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As part of our SoilHealthLabs podcast series, Joe Dickie and I sat down to talk with Dr. Fred Provenza, who helped us delve into the deep connections between healthy grasslands and healthy livestock. Fred's stories bring those connections to life, beginning with Henry DeLuca, a rancher Fred worked for as a senior in high school, throughout college, and for two years after he graduated. Henry began to ranch in the late 1800s and was a man who knew his land intimately. He retained his own replacement heifers because he understood how crucial it was for animals to “know the range”. Henry’s wisdom left a lasting impact on Fred, shaping his understanding of the intricate bond between soil, plants, livestock, and humans. As our conversation unfolded, Fred shared how livestock mothers teach their young—but also how the young teach the mothers. He told us about a mother cow and her calf, explaining, “The calf might explore a plant the mother won’t touch, and if the calf doesn’t get sick and thus learns to eat the plant, the mother may eventually try it too. It’s a two-way street, and that interaction helps the herd adapt to changes in their environment.” Fred also recounted a fascinating story about training animals not to eat saplings. “We had a problem with cows nibbling on young trees, which was bad for both the trees and the cows. So, we started rubbing the saplings with a bitter, non-toxic substance. It only took a few tastes before the cows learned to avoid them entirely. The key was making sure the experience was unpleasant but safe, so the lesson stuck.” This part of the podcast offers us insights into why healthy prairies (with, say 50 or more species of grass and forb) are vital for healthy livestock. The stories Fred shares highlight the dynamic learning that happens between animals and their environment—a relationship that is essential for the well-being of both. Tune in to our upcoming podcast to hear more about these connections and the wisdom that Fred, inspired by mentors like Henry DeLuca, has gathered over decades of study and experience. Dr. Fred Provenza is professor emeritus of Behavioral Ecology at the Department of Wildland Resources, Utah State University. Fred is also the author of three books, including Nourishment: What Animals Can Teach Us about Rediscovering Our Nutritional Wisdom; Foraging Behavior: Managing to Survive in a World of Change; and The Art & Science of Shepherding: Tapping the Wisdom of French Herders - a book he co-authored with ecologist, animal behaviorist, nutritionist Michel Meuret. In the case that Dr. Provenza may have escaped your attention, we recommend the link below which is a really informative talk given by Dr. Provenza at Utah State University: The Web of Life Event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjUgX91VZpk ______________________________________________ ______________________ Visit these “Growing Resilience Through Our Soils” information pages: 1. Podcast page for drought planning fact sheets, Q&As, news, podcasts, and more. 2. Video page to watch videos of other ranchers’ journeys toward improved rangeland/pasture. 3. Follow Growing Resilience on social media: Facebook - Growing Resilience Twitter - @GrowResilience_ Instagram - growingresilience.sd 4. Our homepage: www.growingresiliencesd.com

Dan Rasmussen's family has been on their South Dakota ranch since 1914. As somebody with a family history in ranching, Dan has seen firsthand the endearing, invaluable, and beautiful facets of ranching culture – the deep power it has to bring people closer to themselves, the land, the animals, and each other. He wants to make it clear that he doesn't aim to change this. “We don't want to change our culture completely, but we want to change it for the benefit of the land, the people, our finances, and the livestock. That culture where neighbors are working together, helping each other out, we don't want to lose that or the ability to live that life. But in order to maintain it, we’re going to have to make some changes in ranch country,” says Dan. “There’s no reason to lose the ranch culture that so many of us love and want to maintain. The part of the culture we want to change is the part that doesn’t support land health and soil health.” When it comes to Dan Rasmussen’s pivot down the path of soil health, he says “curiosity killed the cat”. Every farmer or rancher has a turning point where their priorities, strategies and perspective shift, and Dan says he’s so curious that he’s always keeping a keen eye out for facets of his work he may have overlooked.   “That very curiosity is what took me out from the old ranching culture I saw in the 80’s to the new ranching culture that I know now,” says Dan. “In 1991, I went through a program called ‘Bootstraps’, which was an extension program teaching people how to get to the next level of management in ranching. That's where my curiosity kicked in, and I decided I want to learn more. I figure I'm going to be learning until my last day.”   Dan has now been working with the South Dakota Grassland Coalition for 22 years and was a board member for 18. Through this work he saw a need - he watched people emerge from grazing schools with a head full of entirely new strategies, but not enough support or context to follow through in the long run. “So, we started a consulting program we called the Grazing School Follow-Up Program. I’d say we’ve gone through about 120 ranches now in South Dakota and neighboring states.” Dan references the chart in Figure 1  to illustrate that everyone is somewhere on this line and show that the ideal process that ranchers start down, depending on where they are on the line, when leaving a grazing school with new intentions and a new soil-health-oriented approach. Holistic resource management helps managers move to the right on the line. Improved grazing practices improve soil health. To get these improvements, management must give pastures time for soil to become healthier before increasing stocking rate.   Rasmussen emphasizes that any season-long grazing is overgrazing, as indicated by the starting point on the left most extreme of Figure 1 . The first stage in the progression, moving to the right to “slow rotational grazing”, gives plants some time to rest after having been repeatedly grazed by livestock. “The next stop is ‘fast rotational grazing’; this gives those plants a much longer recovery time. And on the far right side is ‘faster rotational grazing’, and that is more like intensive rotational grazing where an example would be 400 yearlings in a pasture for one day, and then they move on and don't come back for 14 months.”   One indicator of healthy soil is that it infiltrates water well. In soil that has been overgrazed, organic matter decreases and water is less likely to effectively infiltrate into the soil, leading to ponding, runoff, and undernourished soil. Rasmussen references the term “effective rainfall,” coined by farmer and resource management expert Alan Savory.   “So, when my neighbors or friends say ‘I had two inches of rain’, I ask them, ‘well, how much of that actually went into your soil?’ If their soil was healthy, they might have had an effective rainfall of two inches. If the soil is not healthy, they might have had an effective rainfall of a quarter of an inch, while the remaining inch and three quarters ran off and went to a river or a dam or something like that. What we want is to keep every drop we can on the prairie, on the grassland, on our property.”   Moving management toward “fast rotational grazing”, the soil receives more rest, allowing root structure, plant diversity, and water infiltration to recover and improve. The principle behind rotational grazing is that the livestock is in a different pasture on the 1st of May every year, allowing each paddock sufficient rest time across differing seasons each year.   “Eventually you come back, and you do it all over again. So, the cattle come in in June and they graze it down to 4-5 inches high and then they move on. Then the grass is growing, growing, growing. Then we’re in September, the grass is pretty high. Now we’re in December and it's snowing. That snow is landing on that grass that had a chance to grow up and now we have insulation for the soil. That's nature's way of protecting that soil. With snow on that grass, there's an insulation factor, and we have soil activity with bugs [soil microbes] thriving longer than if the grass was only 4 inches tall all summer long. We have that bug activity under there because in the middle of the winter there's areas, if the grass is tall enough, that might not even have frost through it. And that allows these bugs to create organic matter and do their work much longer.” Climbing The Learning Curve   While easy to say, it can all be very difficult to execute. Dan wants to offer support for the steep progression from the far-left side of the chart, which is an entrenched ranching culture, to the far right side, which is a new paradigm with a different way to manage soil, land, and livestock.   “We can make a lot of mistakes, costly mistakes, along the way. People can lose interest, lose money – the path is fraught with mistakes. One way to make this journey successful over our years is through education. Holistic resource management is an educational tool originally started by Allan Savory himself that teaches us how to make this trip from seasonal overgrazing to intensive rotational grazing with the least amount of casualties.” When addressing the challenges ranchers face in transitioning to new grazing practices, Dan introduces the Dunning-Kruger effect . This psychological phenomenon describes how people with limited knowledge often overestimate their competence, while those with more experience recognize the complexity and feel less confident. Dan explains that new ranchers often get excited and invest heavily after attending a grazing school, only to face difficulties and become disillusioned. To combat this, he stresses the importance of making small, manageable changes and building a support network of mentors and consultants.  “The reason that we put the follow up program together was that ranchers come to the grazing school, they're there three days, their head is filled with new ideas, then they go home. Now, how do they implement this stuff? That's why we have consultants that will come to the ranch and spend about 40 hours with a rancher, do a grazing plan from the resource inventory and the mapping and help answer these questions. And we have a mentorship program that people can find on our website and call our mentors with questions. – Why did this fail? What should I do here? The tragedy of this is getting started and going too fast, and becoming so disillusioned because you have failures that you quit. We want to avoid that.”   Dan emphasizes the importance of surrounding oneself with a network of resources whose first priority is not profit, so that when the inevitable setbacks arrive, you are not financially being dug further into a hole. “And that's where education comes in. You can take your issues and problems to these workshops and look for answers there, and oftentimes your answer can come from participants. Oftentimes at our workshops, our participants are where we’re getting a lot of good information.” South Dakota Grassland Coalition has a myriad of partners looking to make resources more accessible to ranchers and farmers, partners willing to supply cost-share dollars. Dan explains that through these partnerships, the grazing school can cost $300, about a third of what it costs to actually put it on, and the follow up program can cost $150, which is about a twentieth of the actual cost of the program. A $4000 consulting program can cost $150 through the support of these partnerships.   “We’ve tried to design this so that there is no obstacle financially to doing this. The obstacle that I often hear is: ‘I’m not ready to start yet’, or ‘I don't want you to see the disaster I have at home yet, I want to fix some of it first’. We do not, as consultants, judge anything. We say, ‘this is where you're at’. Everybody is somewhere, and our job as consultants is to say this is where you are, let's get started, what's the first step. Which is often the hardest thing for a lot of land managers, ranchers, to get past– the first step. As a consultant, I can sit down at the kitchen table, and after the resource inventory is done, after the mapping is done, and I know a little more about the operation– I can just say here's the first step– it’s small, it doesn't take much, not very expensive, and once you take the first step and see the results, it is incredibly helpful in taking the next 2,3,4,5, -thousand steps.” In all, Rasmussen wants to be one of the many firmly leading the charge to a new paradigm in ranching culture, one small change at a time. In this process, he takes the human into account by acknowledging how discouraging it can be to shift one’s land management approach, and knowing how imperative it is to have an intuitive, attentive support network.    Find the full interview on the Growing Resilience site at: https://www.growingresiliencesd.com/podcasts/episode/fcf47f11/65-sd-ranchers-tips-for-bridging-traditional-ranching-culture-and-the-best-of-modern-agriculture or search for the SoilHealthLabs podcast on your favorite podcast app.   Other helpful Links: SD Grassland Coalition’s Grazing Schools:  https://sdgrass.org/grazing-school/ SD Grassland Coalition’s Resources:  https://sdgrass.org/resources/   (includes mentoring network, videos, blog, radio spots, weather stations) Check out the feature on Dan in the July issue of  The South Dakota Cattleman , pages 20-21.  https://issuu.com/sdcattleman/docs/july-aug_issuufinal ______________________________________________ ______________________ Visit these “Growing Resilience Through Our Soils” information pages: 1. Podcast page for drought planning fact sheets, Q&As, news, podcasts, and more. 2. Video page to watch videos of other ranchers’ journeys toward improved rangeland/pasture. 3. Follow Growing Resilience on social media: Facebook - Growing Resilience Twitter - @GrowResilience_ Instagram - growingresilience.sd 4. Our homepage: www.growingresiliencesd.com

By Buz Kloot   On Monday the 15th of July this year (2024), Joe Dickie and I got to talk to Dr. Fred Provenza (Professor Emeritus, Dept. Wildland Resources, Utah State University) from his home in Ennis, Montana as part of our podcast series.  Getting to know Fred in the last two months has been a journey in and of itself and I thought I’d share a few insights with you and hopefully this whets your appetite for when we release the podcast. While I don’t consider myself a prodigious reader, I did find that two books this year profoundly affected the way I viewed the world. The first was I saw Satan Fall like Lightning by René Girard, and the other was Nourishment by Fred Provenza. This is the story of how I first got to read Provenza’s amazing book. For the longest time, I would often hear my friend Michael Hall, formerly an NRCS grazing specialist, say “Fred Provenza said….”  As a guy who was coming to grips with soil health in row crop land, I never bothered to find out who Fred Provenza was.  After I fell in love with the prairie and started to see livestock as one of the answers to restoring degraded land, names outside of my South Dakota contacts like Allan Savory, Stan Parsons, Dallas Mount, Terry McCosker and Fred Provenza started to attract my attention. Since I was only one degree of separation from Provenza, I took a chance and asked Michael if he’d provide a letter of introduction to Fred so we could ask for a podcast interview.  Mike graciously, and eventually did this, sending an email to Fred and copying me in.  Well, Fred’s celebrity to me was on par with Tom Brady or Eric Clapton, so my expectation of a response was low.  But to my great surprise, Fred responded the next day “… Buz, wonderful to meet you. Michael told me many wonderful stories about you. I’m happy to do a podcast with you. I am happy to talk about whatever you consider to be most appropriate for your audience.”  Well, don’t you know, I was both shocked and delighted. This was a couple of months ago in late May, and I thought “hoo boy, better be prepared for this podcast, I don’t want to blow it with the behavioral ecology guru!” To prepare, I ordered his book Nourishment and borrowed the audiobook of the same title from the library – I listened to the audiobook (an abridged version of the book itself) and devoured the book as well.  I expected to find a tome about grazing and shepherding livestock, and I got that in spades, but in such an engaging way – Fred loves stories!  What I didn’t expect was the application of so much of what he learned from foraging behavior and how he applied that to ecology, sociology, human health and even metaphysical musings.  I was amazed at the way Fred weaves such a wonderful story that links humankind’s relationship to soil, water, plants and animals to the spiritual world. It truly just blew my mind. As I read through Nourishment and listened to the audiobook, Fred and I struck up a running email conversation. Once again, I didn’t think a rock star like Fred would have the time to converse with me, but he did.  Next week, I’d like to share a little more about our correspondence that led up to the podcast interview. In the meantime, I’d like to share some links that I explored and that I’d highly recommend: Utah State University: The Web of Life. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjUgX91VZpk Grassfed Exchange 2022 'Fred Provenza: Rediscovering Our Nutritional Wisdom'    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKOVsimD5HI 2023 Soil Revolution Conference: Managing Landscapes for Health: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAktpQwf3sY Regenerative Agriculture Podcast: Regenerating Landscapes With Livestock and Diverse Forages: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c7JFx7WyWA Books: Nourishment by Fred Provenza The Art & Science of Shepherding - by Michel Meuret (Editor), Fred Provenza (Editor) ______________________________________________ ______________________ Visit these “Growing Resilience Through Our Soils” information pages: 1. Podcast page for drought planning fact sheets, Q&As, news, podcasts, and more. 2. Video page to watch videos of other ranchers’ journeys toward improved rangeland/pasture. 3. Follow Growing Resilience on social media: Facebook - Growing Resilience Twitter - @GrowResilience_ Instagram - growingresilience.sd 4. Our homepage: www.growingresiliencesd.com

By Cassidy Spencer   Early in June of 2023, Lynn Betts was doing consulting with the South Dakota Grassland Coalition, developing a public service campaign through the USDA to highlight North America’s native grasslands. Videographer Joe Dickie had crisscrossed the grasslands for years already, collecting footage of the country’s authentic ranching livelihood and the grasslands’ expansive, multifaceted beauty. With all this footage, and an aim to bring attention to the wonder of the grasslands– Betts decided to start seeking the right artist to write a song encapsulating the mission to save the grasslands, to bring the message and the footage together into one piece of art.   Joe Dickie was skeptical. So often music about the landscape, about nature, can ‘dip into cheesy territory, into jingle territory’. Joe didn't want a jingle for the grasslands. He wanted a piece of art that could reflect what he found so stunning and so imperative, after studying this landscape for so many years.   Lynn Betts set out to listen through all the Midwest music acts and groups he could find.    “I believe it was Lynn, who wound up in my inbox, saying that he had listened to all the different Midwest artists trying to find the right voice or the right style for this campaign. That they were looking for music to be written, and would we be interested in writing about the wonder of the grasslands?” says Maygen of Maygen & The Birdwatcher. “And he found the right people, because we sure were up for it. We had just been touring earlier that year through the grasslands and admiring the beauty of everything, so that imagery was fresh for us.”   Maygen & The Birdwatcher is a band led by Maygen Lacey and fellow singer/songwriter Noah Neumann. The band began as a duo between the two in 2017, and they have slowly been building their group, their voice and their repertoire since then.   “Over the past few years, we’ve just been getting our music out to as many places as possible and it's been fun to see kind of where it turns up and who hears it– including Lynn,” says Maygen.   Maygen Lacey grew up listening to 90’s country music that her mom was a fan of. She knew she loved music, and sang in high school, but had extreme stage fright following high school, so she did not perform at all. It wasn’t until after she had kids that Maygen realized that if she didn’t start to face her dream and fear of performing, she never would. She began as a studio vocalist and co-leading her first band, a female-fronted duo called Sparrow’s Rising.    At one of their gigs, Maygen met a guitarist, Noah Neumann. She saw his talent and wanted to expand the band and invited Noah to join as a musician. They soon branched off from there as they realized they both had similar songwriting goals that took them away from the genre they were currently in.   Neumann did not grow up listening to country music– he was raised in a small town north of the Twin Cities and played the contrarian, pushing against country music for a lot of his youth, listening to classic rock and playing in metal bands. Eventually a family friend brought country music back into Noah’s life as an adult and something clicked.    “I started to see it from a different perspective. So, I was bopping around through different projects, and I started to feel like I wanted to have a bit more artistic influence on a project's artistic identity. And I didn’t want to do it alone. And I met Maygen, and the rest is history,” says Neumann.   Their collaboration has only blossomed since then.    “When we started with our first EP, he was only playing guitar and I was writing the lyrics. But over the years our voices have kind of grown together. He started writing for our debut full-length album Moonshine and he is an amazing writer and fantastic melody guy. And has a lovely voice. And all these talents came out of the woodwork through this project,” says Maygen.   “-And Maygen used to not play any guitar and now she does,” adds Noah.   Where Good Things Grow A piece of the perfection regarding Maygen & The Birdwatcher as the choice for this project, is that the band had toured through Montana, through the grasslands, through the Midwest and agricultural landscapes. Fresh on their mind was the beauty and the wonder of this landscape, and the importance of calling attention to it. “It’s easy to not notice it, but agriculture is everywhere. Like Montana, we played a festival, and the festival was just surrounded by farmland. Or we went down to Palisade, CO, which is on the western slope of the Rockies, which is a peach town. They farm peaches. That’s what they're all about. You would never know. And it's one of our favorite places we’ve ever been. So, agriculture is everywhere. The livelihood of it, the history, and the families who do this,” says Noah.   In the lyrics for the song, Noah and Maygen wanted to capture and honor the history of the families who have tended this land so long and how much the land means to them; their livelihood, their community. The song begins with the line “Oh, the wonder” to call the audience’s attention to nature’s amazing capacity for care and regeneration and to not take it for granted– as these farming families have not taken it for granted for all these generations.   “For me a lot of the writing was kind of about how interconnected everything is and how important it is to keep it that way– you need the birds, you need the buffalo, you need all that stuff for the soil to get to do what the soil needs to do to keep life moving along the way that it should the way that it's meant to be,” says Maygen.   Once the song was written Joe, Maygen and Noah went into the Lac Qui Parle grasslands in Southwest Minnesota to film video of the two playing and singing the song. The resulting video footage of Maygen singing and Noah strumming the guitar in the radiant warm late-day light over the prairie, spliced into footage of grassland livelihood that Joe had been collecting for years. This music video went on to win Maygen & The Birdwatcher ‘Music Video of the Year’ at the Midwest Country Music Organization Awards, where they also won ‘Entertainer of the Year’. In the future, the band aims to release another full album in the upcoming year. Earlier this year they completed a successful Kickstarter to fund their future projects, and recently released their songs ‘Jericho’ and ‘Right Where You Belong’ to streaming platforms, meant as the first of much new music to come from the rising group. In the meantime, their most recent collection is the forthcoming ‘Leap Year’ EP, due out August 2nd.   “Basically we have plans for the next many years, so many songs and so much we’re trying to do. So we’re like, ‘here's this EP,’ while we’re also trying to make the next full-length piece this fall or winter,” says Maygen.   Watch the full video for ‘Where Good Things Grow” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FklZNJWNxcY     To find out more about Maygen and Noah, go to: https://www.maygenandthebirdwatcher.com/ or follow them on Facebook or Instagram. @maygenandthebirdwatcher   To listen to the full interview CLICK HERE   ______________________________________________ ______________________ Visit these “Growing Resilience Through Our Soils” information pages: 1. Podcast page for drought planning fact sheets, Q&As, news, podcasts, and more. 2. Video page to watch videos of other ranchers’ journeys toward improved rangeland/pasture. 3. Follow Growing Resilience on social media: Facebook - Growing Resilience Twitter - @GrowResilience_ Instagram - growingresilience.sd 4. Our homepage: www.growingresiliencesd.com

By Cassidy Spencer Dr. Dwayne Beck recently retired from the Research Manager position at Dakota Lakes Research Farm in Pierre, South Dakota. As a professor in the Agronomy, Horticulture and Plant Science Department at South Dakota State University, he received his B.S. in Chemistry from Northern State University in 1975 and a Ph.D. in Agronomy from South Dakota State University in 1983. Before beginning his current position in 1990, he was the Research Manager at SDSU’s James Valley Research Center near Redfield, SD. Soil Health Labs researcher Buz Kloot spoke with him in 2013 and again in 2024 about his journey at the research center. Beck's emphasis is on developing no-till systems for irrigated and dryland areas in central South Dakota. This mission is forefront at Dakota Lakes Research Farm.  The land and fixed facilities at Dakota Lakes are owned by a not-for-profit corporation whose primary goal is to identify, test, and demonstrate methods of strengthening and stabilizing the agriculture economy by maintaining and encouraging living soils, clean water, healthy foods and ample wildlife. “Dakota Lakes was originally put together in the early 1980’s by area farmers focused on irrigation.  There had been substantial irrigation development in the area that was spurred by technological developments and the unrealistic exuberance of ‘God’s not making any more soil’ movement of the 70’s. ,” said Beck. “They put in a bunch of irrigation development on the loess soils along the Missouri river. and were experiencing excessive runoff losses because these souls tend to seal easily when water strikes bare soil... Things were not going well”.” In addition, the OPEC oil embargo of the mid-70’s caused energy costs to skyrocket.  Commodity prices were going down and interest rates increased.   Something had to change. At the time, Dr. Darrel DeBoer from SDSU and Beck (still a graduate student at the time) were doing research on irrigation sprinkler options and tillage types relative to the amount of runoff. This work led the farmers to realize they needed to make more informed farming decisions based on research. They asked SDSU if they would begin irrigation research in this area.  SDSU did not have the resources to do that but said they would operate the research enterprise on a farm if the group could purchase the land, equipment, and erect a building.  The group decided it would be best if the farm were owned and operated by producers whilst allowing SDSU to do appropriate research on the land.  The not-for-profit Corporation was created but it took 8 years or so before the Dakota Lakes Research Farm became a reality. A Holistic Approach The sprinkler/tillage study identified the importance of not doing tillage but did not define the techniques needed to properly manage no-till irrigated crops. As a researcher, Beck warns that no-till is just one piece in the puzzle of soil health. It is not enough to simply redact tilling from a conventional system– farmers must pay attention to mimicking the natural water cycle, nutrient cycle and energy cycle (sunlight capture), and biological diversity of natural systems.  The entirety of what affects plant life Beck also understands the impact of appropriate SYSTEMS research and demonstration work to change mindsets. Through the process of developing Dakota Lakes and its research philosophy, Beck found thatwhile it is important to make water go into soils under irrigation, it is more important to maximize infiltration rates under rainfed conditions. Under irrigation, if water runs off, they can pump more– if they have the time and money. On dry land, if water runs off the loss is permanent. This realization shifted the research focus at Dakota Lakes to focus at least equally on rainfed systems. With the increasing cost of energy, the farmers in the area began to re-evaluate the relative profitability of irrigated and dryland systems.  Rainfed systems began to outperform irrigated systems in profit per acre as no-till began to tip the scale.  At DLRF, much of the planned future irrigation was not developed and existing operations with high vertical lifts were returned to rainfed operations. When European settlers began to populate the drier portions of the US, there was an intense effort to “harness” the waterways and develop irrigation projects.  In many cases, the desire was to create something the settlers wanted instead of developing ways for them to fit into the existing ecosystem.  Irrigation should probably be used as a last resort after the water that occurs naturally is used to its greatest efficiency.  Irrigation projects are expensive to build and to operate.  They become obsolete quickly and, in some cases, lead to degradation of the ecosystem.  Having some irrigation in an operation or area can provide stability when rainfall is highly variable. Irrigation was initially at the center of Dakota Lakes’ mission; it is now one piece of its research and operation strategy. Having about 20% of the land base irrigated provides stability in cash flow for the production enterprise and meets the research needs of those that still irrigate in the region.  It also allows doing research that serves farmers in wetter areas of the State and country.  Topics such as cover-crop use are different in wet and dry ecosystems, DLRF has both. Beck's observations on the soil conditions of the region throughout history, informed by historicaljournals like Lewis and Clark's expeditions, highlight the extent of environmental degradation caused by modern grazing and crop production practices. Despite challenges such as shallow soils with high clay content, Beck notes the resilience of native prairie species and their potential for restoring degraded landscapes. From 2013 to 2023 Since Soil Health Labs first spoke to Dwayne Beck 2013, Dakota Lakes has seen still more development toward regenerative and adaptive practices. They experimented with bringing cattle onto the land, first with a fall-calving beef herd, selling the calves the following summer if necessary or backgrounding some if weather was favorable. “But as we got into it more, we brought somebody in, an expert on the range side of things. He had a desire to try to finish cattle as well. So it ended up that we had at times three herds that we were trying to manage, and that was just frankly too much,” said Beck. “So, when I retired, the BOD made the decision to simplify things, the mama cows were sold and now stocker cattle are brought in when needed.  They are not owned by DLRF. The goal with the cattle is to try to cycle nutrients, number one. We have been doing forage crops (a lot of people now call cover crops) and can tailor rotation diversity and intensity by utilizing livestock grazing.” Beck emphasizes this aspect of regenerative agriculture:  it is not one prescriptive system, but a SYSTEM based on natural cycles based on outcomes (mimicking natural cycles) that is designed for one’s own land, and resources and personality. Dakota Lakes began to employ a new fencing system several years ago, where electric fences are attached to the lateral-move and pivot irrigators during the wintertime when they are not used for irrigation.  When the irrigators move, so do the fences. “This really simplifies the moving. Especially in the winter, it's tough to put posts in frozen ground, so having irrigators helps with that quite a bit,” said Beck. “We’ve also recently added one more property that kind of fills our suite of research tools– when we started, we had a long list of things we felt we needed to have– access to the river for water, some different types of soils– ground marine soil is a predominant soil for most of eastern South Dakota. And we had none of that. And we always had that on our list to purchase some of that someday, and finally this fall we had three quarter sections come up for sale and we ended up getting those purchased.” Local Change Since beginning the Dakota Lakes operations, almost 40 years ago, Beck notes a regionalrejuvenation of small towns and local culture. “We were losing some small towns. Some had gone from having two sections of each grade level in their elementary school, to having one section, to the point of considering consolidating with their neighboring district, because they were getting below the point that they could support even one. And now they're back to two sections again up through probably the sixth grade. So, it's building, there's young families coming back in and coming back to the farm and starting an enterprise because now they're raising a lot more stuff,” said Beck. Dakota Lakes Research Farm has helped to raise the productivity of local land and therefore the value of local land. There has been a local increase in employment opportunities that support farming and cropping systems, and increased adoption of regenerative agricultural practices. Beck has noted cultural change in the community regarding farming practice and perspective. “In the old days, if we had soil erosion happening, ditches filling with dirt (which was common) that was just seen as an act of God, something beyond the farmer’s control,” said Beck. “It's really interesting to see how that has changed. Because if somebody has their dirt blowing off their property now, they become shunned, so to speak, by the neighbors.” There is a broaderunderstanding of the causes of soil degradation, erosion and poor soil health. The community understands that it is a farmer’s responsibility to seek to remedy those issues, which are now seen more often as a reflection of the community’s viability and sustainability. The community has a stronger understanding of soil health as a reflection of community health and local land value, a paradigm shift which has brought more of a sense of agency and resourcefulness to local producers. Dakota Lakes Research Farm can be contacted through their website, dakotalakes.com They hope in the future to further involve non-farming landowners and absentee landowners, concerning them with the health of their land and soil. Visit: http://dakotalakes.com/ Consider membership of DLRF: http://www.dakotalakes.com/membership/ Listen to the full interview at GrowingResileinceSD.com https://www.growingresiliencesd.com/podcasts/episode/ff122cab/62-future-focused-farming-exploring-the-intersection-of-science-and-soil-with-dr-dwayne-beck OR find the interview (62 Future-Focused Farming: Exploring the Intersection of Science & Soil with Dr. Dwayn Beck) on the SoilHealthLabs podcast wherever you get your podcasts. ____________________________________________________________________ Visit these “Growing Resilience Through Our Soils” information pages: 1. Podcast page for drought planning fact sheets, Q&As, news, podcasts, and more. 2. Video page to watch videos of other ranchers’ journeys toward improved rangeland/pasture. 3. Follow Growing Resilience on social media: Facebook - Growing Resilience Twitter - @GrowResilience_ Instagram - growingresilience.sd 4. Our homepage: www.growingresiliencesd.com

By Cassidy Spencer Tate Lantz grew up on a small cattle ranch near Winner, South Dakota. After high school he attended South Dakota State University, initially for engineering but eventually shifted his studies to range science. Currently, he serves as Assistant State Conservationist for field operations in Rapid City, South Dakota. Throughout his agricultural career, Lantz has taken positions in conservation, administration and rangeland management with South Dakota farmers, educators and coordinators. Through his expansive agricultural experience, both on the ground and within policy, Lantz has seen firsthand the many moving pieces involved in making large-scale agricultural change. The Central Grasslands Roadmap aims to bring all of these disparate pieces together to enact streamlined change. Their intentions are not only to save grasslands, but the farmers and communities that are sustained by the health of grasslands, as well as the human health and culture that is dependent upon diverse, enriched grassland habitats. The Central Grasslands Roadmap The Central Grasslands Roadmap, an initiative catalyzed by the Bird Conservancy of the Rockies, aims to generate partnerships across three countries— the US, Mexico, and Canada— and eight sectors— indigenous communities and first nations, private land managers, owners, and ranchers, federal agencies, provincial & state agencies, industry (agriculture and the private sector), academia (scientists, researchers, professors), non-governmental organizations, and foundations/funders. Between tree and shrub encroachment, urban sprawl and conversion to agriculture, 60% of native grasslands have been lost. This totals to 360 million acres of habitat lost, and 120 million acres at high risk of loss in the near future. “The number that sticks in my head is 32 million acres of grassland lost since 2012. We’re really losing 3-4 million acres of grassland every year,” said Lantz. “I work with really large ranchers in Western South Dakota-- that’s the size of 3 to 4 Black Hills National Forests, a year.” Grassland bird population reflects the health of grasslands at large. The initiative began when the Bird Conservancy of the Rockies observed that total populations of grassland birds had declined more than 40% since the late 60’s. “When the Bird Conservancy of the Rockies started this roadmap, they realized that they alone could not solve the problem. The problem is not going to be addressed by only focusing on grassland birds. It’s a gigantic phenomenon-- they realized that we need all these partners involved,” said Lantz. “So, if we save the dung beetle, if we save the skipper, if we save the butterfly, we’re saving the bird. That’s the need for the roadmap—to address that the grassland is a deeply diverse, multidimensional community.” The roadmap seeks to unite diverse stakeholders in a common goal of grassland preservation. One sector addressed with the roadmap is the indigenous population, as 19-20% of South Dakota is indigenously inhabited. Traditionally, industrial efforts and interests are far removed from indigenous interests and perspective. The roadmap aims to bridge that gap, to streamline overall efficiency and represent all voices that are impacted by land management decisions. “There’s a lot of opportunity right now with industry to help with this cause. There’s a big push for carbon sequestration, and obviously the grassland is one of the best carbon sequesters we have, while also being very low input,” explained Lantz. “That’s where industry can see the benefit. If they were buying carbon credits, why not work with a producer or an indigenous community that manages millions of acres of grasslands that are sequestering carbon every day?” For 70 plus years, the NRCS has been involved in grassland inventory, national resource inventory, and ecological site description. The forest service has their own differing methods and protocols for managing and measuring land. Lantz explains that in order to make the needed grassland change, each of these disparate organizations need be represented so that data collection and agricultural effort move as efficiently as possible, factoring in all relevant interests. “You know that there is no way that the Bird Conservancy of the Rockies is using NRCS protocols to do their inventories. This is an opportunity for these different entities to come together with all this information,” said Lantz. “I didn’t know about the Plowprint Report until I started working with the Roadmap, these kinds of resources and insights are hopefully what we’re bringing together with the Roadmap, so that we can paint a better picture of the issue, so we can know what we need to concentrate on, where our resources will be most effectively used, where we can get the wins, ensure the wins. Because if we’re not winning, we’re losing.” While the conservation goal is 100 million acres of grassland, Lantz says that the acreage goal is more of a guideline. “The technical goal is just something you put down so you have something to aim at. In truth there is no hard-and-fast end to this mission.” Bolstering Local Support and Strategy The Central Grasslands Roadmap draws attention to the direct correlation between grassland resilience and the functional financial resilience of small grassland communities. As the health of grasslands has declined, the communities on the land have become less economically viable and in places have disappeared entirely. Lantz emphasizes that the effort to enrich the grasslands is consequently also an effort to save many rural grassland communities. “The producers go to the sale barn, pay taxes on their grasslands to support the schools, engage in business with the hardware store, restaurant, the barber—this is how we keep those circles in a functional homeostasis,” said Lantz. “If the people working on the grasslands are not making enough money to survive, they will sell it and leave. And who knows what the priorities are of the next person who buys it.” One strategy to bolster the resilience of small grassland communities is to stack enterprises. A large effort within the roadmap is education. If producers are shown the breadth of opportunities beyond cow-calf management, including hunting enterprises, birdwatching enterprises, and local greenhouse efforts, they can safeguard their operations more thoroughly. The roadmap not only intends to save the grasslands, but to provide producers with the understanding and the tools to build sustainable industry within regenerative strategy. Education is key to the Central Grasslands Roadmap.  The team behind the roadmap shares an understanding that only by effectively illustrating the gravity of the crisis will human behavior shift to prioritize grassland health. At the center of the roadmap is this: elevating the importance of what the grasslands provide to the public, and why they should care. “Think of the rainforest movement. People still are directing a lot of attention there—and they should, it’s obviously an important biome as well. But they’re throwing money at a resource thousands of miles away, while they’re living in a resource that is being actively degraded and that we’re losing as fast or faster than the rainforests,” Lantz explained. “How do we get people to understand, 50 miles from you is a depleted resource that arguably is one of the major factors in the climate crisis on the continent and possibly even the world? At the end of the day, we need to elevate the urgency and relevance of grassland health to community and human health.” The Central Grasslands Roadmap continues to gather and publish relevant resources and make efforts to preserve this vital ecosystem. The key partners of the roadmap are the NRCS, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the World Wildlife Fund, Audubon Rockies, and the American Bird Conservancy. Listen to Tate Lantz’s conversation with Buz Kloot and Joe Dickie at: https://www.growingresiliencesd.com/podcasts/episode/1d51ac39/57-preserving-americas-grasslands-insights-from-tate-lantz-on-the-central-grasslands-roadmap Visit Central Grasslands Roadmap Website at: https://www.grasslandsroadmap.org/ ____________________________________________________________________ Visit these “Growing Resilience Through Our Soils” information pages: 1. Podcast page for drought planning fact sheets, Q&As, news, podcasts, and more. 2. Video page to watch videos of other ranchers’ journeys toward improved rangeland/pasture. 3. Follow Growing Resilience on social media: Facebook - Growing Resilience Twitter - @GrowResilience_ Instagram - growingresilience.sd 4. Our homepage: www.growingresiliencesd.com

In this week’s “Resilience Rodeo”, Ryan Urban talks about the importance of long-term thinking and doing the best you can to leave the land better for future generations. ​On a third-generation diversified cattle and grain operation in south central SD, Ryan Urban continues to build on the beneficial practices that his dad raised him doing, including planting cover crops, rotational grazing, and fostering wildlife. While his mindset has always revolved around these practices, he’s acutely aware of the importance of mindset when others try to adopt them for the first time. When producers, including himself, get stuck in their ways, Ryan suggests they ask themselves “Why are you doing what you’re doing?”, and have the mindset of borrowing the land from future generations to come. These will help direct goals and change a mindset to one that will build long-term success rather than only focusing on the short-term. 1) What is the one thing that you have done that's been most important to the success of your operation? I guess if I had to quantify it down to one thing, it's more of an idea: being open-minded. My dad loved wildlife, so everything he did was geared towards wildlife, pheasants, deer, whatever. I don’t remember how many years ago he first started planting cover crops, rotational grazing, those sorts of things. A lot of guys are implementing new practices and this and that, and they're getting their “aha” moment, but I don't know that we've ever really had one of them, because doing those things is the only way I’ve ever known. The practices that my dad implemented 30, 40 years ago for wildlife, we're still doing them, and we've improved them. We’ve found out what works better, and what doesn't. It's always evolving, and every year comes with its challenges. So more or less, being open-minded is probably the single most important thing to the success of this operation. 2) Can you recall a time or a moment when the light bulb went on for you when you realized that soil health practices make sense or that you should change the way you're farming? There are “aha” moments in everything you do. There are little things like when you’re stuck in your ways and suddenly you think about it like, “Why are we doing what we're doing?” Every year, on virtually every acre of farm ground our place, we'll get soil samples, and we’ve been watching our organic matters climb. In this part of the state, we don't get a lot of rain. We average around 16 inches of rain a year. We don't have real deep topsoil. I've had people look at our samples and compare the organic matter levels in my soils to that of Minnesota where you think of deep, deep topsoil. That's where I can look at things and say, “Yes, we're making progress, we're doing what we want to do.” Our soil profile can only hold so much water and we only get so much water. So, we've got to be able to maximize absolutely every bit that we get, we’ve got to be able to hold it. The biggest first step to that is organic matter in our soil, and I've seen our yields steadily increase in the last 20 years. I can see how the fields will hang on through a dry spell. 3) What surprised you most when you changed the way you farm to include soil health practices? I don't feel like we've necessarily changed anything, so nothing surprised me. The idea here has been the same since I was super little or probably even started before I was born. It's kind of always been the way we've done things, you know. I know that may sound a little cliché and again, I don't like to get caught up on doing things a certain way just because that's how the older generation did it. But, the goal that was established then is still the same now, so I can't speak to a time when we weren't implementing a whole lot of soil health practices. 4) What would you say is the biggest misconception people have who are not managing their farming systems for resiliency and soil health? The idea that we can just be here, you know, trying to make money off a piece of ground by any means possible. In my opinion, this land that I operate, I'm borrowing it from the next generations to come. I owe it to them to make sure I do the best I can with it. And I see that with a lot of people, maybe they're not thinking long term on things. I’ve got four boys. Hopefully at least one of them wants to come back to the farm when they get old enough. I feel like we owe it to them to do the best we can to make it better when they decide to come back and take over. So, I would say that as far as the misconception, it's that people think they can farm a piece of ground and just take, take, take, and not give back to it. Looking at things near-sighted, not looking at the long-term, big picture. 5) Is there something you'd still like to do that you haven't yet done to improve the soil health on your farm? I’ve got a big one I've been working on trying to figure out how we can implement it. If I can put a cover crop on an acre of ground, I'm going to do it. One area I've struggled with is in-crop cover crops, like standing corn and standing beans. We've tinkered with aerial application of cover crops. As far as our moisture goes, there's years that let it work, there are years that don't. We're 100% no-till, and have been for years. I own a disc, but I'd have to go cut some trees down to get it out. So, with aerial application of cover crops in standing corn and beans, we've struggled with seed-to-soil contact. That's something I'd like to be able to figure out how to do. 6) What advice do you have for someone who's considering changing their farming system to be one that's better for building soil health? I tell them it's a no-brainer. But I will also say don't be discouraged if you don't see your results immediately. It's not something where you're necessarily going to see an improvement across all the practices in one year. Building organic matter with cover crops, for example, it can take you two, three, four, or five years of being committed to that before you really start seeing the noticeable results. And with rotational grazing, you can't just start one day in and all of a sudden everything’s going to be all better. It takes time. You have to build that resiliency with the soil. So, I guess my advice is to try new ideas but don't be discouraged if you don't see immediate results right off the bat. 7) When you walk across your croplands, what do you look for as an indicator of healthy soils? Earthworms! I love earthworms! One concern with being a no-till farm though, is I feel like we will run into a problem with stratification of our phosphorus. Well, those earthworms are one way of opening that soil to allow it to breathe, to allow that phosphorus to go down. They're constantly moving nutrients. Seeing the earthworms in the ground, seeing how the microbes and such are working in the ground, that’s an indicator to me of our ground being healthy. 8) What change have you made that at first you thought would never work? Decreasing our commercial fertilizers and gearing more towards keeping that microbiology working in the ground. We’ve cut our commercial fertilizer use down by a third. We went to a variable rate, only putting it in places where it's needed and not where it isn’t. We've cut back, but I have seen just a real steady increase to our corn and soybeans and wheat yields since we've been doing it. So, I guess to be able to decrease the use of commercial fertilizer and still be able to see our yields continue to rise was kind of the correlation to go fully management zone base on the whole farm. 9) What are the signs your cropland is resilient and what does resiliency mean to you? We get 15, to 16 inches of moisture on an average year. It's not a matter of if, but when we will see a dry spell during the growing season. The joke around here is that we're always only one week away from being in a drought. So, being able to see how the crops handle that. How the crops still look healthy going through the hot, dry spells, you know. Whether it's being able to keep our ground cool, or being able to hold more moisture in our soil profile. That to me is a big one. 10) What indicators do you have that healthy soil practices also make sense economically to you? Watching our crop yields climb while our fertilizer use decreases. On the pasture side of things, it's seeing the grass, seeing the health of the pastures. Being able to increase our stocking densities, you know, being able to run a few more cow-calf pairs without being detrimental to the ground. ____________________________________________________________________ Visit these “Growing Resilience Through Our Soils” information pages: 1. Podcast page for drought planning fact sheets, Q&As, news, podcasts, and more. 2. Video page to watch videos of other ranchers’ journeys toward improved rangeland/pasture. 3. Follow Growing Resilience on social media: Facebook - Growing Resilience Twitter - @GrowResilience_ Instagram - growingresilience.sd 4. Our homepage: www.growingresiliencesd.com

This week in the “Resilience Rodeo”, Keith Lambert shares his experience of pushing through the first few rough years to get to the long-term benefits when managing your farm for soil health. In the James River Valley in northeastern SD, Keith Lambert farms in an area dominated by corn and soybeans, with little evidence of small grains or livestock. When it comes to starting soil health practices and getting out of that strict corn-soybean rotation, Keith suggests starting small, learning how things work, and then scale up. 1)    What one thing have you done that's been most important to the success of your operation? Probably having a better understanding of how the soil works. 2)    Can you recall a moment or a time when the light bulb went on for you that you really realized soil health practices make sense or that you should change the way you were farming? I was at a soil health event and heard Dr. Dwayne Beck speak about how the water cycle works in healthy soil and how, well, it doesn’t in poorly managed soils.  Hearing that and remembering how many times we said “just pull it over in the grass at the edge of the field so we can get to it” with machinery, it began to click that we were creating a lot of our own problems with soil. 3)    What surprised you the most when you changed the way you farmed to include soil health practices? How long it takes to see results.  In farming we’re somewhat trained to spray this on or plant this type of seed and you have an instant result, or a result in that growing season. That's not the right measuring stick to use when you're doing this stuff. Realistically, it's at least three, if not five years before you start noticing significant changes, significant results. 4)    What would you say is the biggest misconception people have who are not managing their farming systems for resiliency and soil health? Probably the biggest misconception is some of what we talked about previously. How long it takes to see success in the cover crops and that they don’t just cost money and waste time. They do cost money, and it does take time to implement it. But if you measure it over a larger timeframe, they work pretty well. 5)    Is there something you'd still like to do that you have not yet tried to improve your soil health on your farm? Trying to integrate livestock in some fashion, on a larger scale than what we do currently. We don’t have our own livestock right now. We've used some neighboring cattle to try some things out. I'd like to expand on that. 6)    What advice do you have for somebody who's considering changing their farming system to one that's better for building soil health? Sometimes we want to change things too fast when we’re 20 and not fast enough when we’re 70. So, I’d say start small. Pick one small corner of a field or one small area, whether it's an acre or ten acres or 50, whatever you have available to you. Pick one small spot and try one, two, or three things, as much as you can implement in that small spot. Try anything and begin to learn what might or might not work for you. 7)    When you walk across your crop lands, what are you looking for as an indicator of soil health? The texture of the soil would be the first thing. When you stick a shovel in the ground and pull it out and see what it looks like, that's probably the first thing. 8)    What change have you made that at first you thought would never work? I was a little skeptical about growing soybeans into standing rye. It seemed like an awful big ask to drive through a 3-foot-tall rye crop that was green and growing, expecting soybeans to grow.  The spring was unbelievably late and wet, and I hadn't sprayed it yet. I was forced into it.  The previous year was prevent plant and we seeded rye out there in late summer and with the extreme moisture the following spring the rye went crazy.  I no-tilled planted through the standing rye, sprayed, and rolled it.  The beans came up better than expected and had no crusting issues with the rye covering the soil, it was fun to watch. 9)    What are the signs your cropland is resilient and what does resiliency mean to you? Resiliency would be seeing a large rain event and not losing 30% of your field due to ponding, or watching muddy water run off through the field. That's what we’ve struggled with here in the past. 10) What indicators do you have that healthy soil practices also make economic sense? A good set of yield maps over several years and a basic break-even figure shows the gains made along with the areas to be worked on yet. ____________________________________________________________________ Visit these “Growing Resilience Through Our Soils” information pages: 1. Podcast page for drought planning fact sheets, Q&As, news, podcasts, and more. 2. Video page to watch videos of other ranchers’ journeys toward improved rangeland/pasture. 3. Follow Growing Resilience on social media: Facebook - Growing Resilience Twitter - @GrowResilience_ Instagram - growingresilience.sd 4. Our homepage: www.growingresiliencesd.com

On this week’s “Resilience Rodeo”, Candice Mizera shares her successes and failures in improving her grazing and cropland’s resiliency through goal setting and being flexible. On the Mizera/Olson family operation near McLaughlin, SD, implementing rotational grazing has been a central element to Candice and her husband’s adoption of regenerative agriculture. Candice noticed quickly how rotating animals offered the land one brief stretch of intended disruption and she was amazed to watch the land respond; seeing big bluestem come into the pastures, knocking back Kentucky bluegrass. When asked to speak on resistance to regenerative practices, Candice understands the skepticism and hesitation. Her father was skeptical when she began to install more fences and waterlines, but it’s gratifying now that he can see the results; green grass, even in drought. To Candice, resiliency means flexibility, profitability, and resourcefulness. Capturing and using rainfall, recycling the nutrients made available by cover crops, and utilizing adaptive grazing has kept her root systems intact. She also understands that resiliency in their operation is a collaborative effort: their family, their crew, their faith, and their willingness to seek opportunities to learn and try new things all play a critical role in helping restore soil health to improve the operation for the future 1)    What is the one thing that you have done that's been the most important to the success of your operation? Well, I guess my husband would say definitely getting married. And that's probably partially true for the most part. We've complemented each other more than we strain each other, I guess. So, we've gotten to grow the operation because of that, that we work together and we both kind of have different goals and strengths, so we've complemented each other that way. Bob worked in construction before we got married and worked 20-some years of construction as well as farming, and I’ve had three or four part time jobs to make ends meet when we we’re starting out. We just kept plugging away or finding ways to pay the bills and figure out what we can do to improve the operations, efficiencies, and get more cattle out on the land to justify having more cows. When the cropland makes a lot more of a profit on a lot less acres, it's tough to justify spending 60% of your time on the cows when they're only 30% of the income. So, identifying those things, really looking hard at the numbers and what we needed to do to make each other happy, grow our operation, make it resilient economically, and improve and restore the soil so that it would pay us back were really important things for us. 2)    Can you recall a moment or time when the light bulb went on for you to change the way you were grazing? I would say when I realized that our pasture was full of curlycup gumweed and seeing bare soil. I found out what curlycup gumweed was and that it's indicative of overgrazing and overuse. I would say that that was kind of a lightning bolt moment where we knew we just had to do something different. 3)    What surprised you the most when you changed the way you were grazing? I would say the speed at which the ground recovers, in the pastures that we graze really hard early in the spring to knock back the Kentucky bluegrass, we saw the big bluestem come in that same year and fill up the pastures. It was amazing and really rewarding to see that kind of response in just a one-time treatment and a little sacrifice. It seems like the more intense and shorter the duration, the better the response. 4)    What would you say is the biggest misconception people have who are not managing their grazing systems for resiliency and soil health? I'm not sure. I guess if they don't think it's worth the effort or think it's too much money or too much time or labor. I know that was where my dad was coming from when I told him what I wanted to do on his place. When we bought his cows and started implementing more fences and water lines, he thought we were crazy, but we knew that we had to contain the cows to a smaller area for a shorter time. That was the only way we could really do it with [minimal] labor. Instead of doing electric fences and hauling water, we needed to build the infrastructure, so we put in permanent cross-fences, permanent waterlines, and perimeter-fenced fields. Just one person to go move cows every Monday morning was the goal, so that it was simple and on the schedule, and we just had to go do it. There was a goal, and it was an improvement. But then you realize, well, you need to be a little more flexible. They either need to go sooner or stay a little longer. There is a lot to learn, but it's been really rewarding to see [Dad] go out to the pastures now and see how much grass is left even in the middle of drought. And having more cows out there than he ever had*. That’s been really great to see and I’m glad he’s been around to get to see the improvements. *The Mizera’s now have more than doubled their stocking capacity in the last 15 years. 5)    Is there something that you'd still like to do that you haven't yet to improve your soil health or your grazing system? Yes. We'd like to increase diversity in crop rotations, try poly cropping, and improve and beef up our perimeter fences, and I'd like to bring in some sheep and do some multi-species grazing. We'd also like to break down our current pastures even more with a temporary electric fence and want to have a grazer hired that just moves the cows. Like, even if we just take the 160-acre pastures down in the eighties or eventually forties, you know, and move those cows. And I think honestly, that's when it's no longer going to be practical to have cow-calf pairs. That's where I lean toward the yearlings or fall calving just for the ease of rotational grazing. Yeah, I think that's the really big hurdle we have to get over because having little calves in the system does make it a lot harder. So that's the goal, just do it more intensely so that they're in there for a day or two or three instead of a week or eight or ten days to get more consistent animal impact. 6)    What advice do you have for someone who is considering changing their grazing system to one that's better for building soil health? Well, I think I'd first advise them to get a shovel and see what they're dealing with, where they're starting from. Then maybe call in or see us and do a rangeland assessment survey so that they can find out where they're starting from. Then just make a plan based on what your goals are. So, to improve water infiltration and aggregation, if that's what we're going for, implementing some sort of more management intensive grazing like adaptive grazing, something where you figure out the watering system, figure out your fencing, figure out the size of herd and how many acres you're looking at. You know, just figuring out a plan and talking to guys that have done it before. It's really phenomenal the kind of expertise and knowledge out there. I would recommend that they start talking to a neighbor that started on the system and look at their place. 7)    When you walk across your grasslands now, what do you look for as an indicator of healthy grasslands and healthy soil? I would say leadplant and Western wheatgrass, and I really like big bluestem. That's really great. In one quarter that we just rented this year that hadn't been grazed for four years there was a lot of Kentucky [bluegrass] in that as well as brome. We hit that pretty hard, you know, for a short amount of time, and within that that summer there started to be some big bluestem and a lot of leadplant came in. I just smile and just love going out in those pastures that are healthy, you know, where the big bluestem is growing in the creek and up the hillside and it's awesome because you know that those deep roots are bringing nutrients back up. So, there's just a lot of that that really helps to keep you going to see improvements. And then, of course, seeing green grass in the middle of summer, the end of summer. Of course we need rain, but keeping it vegetative helps. 8)    What change have you made that you thought would never work? I would say the change that we thought would never work would have to be cover cropping after small grains. I hoped it would work, and it seems like it can if we can get the drill chasing the combines around and try to not plant too deep or too shallow. It's kind of a tricky deal, but we've gotten some really good cover crops and we've had a few kind of disasters where, you know, it just didn't rain or we got them too deep or too shallow and some species always grow better than others. But that's been really rewarding to see what we can grow and not hurt the next crop, and that we're actually recycling the nutrients and keeping the soil alive and we're not extracting too much water from the soil like we thought we might. I mean, that was always the thought; we used to think having summer fallow for a year was needed to stock up enough moisture for a crop. So, now to see that we can grow a cover crop and a cash crop, it's really rewarding to see that we can do that with our rainfall, and to learn that it takes a green, growing plant to keep soil alive. And the animals definitely help pay for this, you know, when they can feed themselves in the wintertime that takes care of the hours on a tractor and fuel for the tractor and man hours and the hay bales. It’s a lot of cost savings for sure, as long as it’s less than a foot of uncrusted snow and we have hay on hand for heavy snow years. 9)    What are the signs that your land is resilient, and what does resiliency mean to you? I would say to be able to withstand drought and still either grow a crop or be able to keep our herd together without having to cull because of lack of forage. That's really being resilient and being profitable enough to stay in business. To be able to manage it well enough and grow enough forage or crops to feed the animals when we don’t have rain. Resiliency means flexibility and profitability. And not having runoff, that's huge in my mind. If we can capture 90 plus percent of all the rain that falls on our land, that's what makes us very resilient. 10) When we talk about the importance of grazing management, we often refer to the Rs. Of the words rotate, rest, and recover, which one sticks out to you the most and why? I like rotate. That's because without rotation you can't have either of the other ones. Getting the cows where you want them, when you want them, to accomplish the goals on your range or farmland, that's the key. ____________________________________________________________________ Visit these “Growing Resilience Through Our Soils” information pages: 1. Podcast page for drought planning fact sheets, Q&As, news, podcasts, and more. 2. Video page to watch videos of other ranchers’ journeys toward improved rangeland/pasture. 3. Follow Growing Resilience on social media: Facebook - Growing Resilience Twitter - @GrowResilience_ Instagram - growingresilience.sd 4. Our homepage: www.growingresiliencesd.com

By Buz Kloot The community was saddened to hear of Mitch’s passing after a long illness on 4/29/2024. If you’d like to skip this blog and get to hear Mitch Faulkner’s voice and see video of him, feel free to skip and go straight to the links at the end of this blog. When I have a lot on my mind, I tend to wake up at 3 in the morning and then do my best to try to go back to sleep.  Much of the time, my efforts are in vain, and I drift in and out of alternating thoughts and dreams.  This morning, Mitch Faulkner was on my mind. “Why” would you ask, “are you mourning Mitch?  He lived 1,700 miles away from you and you don’t even know his family!”.  Good question.  This note is a lot more personal than most of our blog posts are, but Mitch was ... is part of a community that I deeply care about, and now, as the ancient text says is a “time for mourning” but at the same time, it’s a time for remembering, this is my part. One of the blessings I have is that I have been able through my work to meet with many ranchers, farmers, and practitioners in South Dakota during film shoots – these folks end up sharing their passion for the land with me and invariably I get to see a bit of their soul.  My friend Joe Dickie, who has infinitely more experience in visiting with farmers and ranchers says “you get to visit and maybe share a meal and then you fall in love with them!”. The first time I met Mitch in October 2020 was at a gathering of ranchers and practitioners in Faith, SD, roughly the same time as I began my love affair with the prairie.  I didn’t get to spend too much time with Mitch that day, but he struck me as erudite and passionate about the prairie with definite ideas of restoration – I do remember that his opinion was that if we protect the riparian areas these parts would be the first to come back, given the availability of soil moisture around the streams and ponds.  We have some video of Mitch talking that day and I plan to go back and get some clips and make them available. My friend Emily Rohrer suggested I do a podcast with Mitch on drought planning and the drought tool in 2021 and I got to know Mitch and his passion a little better.  What struck me in this interview was the way he walked me through the drought tool, and in less than an hour turned me from a novice to a passably competent user. Next time I met Mitch was in September 2022.  I was delighted to see him again and when I rode with him in his truck, he filled me in on the little 80-acre spread belonging to Craig Gardner we were to visit not five miles from Spearfish.  What excited Mitch was that, somehow, this little patch of land was unique.  Mitch’s face lit up when he told me, “Buz, this place is so diverse, and right here in Spearfish!”, and indeed it was.  We went through some rowcrop land and a field covered in a monoculture of almost waist-high smooth brome, but as we rounded a corner, we saw Craig’s little spread; patches of color here and there, lots of tell-tale red signifying big bluestem, and then on closer inspection, all sorts of grasses, plenty of western wheatgrass, sideoats grama (my favorite, and Joe Dickie tells me I pronounce it sideoats grandma) and forbs, abundant leadplant and silver scurf pea and if I remember correctly, prairie aster.  Yes, there was Kentucky bluegrass, but Mitch and Craig had a plan for it.  What animated Mitch that day was his love of the prairie and his passion for preserving it, but it was also his excitement about working with Craig, a newcomer to ranching, but someone with a wildlife biology background who was an eager student; Mitch delighted in his role of teacher and mentor. We shot a lot of film that day, and like so many others, ended up not being fully explored and not made public, much to my regret.  When I heard about Mitch’s condition about a month ago, I made up my mind to produce something that honored Mitch before he passed and ended up digging the story out of the video we shot with Mitch and Craig that day.   In going over the video material of Mitch and Craig, I could kick myself for not having gotten this material into the public space sooner.  What I saw (and hopefully you will, too) from the video is Mitch’s deep concern for the loss of prairie habitat, especially the insidious invasion of tame cool season grasses (smooth brome, Kentucky bluegrass, and crested wheatgrass), his passion for and joy in the prairie and his joy in the fellowship of a kindred spirit like Craig Gardener.  The opening shot in the video of Mitch reflecting on his career seems to be both prescient and intensely poignant. This morning as I lay in bed and thought about Mitch’s family and friends and the huge hole his loss will leave, I thought “I don’t get it, I just don’t understand what the universe is up to”, I know that at some level, that’s OK, but it doesn’t hurt any less.  There was a part of me this morning that thought “Why Mitch and not me?”.  Most of us I think, if we are honest, “shrink before the mystery of death”, I do, at least, in spades. But I am reminded to ask for help to “live as those who are prepared to die and when our days are over to enable us to die as those who go forth to live”. I don’t know what Mitch wanted – when one has limited time on earth, I think family, loved ones, and friends take first place, work is way in the back.  I hope that some of this material will help honor Mitch’s legacy, and I do hope he doesn’t mind, knowing his generous spirit, I know he will forgive me if I have erred in my stumbling attempts to honor him. For those of us who remain, let’s continue the good work of restoring the prairie habitat through education and changing the culture one ranch, one farm, even one child at a time; this work, I am convinced has the potential to restore soil, water, air, plant, animals and human communities to become a true reflection of this vast, abundant, life-giving prairie’s true potential. For more material on Mitch please go to the following links. Podcast: A Practical View of Drought Planning with Mitch Faulkner:  (also available on the SoilHealthLabs podcast show on your mobile phone. Videos: SD Grazing Stick Demonstration Growing Together: How Farmers/Ranchers And USDA-NRCS Are Teaming Up For A Regenerative Future ____________________________________________________________________ Visit these “Growing Resilience Through Our Soils” information pages: 1. Podcast page for drought planning fact sheets, Q&As, news, podcasts, and more. 2. Video page to watch videos of other ranchers’ journeys toward improved rangeland/pasture. 3. Follow Growing Resilience on social media: Facebook - Growing Resilience Twitter - @GrowResilience_ Instagram - growingresilience.sd 4. Our homepage: www.growingresiliencesd.com

On this week’s “Resilience Rodeo”, farmer Scott Hamilton tells how, when it comes to saline-sodic soils, you can have your cake and eat it too, but only if you change your mindset on what “productive” means in those spots. In south-central South Dakota, 90 miles east of the very center of the state, Scott Hamilton farms with his brother Jeff. They primarily grow corn and soybeans but also have cattle as well as other small animals including pigs, sheep, and poultry incorporated into their operation. The Hamilton’s have been working saline-sodic seep areas on their land for the last 20 years and have learned that the only way to face these areas is hand-in-hand with Mother Nature– seeding them back to perennial grasses and alfalfa and grazing livestock on them. They learned early on that continuing crops and chemical input on these saline seep areas only intensified and expanded their problems. 1) What is the one thing you've done that has been the most important thing to the success of your operation? The one thing I’ve done that’s been most important to the success of my operation is to change my mindset. Question things and try to change the status quo. 2) Can you recall a moment when the light bulb went on that soil health practices started to make sense to you? The light bulb went on for me about twenty years ago, when the saline-sodic spots were developing. We kept doing the same management and things weren’t getting any better. So,I’m over here working in a saline-sodic spot, and I looked across the fence and there’s a grass species and flora and fauna growing on the other side, and I’m like– right there, God gave us this. It’s a no-brainer. We’ve just got to work with it. Work with mother nature. Work with God and so forth. That’s when it happened. 3) What surprised you the most when you started implementing soil health practices? What surprised me the most when we changed our farming practices is that it became very enjoyable. To see we have production, that we’re doing something versus taking away. It was really great to see the pheasant hunting or the hay production, or just the simple fact that we’re growing things in these areas that had not been growing things. That was very pleasant mental health-wise, physically, and economically. 4) What would you say is the biggest misconception people have who are not managing their farming systems for soil health and resiliency? The biggest misconception is that we can just keep doing the same things and it’s going to go away. It doesn’t, it only gets worse. Part of that is policy, politics, and so forth. But, to do the same thing and expect different results is just borderline insanity. 5) Is there something you'd still like to do that you haven't yet done to improve the salinity situation on your farm? In terms of trying to improve my salinity environment, we just need to get more diverse plant species there. I think the Hamilton land is only limited by five or six things. I think there’s way more species that could be there. I think if we can create the environment, then we could introduce more, and that might even become the most productive area. It’s all in how you want to look at it. 6) What advice would you have for someone who needs assistance with these saline and sodic spots? Well, if you are fed up with the saline and sodic spots, the first thing you need to do is change your mindset, cause if you don’t change your mindset, you’re still going to go back to what you always did and that hasn't been working. So, first thing you need to do is change your mindset, realize that hay or grass is a crop, and then market it either through hunting or selling to the farmer or rancher, or selling it to the neighbor that’s going to compost. You know, there’s a lot of possibilities, you’ve just got to open your mindset. 7) When you walk across your croplands or grasslands what do you look for as indicators of soil health? When I’m walking across my farmland or the grasslands, I’m trying to be more inclusive in my looking. So, I’m not just looking at, ‘Is there weeds, is there not weeds?’ I’m looking at species, how many species, how much insect population, the kind of wildlife I have there.Those are all signals, and if you’re doing things right, they’ll show up. I try to use those signals as an indicator that I’m going down the right path. Sure, you can measure it and test it and so forth, but you’re spending money you don’t have to, there are things in the environment that are telling you. Is the plant species green? Do you have wildlife? Do your animals have a healthy immune system? There are things that you don’t have to pay for that are telling you if you’ve got things going right. 8) What change have you made in the past that you didn’t think would actually work? Well, you can sort of have your cake and eat it too. I think you can raise cover crops, graze them off, plant crops, and you can almost double crop in a year. You might not have the highest yield, but you might have the most economical. The most economical in terms of buying feed for the livestock. You might not have the highest yield in your crop production,but it is economically efficient, which I didn’t think was possible. I thought we’d get hurt in dry years, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised. 9) What indicators do you have that your land is becoming resilient? The signs that our land is becoming resilient is that we don’t have these fluctuations of high yields, low yields. We’re turning unproductive areas into productive areas. I’d like to think we could increase our organic matter and humus content in our soil so we don’t become so reliant on the weather so we can make it through dry stretches and so forth. 10) What does resilience mean to you? Resilience means what our forefathers went through. They came out here in a covered wagon, settled in a wide-open prairie, and still stuck around. And that’s what I want to do for our generation and the next generations. We want to set it up so they have the opportunity to have the options I had. ____________________________________________________________________ Visit these “Growing Resilience Through Our Soils” information pages: 1. Podcast page for drought planning fact sheets, Q&As, news, podcasts and more. 2. Video page to watch videos of other ranchers’ journeys toward improved rangeland/pasture. 3.Follow Growing Resilience on social media: Facebook - Growing Resilience Twitter - @GrowResilience_ Instagram - growingresilience.sd 4. Our homepage: www.growingresiliencesd.com

On this week’s “Resilience Rodeo”, Alex Boekelheide tells us how focusing on soil health has created a stewardship-based management approach to help make his family’s farm more profitable and resilient. The fifth generation on a farm that has primarily been corn and soybeans near Aberdeen, Alex Boekelheide incorporates diversity into the operation with a goal of continual improvement and stewardship. Shifting the farms approach to a longer-term view has helped them ensure that year to year they can remain profitable while also increasing the resiliency and overall health of their cash- and cover cropping systems. 1)    What one thing have you done that’s been most important to the success of your operation? I really think it's emphasizing the importance of continual learning. Knowing that there's always a better way to do things and never being stuck in a rut saying, “This is the only way” or “This is the best way”. Continuing to be your toughest critic, so to speak, and making sure that your practices align with the values of your operation. And that the practices that you're implementing are going to ensure the long-term success and sustainability for your operation, not only for the generation running it now but for future generations. It really starts with a mindset shift to guide decision-making. 2)    Can you recall a moment or time when the light bulb went on for you, when you realized that soil health practices make sense or that you should change the way you were farming? As I mentioned before, stewardship is very important to us on our farm. We're in the northeast region of South Dakota and we could visually see some of our ground starting to go backwards. We just kind of hung our heads when we looked at some of the acres. We've been excessively wet the past few years and have also had extended periods of drought. It’s been the extremes on both ends of the spectrum. These conditions really identified the weaknesses within our cropping system. Since the mission on our farm revolves around stewardship and leaving things better than the way we found it, we looked in the mirror and realized we needed to make some changes. So, instead of waiting until conditions were beyond repair, we wanted to be proactive and start making some changes now while we still had the ability to improve things and continue to build in resiliency and efficiencies within our operation. That’s why we changed. Seeing the resilience that you can have within a cropping system when you start deploying soil health-minded practices, we have started to feel good about every acre again. 3)    What surprised you most when you changed the way you farm to include these soil health practices? Changing our approach gave our whole team on our farm a new sense of purpose behind the stewardship role we have as farmers. It's easy to kind of get into a monotonous repeat mode on how we farm. Now we have re-lit the fire around the “why” we're implementing different practices. It’s exciting to be a part of. You can look at yourself in the mirror and know you're proactively trying to make a change to benefit and enhance the resources that we get to operate on. 4)    What would you say is the biggest misconception people have who are not managing their farming systems for resiliency or soil health? The biggest misconception is thinking that soil health practices are too difficult to implement while remaining profitable. It can be done. It takes a little more creativity and effort than other cropping systems but it is a doable task and I feel each year gets a little easier as the system evolves. We're very much in our infancy in comparison to some of the farmers that have been doing this for 20 to 30 years. But it all starts with a mindset shift and starting to incorporate changes within a cropping system to build the overall resiliency, sustainability, and performance of your operation. 5)    Is there something you'd still like to do that you haven't yet done to improve your soil health on the farm? Soil health testing is an area that I think we can improve upon to help us make data-driven decisions and quantify the progression of the functionality of our soils. 6)    What advice do you have for someone who's considering changing their farming system to one that's better for building soil health? You have to minimize risk, and that means starting small. When you read about cover crops, no-till, soil health, all these diverse rotations, it sounds like sunshine and roses. But we all know that's not always reality. There's going to be challenges that you face that you didn't encounter before within a traditional cropping system. And that's why you have to start small to figure out some of those hiccups. So that when you do have problems, it's not going to put the financial position of your farm in jeopardy. Start by building confidence with your desired cropping system on a smaller percentage of your acres. Once you are comfortable, then start to roll these practices across all of your acres. 7)    When you walk across your croplands, what do you look for as an indicator of healthy soils? Plant growth and water infiltration. We battle saline soils in our region and that problem can be amplified if you have standing water being lost through evaporation instead of being utilized by a plant. So that's a big driver of why we need to do things differently to make sure we're using our water efficiently through a living root. And as we continue to refine our data collection methods, some soil health and functionality tests will start to be indicators to measure how we're doing. 8)    What change have you made that at first you thought would never work? No-till during a wet spring. You have to force yourself to be patient and let the soil come around on its own to be fit to plant versus forcing it to change with the tillage tool like we used to do in the past. In both 2022 and 2023, we battled through overly wet conditions in the spring planting window. We remained committed to our no-till goals and remained patient to wait for the right time to plant. In both 2022 and 2023, our crop yields were in the top 5 of our farm’s historical yields. That was an eye-opener for me because no-till is most challenging when conditions are wet and we were able to make it work and had a successful crop to follow. 9)    What are the signs your cropland is resilient and what does resiliency mean to you? The soil’s ability to infiltrate water after big rain events is a big indicator of resiliency and health. Another big indicator to me is smaller swings in our average yields from year to year, regardless of the growing conditions. When you can have strong yields year in and year out through all the different weather conditions we face, that is resiliency. It may not be the home run every year. But if we can hit base hits and doubles consistently, that’s how a farm stays in business for generations. 10) What indicators do you have that healthy soil practices also make sense economically? It requires a multi-year systems approach versus just year-to-year. This is where that mindset shift comes into play that I talked about earlier. The small grain acres may not be as attractive on paper, but when you wholistically factor in what that small grain acre does for you, it makes a lot of sense. Nutrient efficiencies, moisture retention, reduced herbicide use, yield improvement, and spreading the workload out on the farm are all factors that start to be influenced by these changes which in turn start to drive down the cost of production for each crop on the farm increasing profitability. ____________________________________________________________________ Visit these “Growing Resilience Through Our Soils” information pages: 1. Podcast page for drought planning fact sheets, Q&As, news, podcasts and more. 2. Video page to watch videos of other ranchers’ journeys toward improved rangeland/pasture. 3.Follow Growing Resilience on social media: Facebook - Growing Resilience Twitter - @GrowResilience_ Instagram - growingresilience.sd 4. Our homepage: www.growingresiliencesd.com