America’s Land Auctioneer

How Regenerative Farming Restores Soil And Boosts Land Value

• Kevin Pifer + Jack Pifer + Steve Link + Andy Mrnak + Jim Sabe + Christian Miller • Season 9 • Episode 15

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Ever wonder why a field that looks “messy” in the fall can be the most valuable ground on the farm? We sit down with Paul, a third‑generation North Dakota producer, to unpack how no‑till, cover crops, and salinity management rebuilt soil structure, improved infiltration, and quietly raised the long‑term value of his land. His story starts with crop diversity after the Freedom to Farm Act and moves through the hard early years of saturated topsoil, compaction layers, and skeptical neighbors before the biology caught up.

Paul explains his simple definition of regenerative agriculture—regenerating the soil—and shows what that looks like on the ground: residue armor, living roots as long as the lawn is green, and tools like arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi working below the surface. He details how satellite‑based zone maps revealed hidden salinity halos, why he keeps steel out of those areas, and how buffers seeded to tolerant grasses and alfalfa, supported by CSP, both protected soil and paid their way through haying. Along the way, wildlife returned; tall stubble sheltered sharp‑tailed grouse and boosted habitat across wetlands and pasture edges.

We also dig into cover crop strategy for short seasons: load the drill by August, prioritize roots over showy biomass, and keep mixes simple and cheap with oats, peas, and radish. For those curious about interseeding, Paul shares timing windows around wheat’s growth stages and lessons learned from dry and wet years. Finally, we translate soil health into dollars. Drawing on his graduate research, Paul quantifies the annual nutrient value tied to each percent of soil organic matter and how that knowledge shifts what farmers are willing to pay in rent or purchases. Add in NRCS programs like EQIP and CSP to de‑risk adoption, and regenerative practices start to look less like a gamble and more like a long‑term investment.

If this conversation sparks ideas for your fields, tap follow, share it with a neighbor who’s “cover‑curious,” and leave a review with your biggest soil challenge—we’ll bring back Paul for a Q&A.

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Contact the team at Pifer's

SPEAKER_04:

So, Paul, thank you so much for joining us today. It's a pleasure to have you.

SPEAKER_01:

Happy to be here. Good to talk about soil.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, absolutely. I'll give you a little introduction here, Paul. Thank you for sending over your bio to us. But uh in 2014, Paul is recognized as the outstanding conservation professional by the National Soil and Water Conservation Society. He also received a Responsible Nutrient Management Award in 2021 at the National No-Till Conference. And Paul and his wife Diane were given a 2023 Conservation Achievement Award by the Rolette Soil Conservation District. And so, Paul, really uh a pleasure to have somebody with uh with your expertise on our show and and talk about some soil management um and uh and your family farm um uh up in uh up in north central North Dakota. Um so I guess we can probably start um maybe by talking a little bit just about uh about about your family farm or your farm specifically, if you could kind of just give us an idea of uh of your footprint up there um and uh just some of your uh um your practices and and what you guys are growing up in up in your neck of the woods.

SPEAKER_01:

Sure. Uh I started farming in uh 1993 as an older than average farmer, and and so it kind of came at the whole farming game with a different perspective. We my wife and I both uh had suit and tie jobs before that. So came into it with a little different perspective onto a family farm that uh my great uncle had homesteaded in in uh 1895. Uh so part of part of the ethics of time has been the stewardship of the family. And believe it or not, even though that's over a hundred years ago, I'm only the third generation on this farm. Um and through the through the years, my dad in particular was uh uh very interested in soils. He started doing soil sampling on his fields in the in the 60s and was one of the early adopters of uh fertilizers, starter fertilizers, and things like that. And I was very interested in the science of of farming in addition to uh just the the mechanics of getting the crop in the ground and harvested. So I grew up with that background. Uh crops and soils magazines were a staple on the on the uh coffee table in the living room, and so so kind of come from that perspective. Uh and then as we started farming, of course, that was prior to the to the Freedom to Farm Bill in 1996, which really opened us up to having the opportunity to do a bunch of things. It's it's it's long enough ago where most people have forgotten that prior to 1996, we basically planted what the government said we could plant and how many acres they said we could plant, and then we had a few free acres to do other crops on. And in my dad's case, he always planted uh flax on those free acres, and wheat and barley, or Durham wheat and barley were the staples on the on the base acres. So 1996 opened us up to finally start adopting other crops, and and and we started changing uh our rotation then to add things like uh field peas and sunflowers were the first two uh crops that that I added as we were farming uh to the rotation. Uh so so that that's kind of the beginning of of how we morphed into this, what we're now call a regenerative farm.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. Paul, um I have a question for you. On that term regenerative ag, what what is the definition of that, or how do you define that? And what's a farm look like that's practicing that?

SPEAKER_01:

That's a great question. And and and uh places like LinkedIn it could get into quite a lengthy back and forth, but for us it's real simple. I'm regenerating the soil. Um we work on that. Uh we know that our our prairies here when we first started out had uh a lot of soil organic matter in them from thousands of years of prairie grasses uh growing up and and dying, uh fire, uh bison grazing them, and it all built the soils, topsoils up to you know, in the Red River Valley of North Dakota, what, 16, 18 inches deep, and out in our area about uh six to eight inches deep. So um, and then along came farming, and and the guys, you know, farmers used the tools they had to to raise the crop and and make a living. And so I'm not I'm not um bashing them for doing it. They they did what they knew at the time. But the cumulative effect of that breaking of the soil, the windstorms of the 30s, um, things like that really reduced the soil in North Dakota. I think Dr. Franzen did a study and estimated that 50% of the topsoil in some areas of North Dakota is gone. And I've seen pictures where it's it's more than that. And and so we've really degenerated our soil with our farming practices. Our farm is all about how to regenerate that with a long-term goal of getting back to that six to eight inches of topsoil and soil organic matters in the six to eight percent range as well. Right, right.

SPEAKER_04:

And so, you know, I guess when I hear about um regenerative ag and and some of the practices that that you can implement, you know, you always hear about things like cover crops um and no-till and stuff like that. Are these some of the practices that uh that you guys are implementing on your farm?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, they they are. In fact, so I'll kind of pick up where I left off earlier with we added a uh a few different crops to a rotation, and and at the time, some of it was just labor management. Um, you know, wheat and barley kind of get harvested about the same time in late August, early September. And so with field peas, we were able to start harvesting earlier, and with the sunflowers we were able to harvest later. And so for my wife and I, we don't farm uh uh a large uh acreage. We have we've added some land over time, but we're at only 1250 crop acres out of about 1800 acres in our total operation. Uh the balance of those acres are in buffer strips and uh uh hay land and pasture land, and then a lot of uh what I like to call wildlife habitat, but largely uh wetlands. So uh as we started moving along, we were looking at how do we manage labor and and expenses and risk, and that's where we started from. But then in 2000 and about 2000, I started doing research on no-till because the the tools were first starting to come out. I can't remember the exact year that Concord came out with their uh no-tail air seeder, but they were, I believe, the first uh large-scale commercial uh no-tail drill. And it kind of bugged me because people were buying these uh different no-till tools, uh see air seeders, but they were still farming the same way they'd been farming before, and I just thought that was wrong. So I've been doing a lot of homework on what it meant to do no-till and what it would take to do that, uh, including some research work on a uh little favorite uh biological of mine called uh arbuscular uh mycorrhizal fungi and the importance of that into the soil structure. And then in in 2005, uh I had an opportunity to buy a cheap used uh uh air seater and and also uh an old Steiger tractor that had enough horsepower to do it. So for uh, I believe about$45,000. We were into no-till farming in 2005 and and we jumped in with both seats and and haven't looked back.

SPEAKER_04:

Wow. Would you consider yourself um, you know, especially up in your area, one of the early adopters of of no-till?

SPEAKER_01:

Uh yeah. I'm sure there were there were a lot of people kind of wondering what what I was doing when the fall wasn't, you know, in the fall up here typically back then uh people would chisel plow their land twice, maybe once uh once the the the second time over, also applying anhydras. And and so the land went into the winter black as opposed to all my fields were just left uh untailed. And I'm sure maybe some people said I was just lazy. I'm not sure. But anyway, yeah, so we started, and and even and even as we started, my my wife was not 100% on board on this. She thought it was nuts. I was comfortable because I'd done my homework, but I I remember my mother uh driving by some of our fields in late May saying, Is that even planted? Or do you have a lot of stuff left to plant? No, it's it's planted, it's just you can't see the can't see the green grain coming yet. Um so that was yeah, that was quite a change for for the neighborhood uh to see no-kill planting. You know, again, I I was part of the Manitoba North Dakota Zero Phil Farmers Association or going to their meetings at that time, and so I knew you know it worked, um, and and so I wasn't uh concerned about that part. We we had some challenges. Um you may remember that in 1993, the year we started farming is the year it started raining in North Dakota, and uh and and devil's legs started going up and up and up and up. So when we started started no-tilling in the past in the 80s, when my dad was doing homework on it, it was because we were so dry and the goal was to save moisture, and and they wanted a kind of this layer of duff over the top of the ground to protect the soil. Um and when we get into the into the uh 2000s, by now the the rain is coming pretty regularly, and one of the things I discovered, and this is part of the both the learning curve and part of the challenge in adopting a new practice, and that is we first started getting our our topsoil able to absorb moisture quickly, but it didn't have the whole soil profile structure, like down into the six, eight, ten, twenty-inch areas uh building up yet the texture and the and the porosity. And so what was happening is we would get these these heavy rains, and the top six inches would just get totally saturated. They'd hold all the moisture, but it couldn't go down because there was still that chisel plow tillage layer in there that hadn't been penetrated yet. So we really struggled uh for a few years there of heavy rain where where the neighbors were able to go and and our fields were uh just uh still still pretty wet. And and so thank goodness for uh preventive plant insurance to kind of help us through those uh bumpy roads those few years in there.

SPEAKER_04:

Right, right. Awesome. Well, uh really interesting to hear about how you're kind of uh a pioneer up in your area uh with uh with the struggles with uh implementing no-tale fit and and stuff like that. But um, so Paul, thank you so much for joining us today. And I know Chris can have some questions for you on about uh no-till and cover crops and some of the some of the benefits and and challenges that uh that people might might see.

SPEAKER_03:

You know, so one thing Paul that I've noticed across North Dakota, and I don't know if this is something that you were seeing years ago, but uh I know something that I'm currently seeing a lot of is this saline that's in the field. Can you give us a little bit of insight on that and and maybe some of the practices on how to combat some of the saline?

SPEAKER_01:

Sure, and and that's uh so uh through an organization I'm in called the uh Northern Plains Resource Conservation Development Council, we actually did a uh project in the uh uh North Dakota Public uh television, uh Prairie Public uh did a document documentary on some of the work with salinity, and that was actually in I want to say 2009 or 10. It's it's still up on the Prairie Public uh website. You can find it by Googling it. Uh it was called South of the Earth. And so we were looking at that issue of salinity, uh, particularly up here in northeastern North Dakota and the problems with it. And one of the things that I had started doing in 2004 was developing zone maps for our field management zones, and that was based on uh some research work that Dr. Franzen had done and uh from NDSU, and then also uh working with uh Lanny Pilite and his company called SATShot on being able to download satellite imagery. And so this was you know, yield monitors were in combines prior to that, but they weren't uh being actively used for management purposes. In fact, I when I started doing the zone management, I was leasing a combine from a company called Machinery Link, and I said, Does it have a yield monitor? And they said, sure. And when it arrived on my farm, I said, Where's the globe to do the GPS work? And they they laughed and they said, Well, this machine started in Texas, and you're the first farmer who's asked for one. Uh so they were there, but not really being used. But anyway, so long, long way to get to the fact that with the zone management, we were able to quickly identify using satellite imagery where non-productive parts of our fields were, and those were very often being driven by salinity in the soil and and not necessarily salinity that you can see. We see that driving down the highway, you see a white patch with nothing growing in it, but the reality is the salinity is reaching farther out into the field than that, and so the management needs to start even away from the obvious area, and that's what we were able to identify with with zone mapping and start working on it. So a couple of things. One, no-till helps, that's one of the primary things, is to not touch those areas with tillage because you create uh areas where water can't fall back down into the soil with a tillage thing, uh tillage operation. So we want to stay away from it with tillage and and then try to plant uh saline-tolerant crops, whether there's some grasses that are good for salinity, as well as some alfalfa varieties that are good for salinity. And so once we had identified those, then we took advantage of CSP, which allowed us to enroll those strips into CSP. And so we started putting in buffers around wetlands and uh along road ditches and things like that using using CSP funding, which also cost shared on the grass. So that worked out really well. And if you were to do a Google Earth map of our farm right now, uh there's only a couple of little areas that you would see anything uh bordering salinity, and we just took care of uh one of them with a fresh planting uh this this past year. So uh stop killing if kosher grows. Uh that's okay. It's a root, something's growing, it's creating root channels to carry water, and and just harvest that off if you can, uh bale it, or or go over it with a rotary mower, uh, putting mulch over the top of the land to stop the evapotranspiration process that's going on that brings the salts to the surface. Um keep away from it with soybeans, flax. If you want to know where your soy saline areas are, look at your yield map from crop like soybeans or or flax, and and stay, keep those crops away, plant something else. Uh corn, canola, oats, barley are will all tolerate salinity to something. So if if if you're not into planting the grass edges or it's not quite that bad, those are crops that you can plant maybe 10 acres along the road and then plant soybeans on the rest of the field. So those are those are things we've done on our own farm in in various uh various ways trying to keep that back. And and what we're seeing then by by our zone sampling, we're seeing the yields actually strengthen a bit in those in those border areas along the salinity. And and and so now I'm actually looking at some of those, maybe encroaching back in on those buffers a little bit, maybe take a take a pass in there with an air seeder and see how if uh if we've beaten back some of the salinity enough to raise a crop again.

SPEAKER_04:

Okay, because yeah, that was that was going to be my next question. You know, how long term are you leaving these these buffer zones before you um I mean do you ever go back in and and work up that soil again and and replant, or um are they kind of a a permanent solution, or um, you know, what's kind of the uh the timeline look like for some of these these buffer zones and and how you manage them?

SPEAKER_01:

Well they they they didn't happen overnight, so they're not gonna disappear overnight, is is I think uh patience is is the key there. So some of these areas uh have been into these buffers for close to 20 years. Um and and the other thing is is sometimes CRP is easier to get into and it's easier to re-enroll stuff, and sometimes it's not. So we've had some where uh the the rental price for for CRP has gone down a bit, and I've decided, well, let's let's just I'll leave some of it uh and just take that out of my own pocket. Well, I I don't exactly because we rent it out for being hayed. So there's always a way to make make money. In fact, haying those grasslands and those buffer strips is actually better for the soil than just letting it go stagnant. Um so uh but but I say encroach on it. So if you've got a buffer that's 60 feet wide, try encroaching on it 20 feet and see what happens. Do you get any crop off of that 20 feet? And to the extent possible, uh what we've done is we'll go into it, hay it, and then spray it in the fall with a pass of uh glyphosate, and then come back in the spring with another pass, and then we just direct seed right into it. It's a little rough, but they they smooth out over time, and and then just see what kind of crop happens. Give it give it three to five years, um, and then and then see if the productivity is there or if it warrants going back into some kind of a program or or just not not losing money on it anymore.

SPEAKER_04:

Right, right. We've got uh um just uh a couple minutes left on this last segment, but um have you noticed uh enhanced uh um you know uh uh wildlife in some of these buffer zones? You know, I I would imagine it would be really good for um for for wildlife habitat as well.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. Uh one of the one of the interesting things about the combination of of the things that we're doing is I noticed uh over a couple of years the uh sharp-tailed grouse population just expanding and expanding in our area. Awesome. And and one spring I had had a chance to actually understand a little bit of why, and that is I'm I'm seeding and I see all these little fuzz balls running, and I have a hawk circling overhead, right? Uh so I kind of parked the tractor so they could get out of the way, but the hawk couldn't get to them because the stubble was too tall. And and so you're you're giving habitat for nesting, and then and then the little ones are are more protected in in the nesting. But yes, we've we've seen uh that uh the Hungarian grouse uh or Hungarian partridge, excuse me, and and uh just you know, deer and moose populations. Our our farm is pretty well covered with with uh have uh habitat opportunities and wildlife uh throughout.

SPEAKER_04:

Awesome. Yeah, that cover is just so important, especially for those ground nesting bird populations. Uh so that's uh yeah, really interesting to hear all the different benefits, not just from the farming standpoint, but also from the uh, conservative. And uh really diving into all these uh all these topics uh surrounding uh regenerative ag on file. Uh one thing we haven't talked much about yet is is cover crops um and the implementation of those. And then kind of um that coincides with that is, you know, I I know when when I've talked to people in the past about cover crops and the uh the benefits um are are certainly there, but it still seems like a lot of people are really hesitant to implement these uh on their farms. And I don't know if it is uh something that is directly related to cost or if the focus for many people is is strictly on on production and yield, um, and and just the bottom line. But um if maybe you could talk a little bit about that, about about why some people might be hesitant to to implement some of these practices, specifically cover crops, um, and then also uh some of the benefits as well.

SPEAKER_01:

Sure. Uh so one of the interesting comments that Gabe Brown made at a presentation way back um 2012-13 up here in in Rolock County, was he said, you guys up here in the northern part of the state with your cold, wet soils, should really start with cover crops before you start no-tilling. And I turned to my uh NRCS uh conservationist who was sitting beside me and I said, Why didn't you tell me that? And she said, I didn't know that. And and so so that's one of the things I would say is people are are looking at no-tilling or even for reduced tilling, um one of the things that cover crops do help with is stimulating soil biology. So for example, I look out my window right now and my lawn is green. And one of one of the concepts that I'm shooting for in our farm, not there by a long shot yet, but is if our lawn is green, I want something in my fields that's green. So that means in the spring and in and in the fall, we should have things uh growing as long as possible. What that what that's doing is is stimulating the biology in your soil, which we don't see, but those are the things that help build up soil organic matter. It's not just the roots in there, but it's all the little critters that live and die, and over time add up a lot of biomass to to the soil, and that creates the structure that allows no-till to function better. So it's it's kind of a kind of a loop. Um, and so that would be one thing, would be but the challenge then is how do you get cover crops planted? For those of us who are still primarily doing small grains, there is a window, uh, usually starting late August into early September for fall planting. And the the trick there that I have found is you have to have your air cedar or whatever drill you're using loaded with cover crops and ready to go. Um if if you just start thinking about it on the 1st of August, the odds of it happening are not great. And again, that's pointing fingers right at me. Those are lessons I've learned. Um, and and still it can be challenging. So in a fall like this, where I thought, okay, we can get some cover crops planted, August looked great, and then all of a sudden it turned wet. And when it's not raining, you're trying to harvest. And and again, with just my wife and I, it's very difficult then to find time to go sit on an air cedar and plant cover crops. Um, we did do some. They they got in late. Uh we planted in uh late, late uh, when was it late October or yeah, mid-October. So you know, kind of past the normal planting date where you'd like to have them planted by the 15th of September. Um but I you know the forecasts were for a warm, warm, wet fall, and I thought, well, let's just take a chance on it. I had a tote full of uh cover crop left over from the previous year. We put that into the air cedar and got it seeded, and and that crop came up. It got to be two, three inches tall, but underneath, and this is the part that most people forget about, it's what's underneath in the soil that's important, not so much how tall the top growth is. Underneath in the soil, we've got roots four, five, six inches long. And so that's that's what I'm after. It's it's it's the shoots, or it's the roots, not the shoots, is a kind of a little metaphor. And and it's unfortunate that you know, early on with cover crops, people were displaying those radishes with you know, two foot long and all that kind of stuff. It's it's unrealistic expectations for us in in the northern plains. Is it just it's not gonna happen except in a preventive plant year? And so so getting those cover crops going, getting that, getting that uh system built up is difficult in a fall planting. One of the things we've been working on is is interseeding cover crops, with uh again, varying successes. So after the c after the crop is planted, uh some guys plant covers with the seed, but then you're limited on your chemical choices. So after the crop, wheat, small grains, I'm we'll just focus on wheat, is planted, then when it gets to be about that three to five leaf stage when it's ready to be sprayed, uh, then we want to be planting cover crops as well. And there was some research done at NDSU Carrington Research Center many years ago about using single disc drills to put nitrogen down in winter wheat, and they determined that as long as it got done before the crops started jointing, there wasn't any yield loss. So I'm using that as the basis for my uh decision making. And we've had some good success doing that. Um again, you still have that challenge. If it's a wet spring, when cover crops would really work well, you're pushing it uh late, and so it's hard to find time to do it. This year, very frustratingly, it was dry, and I chickened out. Uh it it it was so dry, I thought, geez, do I want cover crops growing out there taking moisture away from my crop? And so I didn't do that, and then of course it started raining. So like, you know, I I I kind of have had one of those, if you're gonna do it, do it and let the weather worry about the weather, right? And and that's kind of, I think, going forward, what we're gonna do. Um, even some falls when it's been dry, and I thought, geez, I I'm not gonna get anything grow, and then two weeks later it starts raining, and the cover crops would have done fantastic. So uh trying to out guess the weather, I would say, is a mistake. If you're if you want to commit to this, I think you just need to say, I'm gonna plant the cover crops and you know, and I'm gonna get it done.

SPEAKER_03:

That's a that's very interesting, Paul. For a young farmer or a farmer that wants to try cover crop for the first time, what are some of the mistakes that you see these guys making that are that maybe you've made in the past, and what advice do you have for them if they do choose to put in a cover crop in in for next year?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, so one of the first advice I'd give them is if they're willing to work with NRCS to take the time to visit with NRCS. About what kinds of uh financial programs might be available through Equip or CSP for them to do this. Um and and it's a five-year contract, but that's okay. It takes five years to really learn anything anyway. So and they don't have to sign up the whole farm for it. Maybe it's gonna be 50 acres or 100 acres or whatever. So there is financial help that will offset the cost. I think it's 50-some bucks an acre right now. Uh so yeah, that that's you know, so basically you're risk-free. Um the second thing is, you know, there's ignore all the guys that are planting 30 species. You know, that that's fun. Uh and some of those species are incredibly expensive. Again, I'll credit back to Gabe Brown on this. He said, just keep it simple. If you got some leftover, leftover seed, use it. Um, and we do that a lot. I don't I don't worry if I've got some seed in the air seed or uh, you know, 50 bushels that goes into a tote and and then we use it for cover crops. So uh cheap crops like oats and and field peas, uh radishes, those are all three relatively cheap, and that's and that's a sufficient uh cover crop mix. You don't need 20 uh species in your cover crop mix. Keep it simple, keep it as cheap as you can. I try to stay uh down in the$15 an acre area for my seed expense if I have to buy it. Um but again, we're gonna even if I buy something with lentils and buckwheat and stuff like that in it, I I'll probably go ahead and throw in some oats that I've got uh leftover seed or something like that too. So keep it cheap, keep it simple, um and and just get it in the ground. You know, it doesn't grow in the tote. Uh you gotta get it in the ground.

SPEAKER_03:

That leads me to another question here, Paul. When people are putting these cover crops in, does the NRCS have a mix that they already have put together, or is it typically up to the farmer to choose what his blend is going to be?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that's a good question. Um, I would say so so we first planted cover crops in 2011, and NRCS staff were about as clueless as I was at at helping out in the process because it was all new for them, too. Um there has been a lot more work done since then. Uh farmers are kind of up to their own. One of the things that people will say is what's your goal? So um there are so green cover, green cover seed, green cover crop seed. I can't remember the website of that specifically, but green cover has a a way to go through and think through am I trying to reduce weeds, am I trying to increase my moisture uptake? Uh do I need cool seasons? Do I need warm seasons? There's you know, all those decisions. So there's a matrix there that you can work through. Uh, I've got a spreadsheet that came from NRCS staffer many years ago that I used to help think that through, and and seed dealers are pretty good about helping farmers think that through too. But just a very fundamental thing I do is if I'm planting cover crops into a into a grain crop like oats or wheat to a grassy crop, I'm gonna have more broadleafs in in that one, lentils or peas or buckwheat, things like that. If I'm planting into pea stubble, then I'm gonna put more grassy crops. I'll have I'll have oats and wheat and and things like that. Very good.

SPEAKER_04:

I hate to cut you off, but we are running just a little bit short on time on this last segment, but um hoping to pick up right where we left off uh for our fourth and final segment. Um I do want to take a few. But it's been a fun conversation so far, I think.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, it has. Paul has a wealth of knowledge, and and uh I ran into him at the my. show and he had a boost uh explaining some of the things that he talked about today. And it's just a pleasure having him on the show and and learning from him.

SPEAKER_04:

Absolutely. And uh, you know, in in in our industry, Paul, um, you know, we're always uh the land values and and land rents are are always top of the mind for us. Um and so but a lot of what we're talking about here today and some of these practices that can be implemented, you know, have a have a big effect on on land values and what people are willing to pay for land and and as well as uh rent values as well, um, and and with uh with with landowners and farmers working together as long uh as well as with other resources. Um but I know you've done some of uh some research yourself on on kind of how how values uh correlate with with some of these uh farming techniques that we're talking about here today.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, for I'm I'm in a management uh uh sustainable management master's program, and one of the research papers I wrote on was the uh economic value of soil organic matter and and whether or not farmers realized how much that would contribute. So we cited some statistics, uh some research work that's already been done showing how much uh value there is in nutrient availability for plants based on soil organic matter. And what that shows is that for every um percent soil organic matter has a value of about$12 an acre. That was in 2018 when I did the research work, about$12 an acre uh annual value in increased uh nutrient uh cycling processes and availability of phosphorus and and even micronutrients. And so with the research uh project that I did, we surveyed, I've got a list of farmers, about 750 of them, and we surveyed that group that had about 150 responses, which was really good. And in that we asked the question, how much would you be willing to pay to rent or to buy land uh based on it having 5% soil organic matter versus 3%? And and for a lot of people, you know, their answer was nothing. Uh they didn't see the value in soil organic matter. And then and then we put in a paragraph that explained the nutrient value of soil organic matter and re-asked that same question again, and the number of people willing to pay uh$10 per acre for cash rent uh almost doubled, and the number of people willing to pay$100 an acre more for a purchase almost doubled. So part of the part of the gap there was people just don't understand.

SPEAKER_00:

Right.

SPEAKER_01:

They they hear the talk, but it doesn't translate back into what's it worth to me as a landowner. And I think you know, if if I'm somebody, I'm I'm at an age now where we're where we're trying to retire, but if you're building towards retirement, the value of that that family farm uh to the future is constantly increasing as you build that soil organic matter in your soil. And I I think people should realize that if it's out there, you've got to do some homework, uh, do some digging maybe. And I'm happy to share this research paper with anybody who wants it. But um, and in fact, we did at a national no-till conference a few years ago. The the the challenge is making that commitment and seeing that as a long-term process. It is not put in a little bit of effort today and harvest back the benefit tomorrow. It you're really looking at, like we've been at this now for 20 years, and so you have to be a long-term investor and think of it in that terms, just like just like in the stock market, right? If you put in the money and then you try to second guess the ups and downs all the time, you're gonna end up in worse shape than if you just put in the money, leave it go, write it, and 20 years later capture the value. And that's that's what we have to do. We have to approach this whole regenerative process as an investment in our land that's gonna have value to us, depending upon how old we are, or value to the next generation farming our land. And and that's where the value comes from.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um Paul, it's been really impressive to hear um just about all of the different um organizations that that you're a part of um and all of the uh uh speaking events uh uh that you do. Um I know you have some some upcoming uh stuff that uh well where where can people go uh or where can people um maybe hear you speak uh in length about some of these topics um and and and uh gain some of this this expertise uh in the future from you?

SPEAKER_01:

Well it's really exciting to have the DERT conference back in at In Fargo this uh upcoming January. So January 14th and 15th, University of Minnesota and NDSU are combining forces and and holding a uh conference on soil health at at uh in Fargo. And so that's a wonderful opportunity. It's a two-day two-day program. There are a number of uh discussions on um soil biology, on there's a section on soil salinity, uh, there's things on how to get cover crops growing. I've got a segment on economics of of uh building soil health. Uh how do we do this with nitrogen with uh with corn and soybeans, you know, being the long season crops, what do we do there? So just a whole uh variety of things. So Google SMS slash dirt conference uh 2026 and it'll pop up and you can register for that. Well worth the the time and the effort to attend.

SPEAKER_04:

Awesome, awesome. And I guess we do have uh um a couple more minutes here um for this for this fourth and final segment. But um, you know, I know we had kind of asked you this earlier as well, but you know, for somebody who's looking to uh to implement some of these practices or even just to learn more, you know, I know we've talked a lot about how um for for a lot of people um it's just a lack of education and a lack of understanding about some of these benefits. What are some resources that people can can use um to uh to learn a little bit more about some of these topics and how they can implement them uh on their own farms?

SPEAKER_01:

Um there's yeah, compared to where we were 15 years ago when I was starting, there's so much information out there you can almost get information overload. Right. Uh there are a couple of Facebook groups on cover crops. I maintain one for northern cover crops because what what they're doing in Iowa isn't necessarily applicable to North Dakota and Manitoba. Um and and so there are uh Facebook discussion groups to to join and and talk about that also on regenerative ag. Um green cover seeds has got a wealth of information available on their website for free. NDSU's put out several documents on cover crops, but I think doing that, and then of course, you've got to get your hands dirty, right?

SPEAKER_02:

Right.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh so at some point you need to decide I've done enough homework, I I just need to try this. And again, I'm gonna go back to the the NRCS providing these five-year contracts either with Equip or CSP and the ability to get the financing so you're not 100% exposed on risk. And the advantage, one of the nice things about a five-year contract is it gives you time to learn. And if you are renting land from uh a landowner that's kind of hesitant about this, again, it's a five-year contract. You're gonna get offset, so you don't need to you know work your landowner over for a reduced rent or something like that while you're trying this because you're you're getting the benefit. And they need to sign off on that to give you a five-year contract. So uh that kind of ties both of you together. I've been blessed by having landowners that are just 100% on board. I know not all of them are, yeah, but that's this this kind of relationship process, collaborative point where the farmer learns something, the landowner's value, and his land goes up, uh, and the government helps pay for it. Uh to me is a win-win-win.

SPEAKER_04:

Absolutely. Yep. And I know that uh topics like this are always top of the mind for our land managers here at Pifers, working directly with landowners and farmers trying to implement the best farming practices on their land. Um, folks, uh, we are running out of time here, but um I do want to thank uh Paul. Thank you so much for joining us and educating us today. I also want to thank Cifers auction reality and land management for sponsoring today's goals. Uh folks watching Cifers on the Bible.