollment, or commodities where we see low enrollment, and we’re going to keep pushing that application until we — we’d like to enroll for the first year.
So as soon as we select the operations that we’re going to be doing, then we would set up an appointment with the planner, let them lay out the thing, and, you know, get all the paperwork done. And then we would probably do our first sampling, because we want to get a baseline of where they are before we implement anything, and then they can start implementing the practices. And then we have so many different commodities and so many different types of climate-smart practices. It may depend — like, if you’re a row crop farmer, you might be implementing winter cover crops. I mean, you may not really do the climate-smart practice until, you know, October, right? But if you’re a wheat farmer, maybe you’re doing the cover cropping in the summer. So it may vary a little bit by operation on when they would start exactly.
Jada Dormaier: Do you pay for — let’s say I’m a farmer, I’m going to add cover crops this spring. Do you pay for the seed with the Climate-Smart Initiative program, or…?
Julie Howe: That’s a great question. We provide — we provide money based on the practice that the farmer would be paying for, for what they’re doing. So we’re hoping that we’re paying more than what it would cost them to do it themselves. I think for cover — there’s a few of them that I’m pretty sure we’re over. There’s a few practices that we may not quite be covering all of it, but for some of them — like, for example, for rice production, one of the practices is alternate wetting and drying, and some farmers see that as really risky. And so whether we’re covering all of the cost of that or not, I think we’re not sure. But for things like cover cropping and no-till and things like that, for the most part we’re covering it.
Unless, you know, obviously they need fancy equipment or something like that that’s not available — that might be the only place that would be difficult. We did buy some equipment, though, for the project. So there’s certain areas that will have access to some no-till planters and no-till equipment and things like that, so.
Ross Kenyon: What does your ideal farmer look like? Or are there several profiles that might be useful to you?
Julie Howe: Gosh, I don’t know if we have an ideal farmer. I think that goes into, no farmer’s the same, no participant in the project is the same. So we really are looking for variety, actually. I don’t actually want everybody to be the same, because I want to see the small operation and the large operation, to see how — like, do the practices implement the same way, do you see the same translation that way? I mean, so I think that’s maybe different. We’re a little different than maybe other commodity groups that got — these are industry groups that got this grant — because we want to answer questions, right?
We want to figure — we’re really trying to figure out, like, how can this work in Texas, how can we improve our commodity groups, how can we make it better? So I have embedded in the project — I think there’s at least in our group there’s 10 graduate students that are going to tackle these different questions. Is it a regional thing? Is it a commodity thing? Is it a practice-specific thing? Is it small farmers, large farmers? Is it, you know — so all of those questions we’re hoping to tackle through the project. And is there a better way to measure it? Is there a better way to set this up? Is there a better way to do this?
Because right now, especially with, like, the carbon credits — y’all, I think Nori, y’all have a different way to do it, but some of the carbon crediting programs require very intensive sampling. So, you know, those types of things. Do you need all that sampling? Maybe the way you’re doing it is just perfect. You know, like, these are some of the questions that we’re trying to answer, because the markets right there — it’s all over the place, right? At least, that’s neither here nor there on carbon credits.
Jada Dormaier: I — every time I talk about carbon credits, I feel like I’m more lost than I was.
Julie Howe: The — like, when people talk about it, I feel like I get more confused and more lost every time I learn more about it. So.
Ross Kenyon: Well, speaking of being lost in things, I was going to ask a science question.
Julie Howe: Sure.
Ross Kenyon: It’s very much the same for me. How do you conduct — how do you conduct science when there’s so many variables, even across regions, fields, even within Texas? How could you say these general practices are making a difference in the same kind of way in different places? What do you do with that?
Julie Howe: Well, so that’s where science has been really limited on it, because we really need numbers, right? In order to conduct science we need replication. And so that’s why our application process — you know, people keep asking me, do you have a target number of farmers or commodities or regions? And I’m like, well, no. What we’re going to do is we’re going to look where people are located, what their practices are, and we want to make sure that we select operations that allow us to do that replication that we need. So we’re going to try to make sure that, you know, in each region we have multiples of the same sort of thing.
So we get, you know, a couple of data sets, then maybe we go to another region, make sure we have something like — for, I know, like cotton, because it’s an easy commodity, it’s all over the state. So we can have, you know, maybe three operations that are doing no-till and cover cropping in the Plains, three that do it in Central Texas, three that do it along, you know, the coast, and maybe one down in the Valley or something like that. And then by doing that we have multiple operations kind of doing the same practices, and then we can pull all that data together and evaluate it.
And so that’s what’s limited a lot of our research that we’ve been doing all these years: there’s not enough money in any grant to allow me to do more than a couple of locations. And so it’s really hard to do science when you’re talking about two or three locations and how I can talk about, you know, hundreds of locations. So maybe that gives us better data. Does that sort of explain what I’m hoping we could do?
Ross Kenyon: It sounds like such a difficult thing to do. And I’m sure where you present your research, I imagine someone always asks this replicability question, ’cause it’s pretty obvious, right? It’s one of the central tenets of the scientific method, and yet it seems really challenging to offer an answer. I mean, the Savory Institute gets slammed for this all the time, where they’re saying, like, it doesn’t work the same way in every place, how could we say it’s scientifically valid? And they say, well, we’re holistic and you’re only looking at one thing, and this is a failure of vision, not a failure of the method. And then, I don’t know — do you agree with a retort kind of like that?
Julie Howe: Yeah, I mean, there’s always problems, but then there’s no perfect way to do it, right? And I mean, to be honest, if you got really into the weeds, you could be like, well, every history of every site is going to affect every outcome of every field trial. You know, what if somebody — I mean, my favorite example is, I was working with peanut farmers in Alabama once, and they were talking about how, you know, they went out and they put a new field in production and inoculated. They did everything they’re supposed to. And they looked at their field and they had these circles in there, and they couldn’t figure out why the peanuts were going in circles.
And they did some soil tests, and turns out it used to be an old pecan orchard. Pecans need a lot of zinc, and to peanuts that’s actually toxic — they don’t tolerate a lot of zinc. And so you can see where the circles are, and, like, the pecan farm was done 25, 50 years ago and it was not even any time relevant. So you kind of forget what happened 25 years ago, but sometimes the soil doesn’t forget.
So I can appreciate that thing, but the idea is — and that’s why we have to do it over and over and over again. I think that’s why they call it research, because you search and you research it over and over again, right? So research, you just have to keep doing it over and over again. And the idea is, if you get a lot of sites that do the same thing, you can make the conclusion that there’s a tendency for this practice to work. And so that’s what we’re hoping for: repeatability in multiple environments, so that we can isolate that this is what’s going to happen.
But yes, you’re absolutely right. There’s this problem all across the board. You’re not always going to see the same thing. There are always reasons why some things don’t work some years and sometimes they work others, and there’s a lot of variables. And that’s one of the reasons that agriculture research is probably one of the most difficult types of research you can do.
Ross Kenyon: Seems to me like a discipline that I’m sure people who don’t work in the field think it’s been done for a long time — how could there possibly be new ground to turn over, one might say? But no, this is actually one of the hardest. It’s one of the oldest, surely, but hardest as well. I don’t know.
Julie Howe: Yeah, but you think about it: every year you do it, you’re probably using different varieties, you have different yield goals. You maybe have different fertilizer or different mechanisms, different management practices, different equipment. You know, even just the harvesting equipment can make a big difference in your yields and things like that, if that’s what you’re going for. So, like I said, I didn’t really start out in ag, and I was just sort of blown away by how difficult it is and why it’s really important to really have the same —
So one of the things we’re doing in our project is making sure the same lab is analyzing all the data, because even small differences in how labs handle samples could make a difference in the results. And so we’re trying to keep everything as consistent — we’re running very standard procedures on how things are done so that we can make sure that the data is comparable as best as possible. But it is a constant challenge.
I mean, even, like, greenhouse gases — even the time of day makes a difference. You know, let’s say you go outside at 10:00 in the morning, but by noon, especially in the summer around here, I mean, that might be a 20-degree difference. Or if a front comes through, you know, maybe the temperature changes, maybe it even drops 20 degrees. You try to take a sample, and gases are completely dependent upon temperature, and wind and all these other factors. So we just have to keep doing it and repeating it and making sure that the data is good. I’m probably adding distrust to what we do, but I don’t mean to do that. I’m really saying that we have to work really hard to do a lot of data in order to get clear answers, and that’s what we’re trying to do.
Ross Kenyon: People that I trust the most on anything are the ones who can say, here are the limits to my ideas, here’s where they don’t work so well, here are some of the blind spots that my methodology has. I think if you can admit and hold things a little bit more like that, it should encourage trust. Though to some people that reads as weakness, I don’t know. I feel like I’ve probably inspired trust, and some people are like, who is this wishy-washy guy? What does he actually believe? [unclear]
Julie Howe: I know. They always say that the answer from every scientist is “it depends,” and not because — it’s true, it depends. I’m guilty of it as well. But no, I mean, it’s true, but I’m not a used car salesman. I’m not going to tell you that, you know, it’s going to run perfect and this is going to be great and it’s going to work in every situation and whatever. I don’t think that’s really true.
I have only found one place, though, in the world where I felt like adding carbon to the soil was not a good thing, and that was — I was in Mexico, and we were up in the mountains, and the time of year that they plant, it gets really wet, and adding carbon to the soil added so much more moisture that they would get seed rotting in the field before it germinated. And that’s the only place I ever have seen people complain about adding carbon to the soil.
Every other place they want the carbon, because it helps drainage and it helps the soil hold water, it adds nutrients and better nutrient recycling. There’s so many ancillary benefits to adding carbon to the soil that very few locations in the world are going to have problems with it. But that was the only place — they didn’t have good drainage and that soil just held onto the water really tightly and they just had trouble with it. But that’s the only place I have ever seen that be problematic in my career. But it was a pretty place.
Ross Kenyon: How much rain did they get there?
Julie Howe: Again, they get a lot in the summer. It’s way up in the — I can’t remember, because they probably did it in metric and I don’t want to get the numbers wrong, but yeah, they were up in the mountains. They do a lot of wheat up there, wheat and corn, but mostly wheat, and the wheat just couldn’t handle the extra moisture in the winter. So yeah. And the corn too, I think, because corn doesn’t really like to be too wet. But it was interesting — you learn that.
That’s the other part that I think is really important: going to other places and learning what other people do and seeing how it adapts back to where you are. I think that’s really something. And a lot of people just don’t travel very much, and I know that there are places where you can go in the US and they think it’s hilarious — what do you mean, they don’t do cover crops? And then you go to other places and it’s like, oh, I’m not putting that in there, that’s going to hurt my yield. And it’s almost 180 degrees different, and yet it may be even growing the same thing. So it’s really interesting to me.
Ross Kenyon: Would be nice if there was more mixing of people around the country to have discussions about what works and doesn’t work, and why it works and doesn’t work. It probably does truly depend there, right? Like, I’ve heard people say in drier regions, cover cropping competes for water with the main crop, and that that is a reason why they can’t or won’t do it.
Julie Howe: I’ve heard that. And yet I’ve done three studies, and not one study showed that — it always had more water under the cover crop after the cover crop. Every single one of them.
Ross Kenyon: You messed up my point, but I’m glad to hear it. I’ve heard that — I’ve heard that so many times.
Julie Howe: Oh, me too. The mythology [unclear]. You know, I think it’s something else. I think it has to do with the nutrient cycling. We did see the cash crop struggle. I actually caught up with the other one that was not after a [unclear], but it wasn’t due to water. I think they see it, and I think that effect is visually there, but I don’t know it’s there in actual changes in yield, and I don’t think it’s due to water. I think they attribute it to water, but I don’t think that’s fair. But I’m trying to dispel that myth, because I hear it all the time.
And I think you’re absolutely right, that happens in Eastern Washington. But I think this is also one of those times that maybe the first couple of years you don’t see the benefit and you may see it a little bit later. And that’s important to remember too. But —
Jada Dormaier: And I also think — my dad was an alfalfa farmer, and it’s interesting to see, you know, like, alfalfa farmers are always praying that it doesn’t rain and everyone else wants it to rain. So everybody is wanting a different thing too. So water affects everything differently, and farming is just a really interesting industry in general.
Julie Howe: It really is. I mean, I’m sitting here, it’s raining here, and we’re like 14 inches deficit in water. And I’m actually upset because I have a grazing study and we can’t get the cows to graze because it’s too wet. And I really don’t like — we’re trying to get them out on the cover crops to get them grazed, because I think there’s some benefit to grazing cover crops that you don’t necessarily see, and that also provides some income as far as, you know, food for the cows. So, but I think we’ve tried every time — when we get ready to graze, it rains again. So I’m sitting here going, would you stop raining?
Jada Dormaier: So yeah, just push them out. Julie, what would you say to farmers still on the fence about joining climate programs or carbon programs in general?
Julie Howe: I would say that keep in mind that these practices — despite whether you care about the climate or not, these practices have very high potential to improve your operation, reduce water needs, keep you, you know, longer between drought periods, hold nutrients, reduce fertilizer inputs. Like, all of these types of things can benefit your operation that don’t have anything to do with whether you care about climate change or not. That’s not really why I think farmers should join this. I think it gives you an extremely low-stakes opportunity to try something that you might not think about trying, because you can’t afford to gamble the farm on it, right? So here’s your opportunity, where we’re going to pay you and hopefully it’ll pay you that difference and what that is.
And if you only wanted to try it on a small amount of land, OK, that’s fine too. We don’t have to do your whole operation, but you can do a small side of your operation. So why don’t you try it and see what you think? Get your feet wet in it. And if you hate it and you think it doesn’t have any role in your operation, then we want to learn that at the end of the project. But for right now, let’s try to give it an honest effort and see if this could make a difference. This could maybe change your mind about it, or change how we do things.
Ross Kenyon: If someone wanted to get involved, how should they do so, Julie?
Julie Howe: We have on our project — we have the Texas Climate-Smart Initiative. I think the website is climatesmart.tamu.edu. And then there’s a button right there that takes you to the link to the application. If you’re interested in doing that, there’s some other projects as well.
I don’t have their links summarized or anything, but I know the US cotton protocol has one, the sorghum producers protocol has one, the US rice producers — there’s the beef cattle one. And, I mean, you can go to the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities and you can go by state or commodity, and I think it sorts all those out, so you can get ideas of other programs, and I think they link to all of their websites. So if you happen to be listening and you’re not from Texas, or something else. But I think it’s certainly worth looking into.
And I was trying to tell farmers, carbon credits are gravy, right? You have your operation — this is your gravy. You don’t have to have gravy on your turkey dinner, but man, sometimes it tastes a lot better if you add it, maybe. Or the icing on your cake, or whatever. So, you know, if you think that you can contribute to carbon sequestration, then maybe it’s not $100.00 an acre, but hey, it still could be something that can help you out and make your operation more sustainable economically.
Ross Kenyon: The kolaches. Turkey dinner.
Julie Howe: I know we were into food, so I thought I’d go with that full circle. My students laugh at me because I’m always coming up with analogies, because I find that sometimes people relate better to analogies. I teach, and I have my thousands of analogies for all my concepts.
Ross Kenyon: It’s a good thing to do, I think. It definitely brings it home in that way. Well, thanks for being here. Thanks for helping me, Jada. Glad to have you.
Jada Dormaier: Yeah. Thanks for inviting me. And it was nice to talk with you, Julie.
Julie Howe: That was nice to talk with you too. You had great questions. And I’m glad to hear about your insurance thing — I’m glad you could help me with that. I couldn’t — I didn’t know the answer to that. So it’s awesome.
Jada Dormaier: Oh yeah, no worries.
