Rick Clark and I explore how regenerative agriculture can enhance soil health, improve food quality, and solve other environmental challenges problems. We stress the urgency of transforming agricultural practices for a sustainable future, underscoring the critical roles of soil health and nutrient density in food. Our conversation also covers the advantages of no-till and organic farming, including cost efficiency and yield improvements. We highlight the economic benefits of sustainable farming practices, advocating for a phased approach and proper baseline assessment when adopting regenerative methods. Education and support for farmers transitioning to these practices are also crucial focal points of our discussion.
I've been wanting to get Rick on here for a long, long time.
Rick Clark is a fifth-generation farmer in Warren County, Indiana.
His family has lived on the farm since the 1880s.
He recently became a grandpa and is hopeful about what the next generation will bring to the farm, which now stretches 7,000 acres.
The story of Rick's transition from chemical dependency to regenerative practices has propelled demand from other farmers to learn his strategies, and he has gathered national attention.
In 2017, Rick was honored as Danone's Sustainable Farmer of the Year.
Additionally, Land of Lakes honored him With an outstanding sustainability award, and he was also the regional winner of the American Soybean Association's Conservation Legacy Award.
Currently, Rick is the Fields to Market 2019 recipient of the Sustainable Farmer of the Year Award.
His farm runs on a five crop system, corn, soybean, wheat, alfalfa and regen.
I just want to read one other part of your biography because I think this is interesting.
After Rick graduated from Purdue University with a degree in agriculture and economics, He took an unexpected path that, by choosing to leave the family farm and to pursue a career in finance, after a friend told him about the opportunity, he packed his bag, worked at the heart of Chicago's financial district for four years, learning the ins and outs of the market, and he traded municipal parts.
That just adds another dimension to your bio.
Tell us about that path, about what happened to you, and about how you made that transition from chemical agriculture that your family had been using to regenerative agriculture.
Well, first of all, I'm absolutely honored to be on your show today.
Thank you for having me.
This is probably one of the most important topics that we have in the world today, is this regenerative-style farming that can mitigate climate and save our planet.
You know, Bobby, the one thing that got me where we are today is one event, and it was a one-inch rain event, and it created so much erosion that I could not believe, why are we still doing this?
And that is what woke me up to then start implementing the principles of soil health.
Let me ask you something, because I've spent some time in Indiana.
I haven't been to Warren County, but there are parts of Indiana that are like where I grew up in upstate New York in Massachusetts, which is Rolling Hills.
Broken field and forest, which is my kind of, you know, favorite landscape, but a lot of Indiana is like classic Midwest flatland.
So was the erosion occurring on that kind of flat?
Yes, 1% slope.
So, Bobby, you couldn't tell if you were looking at this field if it was flat or not.
It was 1%.
And the field moved from not only the ditch, but it was also on the road.
This is after we tilled the soil the day before.
We went home that night, planning to plant corn tomorrow.
We got a one-inch rain event that night, and boom, the field is on the road.
Hit me like a truck right in the middle of the forehead, and it's time that we have to make a change.
And, you know, I want to get a plug in right here if I can.
Our farm is featured in a film called Common Ground.
It's being shown across the country in theaters.
There's going to be a big event on April the 22nd, Earth Day.
But, Bobby, a lot of this is in that film.
You know, the highlights of our journey are.
But, Bobby, this was back in 07.
And we've been on this a long time, this journey for a long time.
Well, so then what happened?
And by the way, just a background.
I remember reading as a kid that the Midwest soils had some of the deepest, richest soils in the world.
I think 14 inches even more of sort of black topsoil from, you know, from the ages.
And so what does that look like today?
Yeah, I mean, there's obviously been erosion and that amount of deep, lush organic matter has been cut at least by half.
I mean, if you think about the short amount of time that we've been on this United States farming and the amount of degradations that has occurred in that short amount of time is unfathomable.
It's just outrageous, in my opinion.
So we've lost at least a half of the parent material that has been washed down the river sitting in the Gulf of Mexico.
But, you know, I'll tell you what really wakes you up, Bobby, is We just had a two-inch rain event in our area here within the last 10 days.
And our river is out of the banks.
A two-inch rain event should not get a major river out of its banks.
That tells me that we don't have any water infiltration on our neighboring fields.
I mean, on our fields, the last we've checked, which was a year ago, we've got water infiltration rates of over 20 inches an hour.
That means we can take a 20-inch rain event in one hour and have no standing water or have no runoff.
So that tells you what shape the rest of our landscape is in if a two-inch rain event floods the river basin.
Yeah, and by the way, I've spent a lot of my lifetime working on streams and rivers and thinking about them.
And the things that create healthy ecosystems is a lot of water infiltration, the capacity of the landscapes to store water, and then drip it slowly into the streams so that you have a constant flow year-round.
One of the worst things you can do to a stream is to flood it when there's rain events and then dry it out and starve it whenever you have a dry spell.
And if you want to build healthy, rich ecosystems, you need that water.
So for flooding to reduce flooding downstream, to retain soil, to keep stream health and water health, all of those important things, you need healthy soils.
It's really the answer to everything, right?
It is.
And the other thing too there that I want to add to your thought is not only is the water going in slow and being pulled in through the profile, but it's cleaning that rainwater and it's leaving all of the nutrients and the minerals behind in your soil and only clean water is coming out the other end.
That's what's so important about this is figuring out how to reduce the amount of nitrogen And potassium in the water, in the water supply.
Phosphorus.
Or phosphorus, yes.
It's very much a problem.
So, you know, If I may, let me continue with my journey.
So we got this one-inch rain event, and now it's time to go do some research.
So I start looking on the internet and I start asking some people.
And there's not a lot of people at this time that are really highly visible yet.
So a lot of the research I did was on my own.
And I came up with a species, it was called tillage radish.
And the reason why I came up with the tillage radish was because it will winter kill, meaning that when you get a frost event, so if you're in a zone that gets cold enough to freeze, it will terminate the radish with the cold weather.
So that was number one.
There wasn't going to be any material I was going to deal with next spring that was going to be alive.
And number two, it was great mitigation for compaction and it puts on a deep taproot to sequester the nutrients that are deep within the profile and pull them back to the surface.
And Bobby, when we did this, and then the proof was in the pudding the next year.
So we take a 200-acre field and we plant these cover crops in that field in the fall before.
Then in the spring, we cut the field in half.
And we treat half of it our traditional way, the way we did the rest of the farm, and we treated the other half with no till, and that was the only difference.
We still used chemistry and we still used fertility.
We just took all the tillage out, okay?
So we're already ahead of the game on cost just because the tillage aspect is being taken out.
But you know what?
At the end of the year, that 100 acres that we did the no-till way was not only the best yielding cornfield in the farm, it was the best ROI. And that's what this is all about.
It's not about yield.
Our system is not about producing yield.
It's about producing maximum return on your investment, just like any other business.
I mean, farming is a business.
So we have to treat it like a business.
And Bobby, I want to maximize my dollars per acre, not be a yield hero and try to knock it out of the park every single year.
That's not what we're about.
But you said you were growing no-till radishes.
I forget exactly what you called it.
Tillage radish.
What is it called?
Tillage radish.
Tillage radish.
So you got tillage radish on there, but then you rotate that with corn?
Is that what you're saying?
Well, that's what we did.
This was a bean stubble, a bean field, so we harvested the beans off early enough.
We then came in and we planted four pounds to the acre of tillage radish with a no-till drill.
And those radishes grew.
They made their tubers.
They sent a long root down into the profile.
Then winter came.
They died.
And then you come in next spring and you're looking at just dead, dead tillage plants laying on the surface.
They're not going to hurt you.
You don't harvest the radishes.
No.
No.
The radish is used only in this case for a cover crop to mitigate Okay, I get it.
So then what happened?
Next year you made all 200 acres.
In the spring, we split that 200 acres in half.
So 100 of it was farmed like the rest of the farm.
We came in, we did our spring tillage, we did all that.
We got the ground prepped and then we planted corn.
On the other side, we just no-tilled with no pre-plant tillage.
We just no-tilled in and then we used our nitrogen program and we used our chemical program.
And at the end of the day, that fall, the 100 acres that was no-tilled was not only the best yielding, but it had the best return on investment because of the reduced cost of the tillage.
So then what happened after that?
Then I'm hooked.
I can instantly see the benefit of what's happening here.
So now I have to figure out how do we move this wave of regenerative farming across the farm?
How do we do it and not bankrupt the farm?
Because we've got to get this across pretty quick, in my opinion.
We've got to get this across quick and start to see the benefits of regenerating the soil.
But Bobby, I want to throw a little bit.
We've got to slow down here a little bit.
I went pretty fast.
The number one thing we have to understand is A person out there cannot jeopardize the livelihood of their farm.
They need to start slow, start with small acreage, make sure this is going to work in your operation, and then start to move it across the farm.
But by four years, we were full-blown cover crops on every acre after four years.
That's pretty cool.
But have you gotten lucky or did you take a big loss?
No, we didn't take a big loss.
I wouldn't say I got lucky.
You just advised other people not to do what you did, but you had found success.
It's hard to advise other people to be lucky.
Now, I don't want to use the word risky, but it was a calculated risk, okay?
And I don't want to, it's hard for me to advise other farmers to be on the level of incline that I was on because it's their farm that's at jeopardy, not mine.
So I just want them to slow down a little bit.
But Bobby, once you can see benefits of these cover crops after year one, I mean, you instantly start to see water infiltration pick up.
You start to see earthworm counts go up.
But another thing that we need to back up on is I would also highly recommend That anybody wanting to do this, they need to baseline their farm.
So what I mean is they need to go out and they need to pull their soil samples.
I would take SAP analysis, which is a whole other analysis.
My good friend John Kempf is a master at SAP analysis.
But I would baseline the farm, meaning Let's say you're going to put 500 acres into this program.
Then you need to draw a line in the sand and say, look, that 500 acres, the fertility levels are right here.
Now, as we move forward, what's happening to our fertility?
Is it going up?
Is it going down?
Is our yield going up?
Is it going down?
Then you can start to say to yourself, well, you know what?
We've now pulled inputs down by 20%, but our yields still keep rising.
So we're doing okay.
So let's keep doing what we're doing.
But if you don't do that baseline, you won't have any idea if what you're doing is right or wrong.
But you've gone farther than just tillage.
You've actually cut back chemical use and fertilizer use, right?
Yeah, we've been on the journey for about, I don't know, about 10 years.
And after being in for 10 years, we were at 14-way cover crop mixes, meaning if you would go out in the fall and if you were planting a cocktail of a cover crop, we would have 14 different species in there.
And what we're trying to develop here, Bobby, is what's called a quorum sensing.
You're trying to get the combination of everything in the biological biome working together because you don't know which one of those 14 species that you're going to put out there are going to hit and make it and go.
There may be seven of them that really take off and go and the other seven don't like the trigger environment that they're in.
So you don't know that when you're planting, so you've got to maximize the amount of diversity you put in.
So then when you do that, then we figured out how to use a roller crimper.
Now a roller crimper is a device, it's a round barrel and it's got a chevron pattern on it.
And when you get cover crops growing at a certain stage in their life, they are able to be rolled down with a roller crimper and terminated.
So we started doing this with cereal rye.
So now, we are up to this point now, we are almost off of everything, okay?
We're down to 70% reduction of inputs.
Well, we started to roll cover crop before the soybeans, and we were now letting this mat.
Now, just imagine cereal rye gets six feet tall.
That's how tall I am, and it's over my head.
And we lay this flat, okay?
And then the beans go into it, and the beans grow out of it, and this mat that we just laid down is the armor on the soil.
It's the thatch that's about 10 inches deep.
There's nothing coming through that.
There's no weeds.
So we plant beans.
The first year we did this, we planted a thousand acres of beans.
You have a 10-inch map on top of your soil.
How deep do you plant the beans to make sure the weeds can't catch up with them?
Well, we're planting beans about an inch and a half deep.
So when you pull into the field, now we do this two different ways.
This is one way we do it.
We roll first and come in after the roller.
And now the planter is going to kind of press everything down.
And we don't use any row cleaners to open up.
So our double disc openers are cutting through that.
We're going the same direction that the rye was going.
Rolled down, okay?
So if the tractor went that way, that's how we're going this way with the plant in the same direction.
And then we're going to plant the beans right into this, and then the beans are going to come up and grow, and there's not going to be any weed pressure for the first 45 or 60 days, if any.
So what we did was we did 1,000 acres like this of soybeans.
We left 100-acre field that we sprayed no chemistry on just to see if it would work.
We did this for two years.
That's when I said, how come we're not organic?
And then the third year, we stopped everything.
What did you see on that 100 acres that you didn't spray?
We didn't see any weeds.
Or we didn't see enough weeds to be a problem that would mitigate yield or hurt yield.
Too many times weeds are looked at as a bad thing.
Weeds are not always bad.
Weeds are telling you something out there.
Certain weeds will tell you, you get a yellow weed that comes up in your field, you've got a sulfur problem.
Let that weed play out because that weed's there for a reason.
That weed happens to be a good sequester of sulfur.
Well, your profile is telling you you need sulfur so that yellow weed comes up and away it goes, does its thing, and you won't see it again.
We've seen this many, many times.
So one of the things that farmers are so tied up on is they can't drive down the road and see any weeds in their fields, so they've got to go get their sprayer and spray again to try to clean all the weeds up.
I don't look at it that way.
Now, if you have an explosion of weeds, that's not a good thing.
But I'm talking about 5%, 10% of weeds is not going to hurt a thing.
What was your...
And then, are you now, at this point, are you marketing yourself as regen, chemical-free, organic?
When does that start, and what are the economics of that?
Yeah, so we decided to go organic, I think it was 2017 or 18.
I think it was 18.
And...
When we went that route, we were then certified.
I started with 500 acres, and it took us like four years to get, or five years to get the whole farm in, because again, I just come, you know, from 08, I just jumped in headfirst on cover, something I've never seen before, cover crops.
And we're now at a point where we can go organic.
And we've got to be a little more careful here because there's no more easy buttons to push.
Okay?
There's no chemical buttons I can push.
And we're also, Bobby, we're doing this with no tillage.
I mean, this is what's so unheard of.
There are a lot of organic farms out there that are certified organic, but they're mass tillage.
I mean, it's mass destruction.
They're tilling 10, 12, 14 times a year.
We are doing this with no tillage.
Because if you look at the principles of soil health, and this is where it all begins and ends, the principles of soil health.
The first one is diversity.
You've got to maximize the diversity of the cover crop package you're using and maximize your cash crop rotations.
I mean, you mentioned in our bio that we've got five crops.
We're up to nine now.
So we just keep moving for more and more and more diversity.
And another one of them is minimizing disturbance.
Now what that means is not only tillage disturbance, but chemistry disturbance as well.
On the farm that with the combination now of no chemicals and no tillage for 11 years now.
And this is on large scale row crop.
So we've got to keep in mind that we can do this.
Now, I want to stress here though.
I never pound the table and say, you better farm the way.
I never do that.
What I want to tell you is, look, we are working on a system that has taken everything away, and I'm way over there.
Over here is the group that is doing nothing.
Let's meet somewhere in the middle and let's get started on regenerative practices of farming.
And then we'll decide within your context, which, by the way, is another principle, where can we take your farm safely and not jeopardize the livelihood of your farm?
So are you, I mean, nowadays, almost all the soy and corn that you get in this country is GMO.
Are you using...
You know, are you using Roundup Ready corn, but just not using the Roundup?
No, no.
We are now either buying certified organic seed, which would be all non-GMO, or what we're doing, we're doing something else that's pretty cool, I think, on the farm.
We're doing what's called epigenetics.
If you want me to go into that, I can.
It'll take me a few minutes to get into it.
I think that's really, I mean, to me, I'm fascinated by epigenetics.
The epigenetics are the impacts of exposures That actually amplify over generations.
So there are certain chemicals, and Roundup is one of them, where you infect or you expose a mother rat, and her babies will show some impact, but their babies show a much greater impact.
And this is something that was dismissed by science even 15 years ago.
But it's now mainstream science.
Yeah.
So here's what...
And I've got to give a precursor here, okay?
You have to do this legally.
There are rules and regulations that must be followed here.
So here's what we did.
And again, Bobby...
When I'm sitting around thinking about the principles of soil health and being regenerative and being a good steward of the land and being conservation-minded, I'm always thinking, I'm not inventing anything new here.
I'm trying to remember everything that we've forgotten.
I mean, think about how the homesteaders farmed.
They took their 80-acre plot and they divided it into fourths.
And they had a fourth of alfalfa, or a clover.
They had a fourth of wheat, a fourth of beans, and a fourth of corn.
And the clover, they bailed two or three times a year.
Guess what?
That was the fuel for the horses.
Then they plowed that under.
Of course, we're not doing the tillage part.
But then that became the nitrogen for their corn for the next year.
I mean, they were already doing these things.
So now I'm thinking about when I was a 14-year-old kid, and I'm out on the farm, and it's a beautiful fall day.
It's about 75 degrees.
There's not a cloud in the sky.
The beans are ready, and Dad says, it's time to get the two wagons out of the barn.
We're going to go get our seed beans for next year.
This was in the late 70s, early 80s, okay?
No GMOs.
There's no rules, no regulations.
You were more than I said, Dad, what are you doing?
Why would you do this when you can just go down the road?
Son, we are letting our beings adapt to our system.
That is epigenetics.
So now I'm thinking the same thing.
So we go to the USDA. There's a building in Urbana, Illinois, and they house every seed known to man and woman.
Bobby, every seed's in there.
So you go to their catalog and you look for soybean genetics that are off patent.
Okay, this is critical here.
Please, anybody listening, you have to do this legally.
So we bought 10 varieties Of non-GMO beans that were off patent.
100 bucks a piece.
And they give you 50 seeds.
So you have to grow these out by hand.
The first wave is by hand.
And then when we saw the first year's production off of those 10, we quickly cut it to five.
Okay?
Now it took four years of growing these out to get to enough supply that we can now put it in our big John Deere planter and go out and plant a 40-acre field.
Okay so we now we still kept these five separated this whole time so now we've got the five planted out in the field that we've legally grown ourselves and I decided on the day of harvest I said you know what How do I know which variety my farm is going to adapt to?
So I just said, we're going to make a land race, and we combined all five together, and then we went out the next spring, and that was our supply for the whole bean crop on our farm.
And we planted our beans out of our own supply.
And not only that, Bobby, but it's a supply that is adapting to our system.
And we're doing the same thing with cereal rye.
And we're doing the same thing with livestock.
We've got a cow herd and we've got a sheep herd.
We do not introduce any outside genetics.
It's all being done within the herd.
All of the sires are being picked from inside the herd.
And where do you market, and do you get a premium for selling organic, etc.?
Yeah, we get a premium for selling organic, and it's typically been fairly high over the conventional corn and soybean guys, but there's been a lot of Supply coming in from overseas that has flooded our market and our prices are extremely depressed right now.
Organics coming from overseas?
From India.
A lot of organic comes in from India and it oversupplies our demand and then you know what happens there.
The prices go down.
A year and a half ago, Bobby, there was a bid out there for organic beans at $40 a bushel and today it's $19.
So it's been cut in half in 18 months.
So there's a lot of rules and regs that need to be looked at.
Now, they are trying to help.
There are some new rules that have come in on the organic side, and they are trying to maintain the integrity here a little bit better.
So it is happening.
It just, you know, things like that are hard.
That's hard.
And I'm going to go ahead and announce something here right now on your podcast.
We are also Regenified Certified, which is a stamp of approval from a company that is out measuring your regenerative practices.
And it's a five-tier system, and we came in at Tier 4, which I'm very proud of.
So being organic, being no-till, coming in at Tier 4 is amazing.
So I'm very proud of that.
And who, you know, when you say somebody put out a bid for $40 soybeans, who is that?
Is that like Whole Foods or something?
That was a processor that was looking for food grade soybeans to put into food that we would eat as a consumer.
And does the Indian market respond to that bid?
Are they going to change their crops over there, or is that just on the market?
Well, that probably has already been, I mean, those are slow boats coming across, you know, those crops already had to have been figured out a year in advance.
They were probably, their timing was good, but I think that flow is coming all the time, Bobby.
I don't think it was just a spike in supply because the price ran up.
I think there were other And I'm not a great one to discuss about this because I don't spend a lot of time on this because I've got so many other things to worry about.
But I think it was one of those perfect storm situations where there was a lot of supply coming when the price was high and then they just slammed us with bushels and then the price just quickly tailed off.
You know, I've heard smaller farmers, you have a big, you have like 10 sections, right?
7,000 acres.
Yeah.
That's about 10 square miles, right, of farm.
But I've heard that from smaller farmers, you know, who might have a section or a half a section, that it's much more difficult for them to do no-till and organic, for that matter.
It's more difficult than for the bigger operations.
Possibly, but I think, you know, I think the next big push in the regenerative movement is education.
We've got...
It's just...
It's simply...
I think, Bobby, if you were to go on to that 500 acre producer's farm, and if you were able to implement a program with him, sit down and understand what his risk level is, understand where his context is, and figure understand where his context is, and figure out and come up with a game plan for him to get started.
And remember, I said, we cannot jeopardize the farm.
And it's my opinion that the first time anybody ever tries anything new, it better work, because if it doesn't, they're not coming back.
So with all that being said, we've got to get the teachers out there to get this layer of support to help these farmers to get comfortable to move into these regenerative practices.
Most of the time, Bobby, it's just a simple fact is they don't know what to do.
They hear these podcasts like this, they go to conferences, but they still don't understand how do I come home and implement a program?
And that's what we've got to figure out how to do is get this teaching layer.
But you help young farmers or farmers who are trying to get into it, right?
Oh, yeah.
I travel the world.
I mean, I'm probably on the road now more than I am farming.
I mean, I am stretched pretty thin.
I'm going to Argentina in a couple weeks.
I was in Estonia earlier this year.
I'll be in South Africa.
I mean, it's just on and on and on.
And I'm okay with that.
This teaching is what's driving this and what's moving this.
I mean, Bobby, when I get a text message from somebody on the other side of the planet that says, thank you very much, I went and saw you speak somewhere.
I went home and implemented what you said.
I wish I would have done this 10 years ago.
Thank you.
That makes my week, you know?
And that's what it's all about.
And so, you know, what have the economics been for you?
How have the economics been?
Yeah.
Yeah, economics are good.
I mean, there's a point in the middle.
When you do the transition from doing nothing to starting these regenerative practices, there may be a little bit of yield drag there, a little bit, but not enough to make it worrisome.
But Bobby, when you then go into organic with no tillage, we really dropped on the yield.
But you have to understand Right now, on our farm, we are saving close to $2.7 million a year on expenses because we're not buying fertilizer.
We're not buying chemistry.
We're not buying any more seed.
And we're raising all of our own beans.
Now, I know there's opportunity costs for those beans to be sold, and we're losing out on that.
I get that.
But these beans are adapting to our system.
We're using them.
So when you start to add all of the input costs up and the savings that we are, it's unbelievable.
And most of our fields will be running in that 20% return on investment.
But we do have some fields that are at 100%.
But those are situations that are special.
Maybe they've been alfalfa for they're going into their second year.
There's no expense on that.
There's a little bit of fertility we need to get back.
And the alfalfa fields are the only fields in the farm that we do use some livestock manure on.
Because once you remove that crop four or five times a year, that's total removal.
And that's hard on the soil.
So we augment that with livestock manure.
But those are the only fields.
Just so people can understand who aren't, you know, farmers.
How much, you know, what are your revenues per acre, you know, and your cost versus, you know, profit per acre?
Just generally speaking, what do you want?
How much does a farmer want that's going to make him happy per acre?
Now, you want me to answer that in my way and the neighbors?
You want me to answer two ways?
Both of them.
Okay.
All right.
What, you know, I, again, our system is not about yield.
Now, we, I understand you have to make yield to pay the bills.
I understand that.
But that's not what's driving, I mean, I mean, I'm going to answer your question, but I'm going to make myself a note here.
Human health, I want to come back to that, okay?
We're going to come back to human health.
So what I like to do is I want to be in a margin area where we are starting Somewhere between $1,200 and $1,600 an acre gross, okay?
So whatever that crop is, if it's $10 a bushel corn at 140 bushel an acre, that's $1,400 an acre gross, okay?
That's the starting point where I'd like to start from.
Now, let's go to the expense side.
And we've got spreadsheets, we've got flowcharts, we've got all this stuff going on.
So we know where our costs are, okay?
And when you add everything in, cash rent, mortgage payments, living expenses, you add everything in down to this pin right here.
And then you look at the two, I would love to be in that $500 an acre profit area.
$500 to $700.
So we're coming from $1,400 down to $700.
So that $700 of expenses, Bobby, is everything.
Cash rent, mortgage, everything.
Okay.
The neighbors, let's put the neighbors into perspective.
The neighbors right now have got roughly a cost of $900 an acre to put out an acre of corn.
Almost $900.
So, and let's just assume for easy math, and I'm going to go to my calculator here, so I apologize.
I'm going to tip my head a little bit.
So $900 plus, let's say, cash rent is $320 an acre.
I don't know.
Let's just use that number.
That seems like a pretty good number.
That's $1,220.
And right now, December corn is trading around $4.70 something.
It's in that $4.70 area.
And let's assume that they're getting a $0.40 basis at the elevator.
So that takes your corn down to $4.40.
So let's divide the $12.20 by $4.40.
They'd have to average 277 bushels to break even.
That's not possible.
That is not possible.
I'm trying to work on a $500 an acre margin profit.
They've got to maintain 277 bushel an acre to break even.
So what's happening to them?
I mean, are they coming over to you and knocking on your door and saying...
Sometimes.
Like I told you earlier in the podcast, I... I'd never pound this down anybody's throat, including my neighbors, okay?
My neighbors know who I am.
We all get along.
They know how I'm farming.
My...
I am always looking for validations, whatever that may be, okay?
You know, you walk out into a field of ours and it is so loud out there because the bugs and the birds and everything's chirping and, I mean, it is literally that loud out in the middle of our field.
That's a validation that you are growing a beautiful ecosystem, okay?
Another validation is It's when I get a phone call from one of my neighbors who farms very, very, very large.
Very large.
More than 40,000 acres.
Okay?
And they're a conventional farmer, full tillage, full chemistry, full everything.
They call me up and say, can we please have a meeting and we need to talk about cover crops.
I say, you bet.
So we have the meeting.
I go into their office.
We sit down and we're small talking and I say, okay, guys, why am I here today?
This is the answer they gave me.
We know there's change coming.
We see it.
We understand that cover crops and no-till are going to be a factor of farming in the future.
We need you to teach us how to do it.
Perfect.
That's all we need.
Because honestly, Bobby, where I'm located, the neighbors are going to watch that guy more than they're going to watch me.
So if that guy there starts implementing cover crops and no-till, they're all going to start saying, huh, maybe we better start getting involved.
And lo and behold, as I drive around the community, I'm starting to see fields slowly popping up that are green with cover crops.
So sometimes things happen, as you know, because of attrition.
So maybe, you know, sometimes hounding on the table and browbeating does not work.
We need to show them how you do this and explain to them how you do this.
David, anything else I should ask?
Where can they find him?
Oh, yeah.
Does he have any hope for the future, I guess, too, maybe?
Yeah.
What do you think?
I mean, are you optimistic about the future, about us making this transition as a nation to this kind of, you know, sustainable agriculture?
Yes, but I think what you need to understand here, Bobby, is we need to understand what does success look like, okay?
Do you honestly think we could get 100% of the farmers to farm this way?
No way.
You know it's not going to happen, so you have to understand that.
So now you have to say to yourself, okay, You know what?
When I'm President of the United States, I think, to me, a solution that looks positive would be a 40% movement into regenerative.
Think about that.
Just think.
Just think about...
I'm just going to use rough numbers here for my math in my head.
It's not quite 200 million, but there's 180 million acres of corn and soybeans grown in the United States, plus or minus a few acres, okay?
40% of that is what?
72 million acres?
Think about that.
If we were to get 72 million acres farming in regenerative conservation practices, we would change the planet.
Then everyone looks to the United States as the powerhouse because we are.
So if the United States can do this, why can't China do this?
Why can't India do this?
Why can't South America do this?
Or whatever the case may be.
So yes, I am very hopeful that this will happen in the future.
And honestly, I think I think we need, the government subsidies need to put a little more teeth into the payout process.
And this is what I mean by that.
I think you should set up a five-tier level.
Hey, if you don't want to implement any regenerative practices, fine.
Then you don't get any government subsidy.
But if you want to do 20% of implementation, we'll give you 20% of the payment.
So on, so on, and so on.
To where if you got to a level five, you could get all of the government subsidy payments if you gave us something in return.
And by the way, I am heading into year six now of zero government subsidies.
None.
Haven't had any government multi-paril insurance.
We don't take, we're not in ART or PLC. There is no government subsidy multi-paril crop insurance.
We don't do any of that.
And we're doing this to scale.
And I'm telling you, this can be done.
You need to change the mindset.
And that's another thing, Bobby.
We've got to understand this is heritage.
I mean, you step onto a farm and if you start to offend them of the way, they're going to politely ask you to leave and never come back.
So we cannot offend them.
We have to show them that there maybe is another way of farming to add to their current system.
You mentioned human health.
Yeah.
I want to go there.
Everybody today wants to talk about Regenerative farming and increasing human health.
Okay, I get it.
I'm totally on board.
But what they're talking about is taking a food that has lost its nutrient density over the years and regaining that nutrient density through these farming practices.
I totally agree with that.
I mean, my gosh, Bobby, we've lost over a third of our nutrient density in the last 20 years.
Over a third.
You'd have to eat, I think it was eight oranges today, to equal one orange from 50 years ago on nutrient density.
Why?
Why is that happening?
Okay, that's one side of the human health.
The other side of the human health equation is our health, our, us.
Us being around these chemicals and these caustic herbicides and pesticides and all of these things.
Insecticides.
I can remember as a kid being 14 years old on the bus coming home from school and couldn't wait to get home and help dad because he's planting corn today.
And I'm out there in the middle of insecticide boxes and all this caustic stuff and on the side of that insecticide box is a skull and crossbones.
And I'm like, Dad, what's this?
He said, son, that's Dad.
I'm like, why are we touching this stuff?
So then, now I'm older and I'm thinking about different things.
You know, once you go on the other side of life, you know, we're both on the back end of life now.
I'm 60.
I turned 60 in January.
And we look at things differently now.
And I'm sitting here thinking, let's see now.
My wife had breast cancer when she was 30.
My son-in-law or my nephew had non-hospital lymphoma when he was 23.
My uncle died of cancer.
My sister-in-law died of cancer.
My mother had diabetes.
I've got diabetes.
What's going on?
So then you start to think to yourself, okay, I am done.
I don't care if our farm loses 40% yield.
I don't care.
I am no longer going to expose our family members or our team members to these caustic chemicals.
Period.
So that's where we are, Bobby.
And once you start to think like this, I mean, you probably can think back through your family tree and some of the health issues coming through time.
It's there.
I mean, look at autoimmune diseases are skyrocketing.
Everything seems to be a problem right now.
Yeah, and farmers, farm communities are now some of the sickest communities in our country.
Yeah, yeah.
So, you know, I can't say enough about the way we farm.
Is our system going to feed the world today?
No, it's not.
I'll be honest with you, it's not.
I am doing too many radical things that is not generating the yield that we need, but we are generating nutrient density to where that if you only have a small portion of food to supply to a third world country, It now is at least higher nutrient density.
So that small portion goes further in their lifestyle.
Now, we will be there.
I think we'll be there before I retire.
I think I'm 60.
I've probably got 12 good years in me of being in charge here.
I mean, coming up with the ideas.
We can do a lot in 12 years.
No doubt about it.
And the next frontier on this whole thing is biology.
And it has already started and we need a systematic biology program running side by side our systematic principles of soil health building your farm into the future.
Rick Clark, thank you very much.
Tell us how people can reach you.
Yeah, this Thank you.
I am online and I'm known as Farm Green 13.
So that's Farm Green, the number 13.
Our webpage is www.farmgreen.land.
I put my email out there and I'll even give you my cell phone number because I publish it everywhere because I think teaching is critical.
Email is rick at farmgreen.land.
Cell phone 765-585-2413.
Bobby, thank you so much.
And what I really appreciate and respect is the fact that you understand how important this is and you've taken time.
I mean, you're in the middle of a presidential race here having a podcast with me.
So thank you very much.
I appreciate it.
Well, a lot of my presidential race is about restoring health, restoring soils, you know.
It's the foundation stone of our country.
Let me ask you a personal question.
Do you have any opinions about raw milk?
I think raw milk is just fine to drink, if you understand the source words coming from.
I've drank it in the past, and honestly, because of my diabetes, it kind of raises my sugar, but if I was a diabetic, I would be drinking raw milk, yes.
Rick, thank you very much.
God bless you.
And I'm going to come back and do your podcast in a couple of weeks.
