Justin Place

We’re all fighting the same fight and we’re looking for the same things. If you’re not experimenting, you’re not learning.

 

Bill Northey

We also have better tools than we used to. We can place that fertilizer just when we want it at the right time.

 

Janette Veazey-Post

You want to treat the land the way that it’s supposed to be treated. You want the consumer to respect you.

 

Dusty Weis

Welcome to the FARMSMART Podcast, presented by Nutrien Ag Solutions, where every month we're talking to sustainable agriculture experts from throughout the industry.

As the leading source of insight for growers on evolving their sustainability practices while staying grounded in agronomic proof, FARMSMART is where sustainability meets opportunity.

We don't just talk change. We're out in the field helping you identify the products, practices and technologies that bring the future to your fields faster. I'm Dusty Weis.

 

Sally Flis

And I'm Dr. Sally Flis, Director of Sustainable Ag Programs, and Dusty, one of the most rewarding things about this job is we get to support the people who provide food, fiber and fuel to the world.

It’s the oldest profession, and I would argue it’s one of the most noble.

 

Dusty Weis

For sure Sally. And it’s that time of year when things slow down a little bit, and we take time to be grateful for certain things.

I know one thing we talk about around my Thanksgiving table is that everything we get to enjoy at dinner is there because of someone’s hard work.

So in that spirit, we wanted to use this episode as a “Celebration of Growers” by looking back on some of the conversations we’ve had with farmers who spend every day working to leave the world in better shape than they found it.

 

Sally Flis

We’re going to start by looking back on a conversation we had recently with Justin Place.

And one thing he stressed was how staying engaged with his local and national commodity organizations has helped him weather new challenges.

He’s a grower from Hamer, Idaho, and was the President of the Idaho Grain Producers Association when we talked to him.

 

Justin Place

It's interesting you mentioned it's an arid climate. The annual rainfall here is about 12 inches, and most of that falls in the form of snow during the winter months. So I can look out and I see the Grand Tetons through my kitchen window. They're out there a little ways out, but I can still see them.

We're about an hour and a half from Yellowstone National Park, so kind of paints a picture where we're really at. It's a dry desert here, so we grow primarily wheat and barley, and we grow alfalfa. We've grown mustard, brown mustard and now this year, we've grown yellow mustard. So in this area, there's a lot of guys grow potatoes.

There is some corn being grown for silage. But we're going to probably dabble a little bit of corn this coming year. You always got to try something.

 

Sally Flis

Justin, I think you probably mentioned it already, but water is probably one of your biggest challenges where you farm. But what are some of the other challenges that you guys are facing as you look at the diversity of crops that you mentioned, that you guys are growing on the farm?

 

Justin Place

Yeah, you're right. Water is the biggest thing. That's a hot topic in the Snake River plain. Weather is always a challenge. You never know what the weather's going to do for us. We sit at about 4900 feet elevation, so it's high.

We've tried doing various things and, you know, your growing season is always a challenge. This year was a short season, started early, but it stayed cold through mid-May. We've had a great harvest this fall. It's been hot, so that's kind of it, it’s the weather. It’s a big challenge.

 

Sally Flis

Justin, are you irrigating any of your crops or are you all dryland production on your farm?

 

Justin Place

We had some guys from Wisconsin one day, custom cutter guys came out, said, “What does it look like? I see pivots around everywhere around here.” I said, “You see that dry, short weeds over there in the corner where we don't irrigate? It's about four inches tall. That's what we get if you don't irrigate.” So yes, we are all full irrigation.

In my area most everything's irrigated. Up in the higher country, some of those guys are dry land. But even the dry land guys are… there's a lot of irrigation up in the higher country as well, you know, if they can do it.

As far as ours go, we come out of wells. So we pump out of the Snake River aquifer.

So that's like I said, it's been a hot topic. There's a water challenge to try to conserve water and make sure we have enough to go around.

Idaho has got an interesting, it's an interesting water state. The water law is first in time is first in right. So up here in East Idaho a lot of this was developed later.

The earlier water rights are in southern Idaho. And so those guys have made a water call and they want their water, understandably. You know I don't want to dry them up and they certainly don't want to dry me up either. So it's just a matter of trying to get that figured out for everybody.

 

Dusty Weis

Yeah, it's got to be an odd balance to have to strike out there, particularly since, I mean, it flows through your land before it gets to theirs. You'd certainly have the opportunity to take more than your share if you wanted to there.

But certainly one of the ways that we get around that as growers, and we talk to a lot of members of a lot of different national and local commodity organizations, but those commodity organizations can be one way to sort of find a middle ground and find cooperation around issues like that.

And certainly, each one is unique as well. Wanted to talk about how you got involved with the Idaho Grain Producers Association, and what made you decide to take on a leadership role there, too?

 

Justin Place

Well, I got to bless my dad's heart. I've got to hand it to dad. When I first got involved with Idaho Grain, he's like, “Why don't you go to this tri-state grain grower meeting?” It's Idaho grain producers in Washington and Oregon. The three states get together once a year and have this tri-state grain meeting. And he says, “Why don't you go up there and see what it's all about?”

So I did, and I learned real quick. You know, no offense to the guys in the back of the room, but the guys in the back are always in the back. But the real wheels that make things move and shake and happen sit towards the front and the middle of the room. And, you know, I thought I would like to sit with those guys.

Those guys are the ones that make things happen. And I really didn't know anyone there when I first attended, but I worked my way to the front of the room so that I could get in with the movers and shakers. I figured I'm just a small guy in the room here. You know, I'll either get ground to dust, or I'll find my way into where I need to be. And here I am.

I joke with my wife all the time I'm the shy, quiet one in the back of the room. But for some reason I always get pushed to the front and then I get stuck in front of a microphone.

 

Dusty Weis

You know, two things that have always really impressed me about the commodity organizations like that, Justin, and the first one, and certainly I'd love to hear your comments on it as well, but the first one is the way that they always invite people in when they find someone who has an interest in, as you put it, being in the front of the room, there's nobody that says, no, no, no, this isn't your place.

Get in the back of the room. They're always happy to have someone be involved in that.

And the second thing that's always really impressed me about those organizations is the fact that primarily, they're driven by the hard work and blood, sweat and tears of volunteers like you. I mean, being the president of the Idaho Grain Producers Association, that's a fair amount of time on someone's schedule that's already pretty busy there.

What makes you and the members that help keep this organization together, give so generously of your time and talents?

 

Justin Place

When you stop and think about it, it involves our livelihoods. So you can either sit back and watch things happen, or you can be there and you have a say in what goes on. You know, that's really what it boils down to. We've got some really good people in our organization. And you're right, it's a volunteer army, if you will, to do it.

We have a mentorship program where we're always training, trying to bring new people in to the organization and bring them in as leadership eventually, you know, we strive to work that way. You know, I started out in 2015, I was brought on with a mentorship program with National Barley Growers Association.

It's been a very good training ground, if you will. You know, you go, you get your feet wet. I learned real quick there's no free lunches. You know, they're always willing to give you something, but you better be able to put back because somebody is going to take away from that free lunch every once in a while.

 

Sally Flis

Justin, you mentioned a lot of different areas that organizations like Idaho Grain Producers work in. Advocacy, leadership training, informational meetings, outreach to members and others. How has sustainability been a part of the discussions at a group like Idaho Grain Producers over the last five or so years?

 

Justin Place

You know, sustainability is a real good question mark. You know, it's a buzzword that everybody uses. I'm guessing if I ask the two of you what sustainability means it would be something different to both of you, just as it would be for me. And everybody I talk to has the same thing of, well, sustainability just depends on who you're talking to.

We have our meetings with Idaho Grain Producers, and we discuss a lot of things, a lot of politics as we go through there. We talk about different things as we lobby on behalf of the grain producers in the state of Idaho.

But we also, I call it the “campfire meeting,” is after the meetings are all done and we've had dinner and we're just all sitting around the hotel lobby and some are drinking their adult beverages, some are drinking soda pop, some of them are drinking water.

I think that's the very best part of the meetings, because then you sit down and you say, “Hey, you know, how did your grain really work?” You know, we had the meeting. We always go around, we ask, how's things working out for you? How's your crop? What's the crop look like in your area? And you always get those big fish stories.

But you know, the minute you do that, one guy's not going to let the next guy beat him out. But when you get to the campfire session where we're all just sitting around, just farmers being farmers, you know, we've taken the suits and ties off and we're just chillin’.

And that's the best part of the whole organizational meeting. Because then you have this network of people throughout the state and it extends on over, we're involved with National Wheat Growers Association and National Barley Growers Association.

You know, you just gain this big group of network of people across the country. And we're all fighting the same fight, and we're looking for the same things, and we're trying to figure out, and there's really no reason to reinvent the wheel if somebody has done it, let's talk about it.

So when we sit around those roundtables or the fireside sessions, I guess, if you will, we're always picking everybody's brain, you know, “Hey, have you tried growing this crop?”

We're always looking for something new. And that's what brought me into the no-till side of things. That also brought me into growing mustard, trying different things, you know, just if you're not experimenting, you're not learning.

 

Dusty Weis

“If you’re not experimenting, you’re not learning.”

Sally, I really love that quote from Justin Place. Kind of sums up the very best of what makes agriculture great.

 

Sally Flis

For sure, and we see it every day with the growers that we work with and in the work that we do in the field and what we think about for upcoming cropping seasons with the programs that we run.

And over the years, we’ve gone out of our way to celebrate growers who exemplify that attitude.

Like the time we talked to Janette Veazey-Post.

She works on a dairy operation in Western New York and Eastern Ohio with 8,000 head of cattle and 13,000 total acres.

And she’s really fearless about trying new technologies and techniques…

 

Janette Veazey-Post

So, we're a partnership between the Lamb family and the Veazey family. The lambs oversee all the dairy cows. And, the Veazeys take care of all the crops, putting up the feed for the cows, and we take care of all the bookwork.

 

Sally Flis

So Janette, one of your operations is a couple miles from my house, just down the road from us. And then, the other one is just a little bit east of us. And, working with your crop consultant at your New York location, you got interested and we visited with you on our 2021 carbon end-to-end pilots. Why were you guys interested in participating in a carbon pilot?

 

Janette Veazey-Post

So I think trying to show the consumer what we're doing in carbon is a big part of that, it's become pretty popular. So, it was brought to our attention. So, we just wanted to try it and see how it would fit into our operation.

 

Sally Flis

The carbon around soil crop management is only one side of what you can do with reducing emissions, especially in a livestock operation with the dairy cattle. I know you guys have manure digesters on the farm and are already listed on some of the carbon registries as taking advantage of the benefits of reducing methane emissions from the manure digestion. How did you guys get involved in that part of your sustainability programming?

 

Janette Veazey-Post

So I think, become a sustainable on the whole dairy is important. They brought to our attention about getting carbon for the methane. And so, we did sign on for that. We have two digesters on two of our dairies. And so, we did buy into that.

 

Sally Flis

How are you guys managing the difference in the quality or consistency of products you get out of those manure digesters, versus previous manure management you were doing on the farm?

 

Janette Veazey-Post

I mean, to be able to get more sustainable is the goal. When we first put in the digesters, we were collecting the methane for electricity. Now we're working with another company and they are actually taking the gas off of it. And, they clean it, and they compress it, and they put it right into the natural gas line.

 

Sally Flis

Are you guys reusing your solids as bedding in that system?

 

Janette Veazey-Post

We do. So, all of our manure is separated after it goes through the digester. It’s separated and all the liquid gets spread as nutrients in the field, and the solids get bedded for the dairy cows.

 

Dusty Weis

So Janette, we obviously talk a lot about cropping practices on this show… sustainability practices and the revenue opportunities those generate. But this is our first time talking to someone from a dairy operation. What’s that like in the dairy process? Are you finding new value in tracking sustainability in your dairy operation, and what sort of opportunities or markets is that opening up to you? 

 

Janette Veazey-Post

So, for our dairy in Ohio, we participate in a sustainability program. And so, they actually take everything that we do, which comes to collecting all that data. And so, I can give them all this information from every single pass that we apply to a field, and they can say what our carbon footprint is. So, it's really neat and cool information. And I wish we could do more of something like that in New York, but our milk market in New York isn't to that point.

 

Dusty Weis

Are there any premiums that you can earn from doing that?

 

Janette Veazey-Post

Actually so, they give us funding for it. Help us with some sustainability programs. They helped us purchase a cover crop tool to apply cover crops. And even in the barns and with the dairy cows, they can help us with tracking our water usage and fans. They can all go on thermostats and timers, and it's helped us learn a lot too.

 

Sally Flis

So along those lines, Janette, carbon has been the focus of sustainability discussions probably for a couple years now, with it being that lead headline of things. It sounds like you guys are doing a ton of other sustainability stuff that may have links back to carbon, but not necessarily what we talk about in carbon all the time.

What are some of the other sustainable practices you guys are implementing across the whole operation, from the fans and the water use efficiency pieces that you're looking at on one of your operations… what's that whole farm sustainability picture for you guys?

 

Janette Veazey-Post

So, I think we're still learning on what to do. We just did an expansion over at one of our dairies. Even the curtains on the barns goes off of temperature and wind. And so, they'll come up and down to be most comfortable for the cows. So, even though we're trying to become sustainability, we're not taking from the cow comfort and producing high quality milk.

 

Sally Flis

What are some of the feed management aspects you guys look at in sustainability? We've got in your field records, all the individual field passes, but what are other data points in there on storage, or shrink, or that stuff around feed inventories that you're looking at?

 

Janette Veazey-Post

Every load of feed that comes in is weighed, every truckload of corn silage we harvest, every truckload of haylage that we harvest, everything is weighed across scales and put into a software and it's tracked. And then, as they feed out, every bucket full, every feed mix that they do is kept track of the monitor.

 

Sally Flis

You guys for sure have a lot of data.

 

Janette Veazey-Post

Told you I was data-driven.

 

Dusty Weis

And you said that earlier, alluding to how you were data driven. Ultimately at the end of the day, these investments that you're making in equipment, in practices, in the digesters, that's an investment on your part. So, how do you track in your data the ROI that you see on those investments?

 

Janette Veazey-Post

So, it's all in our programs that we have. And that's one of the reasons why we have them, is so we can track. I think a lot of people know... Or they think that they know what their costs are, but until you put it into a sheet or a software, I'm not really sure that you do.

 

Dusty Weis

But, all that is to say, when you look at the bottom of that spreadsheet, what has that ROI been? Have you found that yet?

 

Janette Veazey-Post

Yeah. We're working on it. The hardest part about figuring out your cost is... So, we strip till, so you take that strip till machine and how do you come up with your price per acre that you want to put on that? So that's the hard part. So, we go off of custom rates, and just put a number in. But, I mean, until you know how long you're going to keep a piece of equipment, it's really hard to know exactly what your cost is against that.

So, I'm still trying to figure it all out. And, I do love my spreadsheets, but I keep track of all of our repairs on all of our equipment to try, and distribute that across our acres. That's probably one of the hardest things to do.

 

Dusty Weis

It's very thorough. Very thorough.

 

Janette Veazey-Post

Yeah.

 

Sally Flis

So Janette, a lot of the stuff that... Some of your record keeping for your operations goes back to that, you guys fall under state regulations for concentrated animal feeding operation in New York, with the number of cows that you have. How has having to be in a program like a CAFO program and have a permit, either hindered you guys making changes on the farm or encouraged you to make more changes on the farm?

 

Janette Veazey-Post

I would say it's made it a little harder, just because of all the paperwork you have to do and everything you have to keep track of. But, I mean, at the end of the day, you want to be a respectable farmer. You want to treat the land the way that it's supposed to be treated. You want the consumer to respect you. So, I think that part of those programs... Or those permits, at the end of the day, that's what you're getting from it. I mean, it does make things difficult, but it also makes us better farmers too.

Everybody wants to know where their food comes from and that's gotten really, really big. And I think farming has laid back on that for too long. And so, we have to build back up from there.

 

Dusty Weis

Janette there touches on some issues that a lot of us have dealt with on a local level.

But farmers need leaders to advocate on these issues at a national level as well.

And unfortunately, we recently lost a good one.

We’ll look back at the life and accomplishments of Iowa’s Bill Northey, coming up in a minute, here on the FARMSMART Podcast.

 

BREAK

 

Dusty Weis

This is the FARMSMART Podcast, and I’m Dusty Weis, along with Sally Flis.

And Sally, in this episode we’re showing our gratitude for the growers who work to put food on the table for their neighbors.

And one agriculture icon who I’m grateful we got to meet is Bill Northey.   

 

Sally Flis

Yeah, it's unfortunate Bill passed away last year after more than 40 years in the ag industry.

He served a decade as Iowa's Secretary of Agriculture and was Under Secretary for Farm Production and Conservation at USDA. And when we talked to him, he had just started as the CEO of the Agribusiness Association of Iowa.

Bill was always somebody that anybody could call up and ask a question to, even when he was serving as an Under Secretary at USDA. He was a great leader, a great person to connect to, and had insights on all kinds of things, and was always excited to talk about how we could help farmers do better in the field and provide the support they needed.

He was someone who I was grateful to have gotten to know and really projected that voice of the grower, not just for Iowa, but at a national and international level in the roles he got to serve in.

 

Bill Northey

We have some great ag organizations in the state of Iowa. Certainly we think of our farmer organizations, whether it's the farm Bureau, or corn, or soybean growers, livestock associations.

The Agribusiness Association really focuses on that business community out there. So our members are the supply co-ops and private supply companies as well that support farmers. They buy the products from farmers as well. We include some manufacturing companies that are ag manufacturers in Iowa, software providers and others.

About 200 companies in Iowa. A few of the international companies are also members of the Agribusiness Association of Iowa.

My background, I started on a farm in Northwest Iowa and went to Iowa State University, came back to that farm, happy to be able to farm. Farmed with my grandfather and started doing some activities off the farm and getting involved in Iowa Corn Growers Association, later served as president of Iowa Corn Growers, National Corn Growers Association, and really gave me a taste for the things you can do off the farm while still farming and how important associations are.

And then in 2006, I ran for Secretary of Agriculture in Iowa. That's an elected position. Really didn't have enough experience to rightfully do it, but the people of Iowa elected me in a very close election and I was elected and I served and was reelected again in 2010 and 2014.

And then in 2017, I got a call from Secretary Perdue and he wanted to sit down and have a conversation about what he was thinking about doing at USDA. And of course you take a call from the secretary, glad for a conversation and 45-minute conversation turns into two hours and we both felt like we could work together. And somehow I fit in his puzzle pieces of what he wanted in different roles at USDA.

I had to go through a Senate confirmation and served for three years as undersecretary at Farm Production and Conservation, which is Farm Service Agencies, the farm programs at USDA, NRCS, the conservation programs, and then crop insurance, which is a big program that's delivered mostly privately, but about 500 folks work on that at USDA, so 22,000 people, and we kicked out a few billion dollars worth of programs and it’s something, this small town, Northwest Iowa farm boy never thought he'd be doing, but really enjoyed and great experience.

 

Dusty Weis

All those roles you’ve had, Bill, and you’ve obviously got your finger on the pulse of ag practices in Iowa.

I know out there that water management, watersheds are a big topic of discussion. How are your growers approaching practice changes on the farm, whether they’re talking about cover crops or field tiling or tillage, biodiversity…

What have been some of the best ways you've seen growers get into those things?

 

Bill Northey

Well, I think for drainage probably yield monitors were the biggest thing. You know, we came across the field and we knew we had a wet spot and we thought, boy, the yield probably is 20 bushels lower there. And it was really 70 bushels lower once we had a yield monitor.

And so we had a lot of folks that said, I've got to do something to address that drainage.

And so I think the tools that we have to be able to look at that I think help us prioritize some of those things to address.

We spent a lot of time talking about water quality in Iowa as well. And we've seen a big growth in cover crops, still a small percentage. We have north of 3 million acres of cover crops in Iowa. That's out of 23 million acres of corn and soybeans. So it's not the majority by a long ways. And in some places you can drive for a while before you see a cover crop growing in that field.

But when we started what we call Nutrient Reduction Strategy, about 10 years ago, we had less than 50,000 acres of cover crops in Iowa. So we have an interest.

I think it grew out of several things. One is the ability to address water quality. Another was a discussion around the benefits to soil health and maybe of resilience as we just talked about in trying to make sure that in dry years and in wet years, that soil's able to absorb moisture and provide it for the crop and make sure that there's still some air in that soil, and that we grow a healthy plant because we don't know what the year is going to be when we stick that seed in the ground.

So I think there's a lot of things. We also have better tools than we used to. We can place that fertilizer just when we want it at the right time. We can get that planter across the field and make sure that all the down pressure works, even in our light ground and our heavy ground and wet soil and dry soil. And some of those tools that allow us a better job of that application, I think give a few more options in management to some of those farmers as well.

 

Sally Flis

Yeah. And I like that resilience term, you keep saying, Bill. That is really an important piece or a different aspect to think about on this. And I think it ties into one of those NRCS terms of resource concern, where, what is the resource concern that's going to help make the grower the most resilient out in the field?

And sometimes it's an environmental practice change. Sometimes, as you mentioned, it's what is the market bearing down on that grower? What are they able to get for supply? Can they get cover crop seeds? Can they get the equipment they need?

So it's just such a diverse challenge out there right now for growers and crop consultants to make a lot of these practices work in the field.

So following up on that, I know you guys are working on some science to try and update nitrogen management or nitrogen recommendation rates in Iowa because of some of these technology changes and different challenges that we see in the field and water quality concerns. Can you explain a little bit with the project you guys have going?

 

Bill Northey

Yeah. I appreciate the question, Sally. Pretty excited about this project. It happened before I got here. I was off Washington DC and smart people thought about it before I came back. So I'm just glad to be able to help it.

But it really is to say that we know nitrogen is a really tough thing to manage. We know there is no one perfect rate for nitrogen application for a crop. We'd love if there was, but we have soil mineralization that happens in our nutrient rich soils that are out here. And that varies in year to year because it may be a warm year, a wet year. Those all have impacts.

We have different productivities of soils across the same row in the field. We have actually hybrids that use different amounts at different times as well.

And so this project is to take across, it'll be about 150 fields this year, and we'd like to grow that to 500 test sites in the next year or so, and then run this test for the next 10 years, at least to be able to see what happens at different rates across that field.

And one of the things that allows us to do this in a very efficient way is precision agriculture. So we can change the rate as we drive across that field without having to stop and turn a dial. It's just a prescription on the machine.

And so that machine is applying 180 pounds, and then suddenly it's applying 120 pounds for a certain period of space. And then all of the sudden it's up, back to 180 pounds. We know exactly where that is when we take that combine across the field later, and we can be able to see what that yield difference was between that and the crop right beside it.

And so it didn't take a whole test plot, stopping, emptying a planter out, changing rates, figuring out strips. And we can do these in small plots and repeat them across a field in ways that give us a lot more ability to test.

And that allows us to be able to get to hundreds of sites across the state of Iowa and to be able to have it multiple years so that we can get a chance at finding out what's the rate in different years, in different sites, on different types of soils, with different hybrids and come up with better recommendations.

And it likely won't be one recommendation that says 1.1 pounds of nitrogen for every bushel that you plan to plant or a little bit more, if nitrogen's cheap and corn is expensive, it's going to be more complex than that.

But up until now, we haven't been able to do that. So we are really looking forward to this. We know we need to do a better job because we want to manage those nutrients and get them into our crop. We also want to make sure that those nutrients don't leave the field and go someplace else and cause problems for other people, whether it's in Iowa streams or down the Mississippi River, and this should help us get 10 numbers that are better.

 

OUTRO

That is going to conclude this episode of The FARMSMART Podcast. New episodes arrive every month, so make sure you subscribe to The FARMSMART Podcast in your favorite app and visit (nutrienagsolutions.com/FARMSMART) to learn more.

The FARMSMART Podcast is brought to you by Nutrien Ag Solutions.

And the FARMSMART Podcast is produced by Podcamp Media, branded podcast production for businesses. podcampmedia.com.

I’m Dusty Weis. For Sally Flis and Nutrien Ag Solutions, thanks for listening.