Episode 6: Cover Cropping Trials and Goat Herds with Eric Odberg
Eric Odberg speaking with other FLOURISH participants
About the episode:
Join us as we chat with farmer Eric Odberg about his use of goat and cattle grazing in his cover crop system. Eric shares how partnering with a goat herder and cattle ranchers has helped integrate livestock into his operation over the past few years. Eric and Ryan explore lessons from Eric’s on-farm trials, including surprising discoveries, what’s worked, what hasn’t, and what he’s learned along the way.
Eric is a participant in the FLOURISH on-farm trials.
About the podcast:
Welcome to the FLOURISH Podcast, where we at the Palouse Conservation District interview farmers, ranchers, and researchers on topics related to conservation agriculture. FLOURISH, also known as Farmers Leading Our United Revolution in Soil Health, is a farmer-led conservation innovation project to support the widespread adoption of soil health practices by integrating cover crops and livestock into farming operations in the Inland Pacific Northwest. The ambitious purpose of FLOURISH is to not only regenerate our soils, but also our rural communities by creating opportunities for younger generations to return to productive, sustainable farms. On this podcast, we bring you updates from on-farm trials, research, findings, and advice from farmers.
The views and opinions expressed on the FLOURISH Podcast are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Palouse Conservation District or the USDA Conservation Innovation Grants program. Any content provided by our Guests are of their opinion and are not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual, or anyone or anything.
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Introduction
Hello, and welcome to the FLOURISH Podcast, where we at the Palouse Conservation District interview farmers, ranchers, and researchers on topics in conservation agriculture. FLOURISH, also known as Farmers Leading Our United Revolution in Soil Health, is a farmer-led conservation innovation project to support the widespread adoption of soil health practices by integrating cover crops and livestock into farming operations. The ambitious purpose of FLOURISH is to not only regenerate our soils, but also our rural communities by creating opportunities for younger generations to return to productive, sustainable farms. On this podcast, we bring you updates from on-farm trials, research findings, and advice from farmers.
Ryan Boylan
Hello, and welcome back to the FLOURISH Podcast. I'm here today with Eric Odberg from Odberg Farms. Eric, thanks for joining us.
Eric Odberg
Hey, you're welcome, Ryan. Thanks for inviting me.
Ryan Boylan
Yeah, it's a snowy day here in Eastern Washington, and Eric made the trek into our office, so thanks for doing that.
Eric Odberg
Perfect timing. Timing's everything.
Ryan Boylan
Eric, would you mind talking a little bit about your farm, where it is, how much rain you get, some crop rotations?
Eric Odberg
Yeah, I'm a fourth-generation farmer in Genesee, Idaho. I farm with my wife, Malia, and our three boys, Ethan, Evan, and Nick. My great-grandfather settled in the Genesee area in 1894, so this year is the 131st year of our farm. We farm in a 22-inch precipitation zone, farm 2,200 acres. I've been no-tilling for 23 years.
Ryan Boylan
Nice.
Eric Odberg
We are committed to conservation. I just completed our fifth CSP contract, so I've been doing CSP with NRCS for 20 years now, and that's where I've had a little bit of experience growing cover crops. It's a great conservation program.
It covers all aspects of conservation farming on your farm. It's supposed to be for growers, producers that are kind of pushing the envelope, but the farther you get into it, the harder it is to find practices. They call them enhancements that you're eligible for and that you can get funding for, so it's been a good one to have.
I'm up for renewal this next year, so I need to decide if I'm going to keep on doing it or not.
Ryan Boylan
Yeah, that's good. That's what enabled you to start experimenting with cover crops?
Eric Odberg
Yeah, I got my first taste of cover crop with it.
My last contract, I had a cover crop component with it. I was supposed to do a full field cover crop, and so that prevented me from starting FLOURISH on the first year. Tami Stubbs, who used to work in your office here, approached me about being a collaborator in this FLOURISH project, and I kind of had a problem because I was already in the CSP contract and doing cover crops, so it kind of threw me out and made me ineligible on the first year, but I went ahead and had cover crops and grazed it, so we can talk more about that.
Ryan Boylan
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Was there anything else about the farm? Like, oh, what's your standard crop rotation? I know yours is maybe a little different than most folks'.
Eric Odberg
Oh, it's a standard three-year rotation with winter wheat, spring grain, pulses. But then I also grow spring canola, which that can replace spring grain or the pulse leg of the rotation, and then I've also experimented with other crops, non-traditional Palouse crops like sunflowers and millet and sorghum and flax. So I've tried to add more diversity into our crop rotation because that's an important part of conservation farming and making it all work, and so the longer rotation the better, but to still remain profitable and having those alternative crops actually make a return is challenging, and so I haven't done anything field-wide. Well, I mean, I have done things field-wide, but I keep things relatively small. I don't convert the whole farm or half a farm to sunflowers.
Ryan Boylan
Yeah, that's good. So, the podcast is about FLOURISH. Again, I say this almost every time, but it's Farmers Leading Our United Revolution Soil Health, and Eric is one of those farmers. Eric, can you tell us why you were interested in joining the program, aside from Tami kind of knocking on your door?
Eric Odberg
Well, like I said, I had experimented with cover crops a little bit with CSP, and I wanted to do more. And so I found this enhancement with CSP that allowed me to do that. But with this new project that you had, that you offered, it just seemed, I mean, it was lucrative and also really kind of helped push it more and develop, get more experience with cover crops. And it has allowed me to already learn more about cover crop, cover crop grazing, and really learning as you go.
And so, yeah, I think it's great and glad to be a part of it.
Ryan Boylan
Yeah, we're fortunate to have you. So, aside from joining FLOURISH, what sort of motivated you? I know you said you've been conservation farming for at least 20 years, probably longer, and that's like one of the big things, but what was your motivation for moving in this direction of, yeah, more diverse crops, cover cropping, livestock?
Eric Odberg
Well, you know, I've been no-tilling for 23 years and really felt that I was at a roadblock or standstill with that.
I didn't, you know, we saw a lot of improvements and benefits in the beginning, and it just seemed like, yeah, we're just not making many more progress. And then also encountering problems as well, like compaction and weed issues. Italian ryegrass is our number one weed, and so I had more problems with that.
And I just thought that cover crops were a way of moving our farm forward with conservation. I mean, as part of conservation farming and getting more diversity in your rotation, using a non-synthetic means of controlling problem weeds, helping with compaction, increasing organic matter, you know, being able to sequester more carbon on the farm with cover crops, and yeah, just a lot of benefits, and it seemed like that was the next step for our farm as far as conservation goes.
Ryan Boylan
Yeah, that's great. So you also have, you did one year of FLOURISH so far, but you have a pretty unique story about integrating livestock into your FLOURISH trial, and bigger than that even. Would you mind talking a little bit about just how it came about, how you got livestock on the farm?
Eric Odberg
Right, right. Well, yeah, two years ago was the year that I had this enhancement with CSP, and it was a full field cover crop, and I chose to have 195-acre field, seeded all the cover crops, full season cover crop.
I tried previously trying to do the overwinter, you know, seed in the fall, overwinter cover crop, and I just didn't see any much benefit results from that. And so I wanted to do this full season cover crop, and when I seeded it that first year, I seeded it June 1, and kind of slowly to take off, but then when I started getting a good growth to it, I noticed all the wildlife that was out there and grazing on this thing. And I had a neighbor who's also part of this project, Clint Zenner, and he'd done some experimenting with livestock grazing, with doing cover crops, and so I asked him if he had any access or any suggestions about being able to graze this cover crop, and he told me about this rancher, goat rancher, and first he said, well, how do you feel about goats grazing on your cover crop? And I'm like, oh, okay, it's grazing, it's livestock grazing, and he put me in contact with this goat rancher in White Bird, Idaho. Her name's Marianne Lindsey, and she had a large herd of goats, and at the end of July of that, you know, two years ago, she brought up her goats and slowly kind of released them out there, and we had like, she had 550 head of goats out there.
Ryan Boylan
Oh, wow.
Eric Odberg
Two goat herders, they were, that she had, they're from Peru, they lived out there, they camped out there, they had a camper, and they just stayed out there all summer. They had four herding dogs, sheep dogs, and electro fence, and they'd pin them up, pin the goats up in like 25, 30 acre areas, and it was intensive grazing.
I have a field man, I call him my regenerative field man, and when he, I showed him pictures of it, or he was out there, and he said, that is scorched earth grazing. Those goats would just, they'd graze it clear down to dirt. I mean, it looked like I had tilled the field, because there just nothing left.
But what I noticed after they had done that, the regrowth that got after they did that. And so, I kind of did some research about that, what is really, what was really going on out there. And what I found out is that when a plant is grazed, it releases, the plant releases root exudates, which are carbohydrates, and proteins, and fats.
Their roots release that into the soil, which then feeds the soil microbes, which then influences plant growth, which causes the plants to grow more. And then the plants create more root mass. And then therefore, you get higher organic matter through that.
And you get other benefits like higher water holding capacity, more nutrient cycling is going on out there. It helps create more nutrients for other crops.
Ryan Boylan
Yeah, that's cool. So, was, well, two things. I remember coming out to soil sample that fall in the cover crop, maybe it was like August or early August, maybe.
Eric Odberg
Yeah, it was a fall after that cover crop or with the cover crop was still growing, still out there. She didn't take the goats off until October 26.
Ryan Boylan
Oh, wow.
Eric Odberg
When we had our first freeze.
So, we were really blessed to have a late freeze that fall, and she was able to keep them out there a really long time. But yeah, that's when you were soil testing, it's still in cover crop, it's still growing.
Ryan Boylan
Yeah, it was like actively growing. That's interesting. Yeah, it was like hip high.
Eric Odberg
And so, the results from that, you know, everything looked positive with the the soil health testing that you got from that, but the organic matter wasn't really high. It was like only, I say only 2.8%, which for our farm is not really high, but I think it was because everything was still growing.
And so, when I, so I seeded it to spring canola this past year in ‘24. And then I seeded it to winter wheat this fall. And, you know, of course, I soil tested before that. And so, then the organic matter that I got on that soil test was 4%.
Ryan Boylan
Oh, wow. Cool.
Eric Odberg
So, I think that's more accurate measure of what the cover crop had. And then what was really surprising, though, is that the residual nitrogen in that field was, I had 197 pounds of residual N.
Ryan Boylan
Whoa.
Eric Odberg
Whereas my other fields that I have, they go from 24 to 62 pounds of residual N. And so, I cut my N way back when I seeded, and I applied very little phosphate to it when I seeded.
I applied no seed row phosphate, a little bit with my deep band, and that was it.
Ryan Boylan
Do you remember what you cut your rate back by?
Eric Odberg
Um, I think I ended up like at 70, 75 pounds maybe of N versus, you know, 100. Yeah, like around 100 or 120. And so, cut it back, what I thought was substantial, but I probably could go cut it back further. But yeah, we'll see as we go ahead with this project.
Ryan Boylan
Yeah, very cool. Okay, so back to the goats, did you track like rate of gain, like weight gained on the goats or anything like that?
Eric Odberg
Yes, the goat rancher told me that the goats gained about 40 to 50 pounds on the cover crop. And that was with the billies. The male goats didn't gain, she said, but the goats also bred up really well. So, maybe that was the reason why the male goats didn't gain, they were just too active. But she got a lot more goats out of it, and most of the goats gained quite a bit.
Ryan Boylan
Yeah, and then if you would want to, did you talk about the arrangement that you had with the goat herder? Like they just brought the goats in, managed everything, you were kind of hands off.
Eric Odberg
Yeah, I was really quid pro quo, I guess you'd say. I was getting the cover crop grazed, and she was getting this great pasture for her goats, and just kind of said, let's see how this goes. And I didn't really expect anything, and end of all of it, she did end up paying for the grazing that summer, which was a pleasant surprise. And so, on top of what I got with the conservation program payment. Still, I didn't tell my wife, Malia, that this was one of the practices I was going to be implementing, and she's the CFO of Odberg Farms, and when she found out about this, and I mean, you're taking a whole year out of production?
Ryan Boylan
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Eric Odberg
She's like, you didn't, and you didn't run this by me?
Ryan Boylan
That's funny.
Eric Odberg
And I said, well, yeah, so, you know, something, you know, doing this for soil health, improve our ground, and yeah, we're not going to be making that much money with it, but hopefully we will in subsequent years. And like I said, I did follow the cover crop with spring canola.
I was a little bit disappointed with the spring canola stand. I seeded it, and it seeded pretty well with my hoe drill, other than there's just so many roots from the cover crop that would build up on the shanks, and so it kind of, it made more disturbance out there than I would have liked. And then just didn't receive any rain for about a month afterwards, and the ridgetops, the clay ridgetops, they're really impacted by that, and you know, they didn't produce really well. And but, you know, the rest of the field was good dirt, and it did really well, and so it was, the canola did 200 pounds less than another field I had that was more, I guess, regular, conventional grown canola, and so I guess that's what you call a yield drag.
Ryan Boylan
Right.
Eric Odberg
I had a yield drag with coming out of the cover crop, but then hopefully now with the winter wheat that's seeded that I will, you know, see the full results from the cover crop and have a better understanding or estimate of what the value is of cover crop as far as future years production.
Ryan Boylan
Yeah, so do you think the, we talk a lot about like return on investment, do you think the return on the investment of the cover cropping and livestock integration was worth it, like in your opinion? For, you said you had like a nitrogen bonus, and I guess maybe this year you'll see with the winter wheat?
Eric Odberg
Yes, we're still, still don't know yet for sure, but it's something that I'm committed to.
I had a question from a friend of mine, a business friend, Guy Swanson, so probably a few people listening to this might know of him. He, you know, developed the yielder drill, and then he had his Exactrix fertilizer system, and then that's how I got to know him. I have an Exactrix anhydrous ammonia fertilizer system on my drill. But he was asking me about the, you know, the cover crop, cover crop grazing, you know, what's my, what's my goal, what's my end game with this, how it's, what's the benefit of it, because he's very much, you know, believes in no-till, but, you know, all this other regenerative stuff he’s not really sold on, and I guess what I told him is it's part of getting more diversity into the cropping system.
It's just another, getting another leg into that. My dad, we grow cover crops as well, but they, back then it was called green manure, and then they, you know, disk or plow it under, and I had actually, that's when I first got started driving tractor. I'd be out there disking black peas or clover or alfalfa under, and, you know, it was a good conservation practice at the time, but now we know that it's better not to be tilling this stuff under, and it's better to, you know, either spray it out or graze it. And it's kind of going back to older methods of farming, trying to grow, grow our nitrogen organically instead of really, we're trying to reduce synthetic nitrogen all the time, and this is another way of doing that.
Ryan Boylan
Yeah, yeah, and you saw some of those benefits. Yeah, which is cool. So, did you end up terminating the cover crop or you just let it frost out after the grazing was done?
Eric Odberg
Yeah, they weren't able to get, those goats weren't — as hard as they tried, and the goat herders tried, they weren't able to get through all of it. There was about 80 acres that they didn't graze, and so after it all froze, I went out there, we have a flail mower, and I mowed those acres, and that's how I, the frost really terminated the crop is what happened. It was grazed, but it just, like I said, when they grazed it, it just kept on growing, but the stuff that they grazed, I didn't have to do anything to.
Ryan Boylan
Oh, that's great.
Eric Odberg
The frost just took care of it.
Ryan Boylan
Like visually, did you see any difference in the canola that followed between the sides that had been grazed versus mowed?
Eric Odberg
Well, Brad Johnson, who works in your office here, he told me I should do two separate soil tests of those areas, and I kind of forgot about that.
Ryan Boylan
Or we should have come out and done that.
Eric Odberg
Yeah, but I might notice a yield difference. I know the areas when I'm harvesting the winter wheat this summer, the yield difference. I'm sure, yeah, I'll be very cognizant of that when I'm in the combine, because I know —
Ryan Boylan
Where they are. Yeah. So then this year with your FLOURISH trial, you weren't able to get goats again, correct?
Eric Odberg
Well, she had a big sale. She sold most of her goats, and so I had to find another rancher to graze cover crop and turn to Clint Zenner again, and he let me approach the rancher that he was using, and so I was able to use him. He had, him and another younger rancher had about 30 head of cows.
I had much smaller cover crop acreage this year, just the 30 acres that were in the FLOURISH project, and it worked well. The cattle did a good job. They were almost as good as goats.
I had it adjacent to an old meadow that we had. My grandfather was actually a rancher. He just messed with cows and his brothers did the farming, and so every piece of ground that he purchased had a pretty sizable meadow in it, and so I thought to have a cover crop next to the meadow would be able to, he'd have about 50 acres to be able to graze in, and having cover crops and this grass, so it worked well.
He took them to the sale right after they came off the cover crop, and he was really, he said that his cows gained the most they've ever gained on summer pasture with my cover crop, and so he was very, very happy about that. And once again, we didn't have a rental agreement in place, did the same thing, quid pro quo, and he sent me a check at the end of the season. It was kind of similar to what I got, and so it was very nice to see.
Ryan Boylan
So do you have a preference, goats or cattle?
Eric Odberg
Well, I've been still in contact with a goat rancher, and she hasn't gotten rid of her goats. She still has a goat herd, and I'm not sure exactly how many she has, but during this past year with this last year's cover crop, I sent her pictures of it, and she's like, oh gosh, man, that looks like some really good feed. So when was he able to start grazing, and I told him towards the end of July, and that's about when she started grazing as well, and she actually got a longer period of time than he did this year. We had earlier frost, so he just got a couple months with his cows. And so I might have her come back and graze more, so I might have more cover crop grazing than just the 30 acres, but I'm trying to... As of right now, I have things that's planned out of the 30 and an additional 22 acres that I have in the Northwest Water Quality Initiative with NRCS and the Nez Perce County Conservation District, and it's in the... It's all part of the Catholic Creek water drainage.
It's the priority area, and we have a rim ground that flows and drains into that, and Catholic Creek runs directly into the Clearwater River, and so it's trying to... It's addressing water quality, salmon habitat, and yeah, it's good. It's a good program, and you don't... I'm not an avid fisherman or anything, and here a couple years ago, we had a foreign exchange student from Ecuador, and I took him down to the Nez Perce National Park down there at Spalding, and it was closed. And I was like, oh darn, but they still had park rangers there, and they said, well, you just go right over here to a Lapwai Creek, and the salmon are spawning right now, and so we went and walked over there, and sure enough, I had never seen that before in one of the —
Ryan Boylan
It’s so cool, yeah, yeah.
Eric Odberg
Yeah, but in one of the small creeks that are flowing into the Clearwater to see the salmon spawning. And I don't think that maybe many of the growers that are on these tributaries, that little creek that's flowing out of their farm, realize that it's directly impacting salmon habitat.
Ryan Boylan
Yeah, yeah. I've often heard them referred to as ditches.
Eric Odberg
Yeah, yeah. I mean, they get to that point when they get way up in the country.
Ryan Boylan
No, that's great, yeah. Everything flows downstream. We talked about this a little bit before we started recording, but I think it's important to talk about just the pH issue that is happening a lot on the Palouse. Can you just talk about that and what you've done with liming to address it?
Eric Odberg
Yeah, I've experimented with liming for, I don't know, over 10 years now, maybe close to 15 years. Primarily, I've used sugar beet lime. When I first tried it, I had really great results with it. And then, I like it, I mean, it dropped the pH down, you know, brought the pH up almost immediately and had a real good yield bump from it on the following year. And then I kept, you know, trying it on a field, you know, every year and never got the same results and really kind of got discouraged with it. But, you know, kept trying it, looking at other lime sources.
And I've picked it up again in the last couple of years. Tried a new lime source with the dolomite lime, and it's actually quite a bit more expensive than the sugar beet lime. And so, I've actually reduced the application of it, but I've seen some good initial results with the liming.
With cover crops, I'm hoping that that might see an impact or benefit with that too, regarding the pH, because, you know, you have the nutrient cycling that's going on. You have deep-rooted cover crops. And so, you know, the pH is, you know, from all the years of 40 or 50 years of synthetic nitrogen application, you know, the soil is really stratified and, you know, it's more acidic at the top as far as down deeper.
And hopefully, with the cover crops, more neutral soil will bring the soil pH up as well. So, that's something I haven't seen yet. Well, actually, the soil testing that your conservation district has done, it showed a little bit of improvement, I guess. It's at like 6% rather than under 6%.
Ryan Boylan
Yeah. That's what I was going to ask is, like, what would you say on average your fields are like for pH?
Eric Odberg
Yeah, like five and a half.
Ryan Boylan
Okay.
Eric Odberg
And they say that you get under that is when you start getting impacted or the nutrients become less available. And so, but I think with, you know, we're farming and conservation farming that we've been able to, you know, keep it in that range and not have a big impact with yields yet.
Aluminum toxicity, that's, you know, that I think impacts the yield.
Ryan Boylan
Yeah. That's great. And we talked about aluminum toxicity on a previous podcast with Neil Appel, which is great. So, yeah, thanks for touching on that.
Sort of switching gears a little bit, you mentioned in the beginning that one of the reasons you're motivated to do cover cropping is to diversify your crop rotation, but I know you've been experimenting with other crops. So you mentioned like flax and millet and sunflowers.
Can you just talk about some of those experiences and who you've been working with and how it's been going?
Eric Odberg
Well, what really started it with me… Well, when I first started no-tilling, you know, I tried to get all the information I could and there was growers in our area that went back to the Midwest and went to the Dakota Lakes Research Center and saw and talked to Dwayne Beck. And, I mean, the one thing that he preaches most is rotation, rotation, rotation. And so in order to make no-till work, you have to have rotation.
And I'm a grower for Shepherd's Grain, still a grower for Shepherd's Grain, and at the time the research logistics person was Jeremy Bunch. Now he's the CEO of Shepherd's Grain, but he wanted to do a research project on rotation and wanted to have a six-year rotation. And so there was 50 acres on our farm that we decided to do this research project and implement a six-year rotation.
And so getting more crops into that rotation, crops that aren't growing on the Palouse, which are warm season crops, and there's warm season broadleaves like sorghum and safflower, and then there's warm season grasses like corn, millet, and sorghum. And so we started experimenting with those crops on that 50 acres and then I started trying more of it on other acres on our farm. But that research project really kind of got me started with it and got me some confidence in growing those crops and then trying it more broadly.
But I've still, I kept things barely, you know, not a lot of huge acreage with any of those.
Ryan Boyan
Yeah. So is one of the issues, maybe you can talk about some of the issues growing them, is it just finding a market for like the crops that typically aren't grown here?
Eric Odberg
Yep. That's one of the issues, especially having, I guess, a lucrative market, a food grade market. We're fortunate to have a market up in Spokane called Global Harvest Foods. They are a birdseed manufacturer.
So they take sunflowers, they take millet, but it's for birdseed. So they're not going to pay a whole lot for it. So, but it's a good, really a good fallback market.
So one of the years when I expanded my millet production, I had actually 50 acres of millet and I had kind of arranged to grow this for a malting company for gluten-free malt. They wanted to get into gluten-free malt and change over part of their facility to that. And, well, things didn't pan out.
They backed out of it and they decided not to do it. And so it was going to be more lucrative, but thankfully I did have this fallback birdseed market that I was able to, you know, get rid of the problem.
And then the other problem is we are dealing with these warm season crops, they take longer to grow usually. And we are not set up on the Palouse here to, you know, grow like corn, soybeans. They depend a lot on drying capacity. And we don't have any of that or very little of it here on the Palouse.
And so that is another, you know, drawback or roadblock. When I've grown them on bigger acreage, I've tried desiccation. That's worked all right. I've tried swathing and that works as well. And so I haven't had anything dried. I've just used, you know, depending on aeration in grain bins.
And so that's another, so the markets and then the longer growing season. But you're getting a different kind of crop, you know, you're getting this warm season crop in the rotation that we do not have here on the Palouse, which I think we need. And so...
Ryan Boylan
So have you been working with Washington State University too on like their millet research?
Eric Odberg
Yes, yes. In the last three or four, about three years ago, a couple seasons of growing millet trials on our farm. It was Washington State with Kevin Murphy was the head of the project. And it's like Northwest Palettes.
And, and it's really was studying millet as being a food crop, and not just for birdseed. And so it kept me growing millet, trying different varieties. I pretty much had just tried one variety, Huntsman. That's like the predominant, I guess, standby variety that's grown. And so they got ahold of other varieties and I was able to try them out. And the first year of it was in ‘22.
I had stripped trials of it, but it was a very wet, late... Spring wasn't real wet, but then it got wet in June. And I tried to seed those... I tried to seed millet the first of June and it didn't work out. And I ended up, I didn't seed that millet trial until the like 20th of June.
And I was pretty nervous about that, but I talked to Dave Huggins. He had experimented with, you know, he's in charge of the Cook Conservation Farm. And he had experimented with millet too in the past.
And he'd seeded it that late before and got a crop. And I had read about growers in other areas that had seeded millet late. It's actually a crop that really doesn't take that many growing degree days to get a crop of it. I think it's like 45 days.
Ryan Boylan
Oh, wow.
Eric Odberg
Yeah. It is really short, but to get it to mature and to dry down, that’s another thing. Yeah. So it really doesn't need that long to mature to get and become a crop, but...
Ryan Boylan
Before you can harvest it.
Eric Odberg
Yeah. Before your harvest, it's a lot longer than 45 days.
Ryan Boylan
Right. And then it starts raining in the fall. Yeah. That's hard. That's great.
Well, yeah, it seems like, I mean, I know you've been involved in a lot of research and Eric and I were talking about this when I first moved here. I did some research on his farm. But do you have any ideas of like future directions or where you'd like to see the land grant universities or the conservation districts or whoever, like where would you like to see research go in agriculture? It could be related to regenerative ag, it could be, you know, any ideas you have?
Eric Odberg
Well, I think that our land grant universities have been doing a really great job. I was involved with, I was a collaborator on the REACCH project that was back in 2011, Regional Approaches to Climate Change. It was a $20 million grant and I was trying to look ahead and find strategies, solutions to changing climate that we're experiencing.
And I was in a kind of, it was a research project within REACCH. It was called the Site-Specific Climate-Friendly Farming Project in that. And I got a lot of, it was primarily focusing on variable rate application. I'd been doing that for a few years, late 2000s, 2008, I got started with it. And so it was really good timing to validate what I was doing. I kind of just did it by the seat of my pants.
I knew by the yield monitors out there that our ridge tops or hilltops were only yielding about half of what our draw bottoms were. And so the hilltops didn't need near the amount of nitrogen that our draw bottoms did. And so I got a lot of insight and value out of that research project.
But then after that, U of I got a grant, it's called, it was LIT, Landscapes in Transition.
Ryan Boylan
Oh, yeah.
Eric Odberg
And I was part of that as well, and collaborated with that.
But that, it really focused more on alternative crops, looking at cover crops, winter pulses. And one interesting thing that came out of that is that I found that winter pulses, winter peas had just as much soil health benefit as cover crops. And so it really got me, I had tried winter peas, kind of, right after I first started farming and didn't have a whole lot of success or luck, kind of had some disasters, actually.
Ryan Boylan
That’s the best way to learn.
Eric Odberg
Yeah. And so I was a little reluctant to dive back into them. But, you know, it gave me kind of the incentive to try them. And once again, my neighbor, Clint Zenner, had been trying winter peas as well and seemed to be having good luck.
And so I kind of dove back into growing those and then trying cover crops as well. And so, like right now, I'm continuing on with CSP. I'm in a new, actually an EQIP grant called the Northwest Water Quality Initiative.
And one of the practices that I've signed up for with that is more cover crops. And so I'll be growing cover crops for that and continuing on with FLOURISH. And then now, like I was saying, the land grant university, really, I think they're doing what needs to be done.
And they got this $59 million —
Ryan Boylan
Yeah, it’s insane.
Eric Odberg
— grant to help fund climate-smart practices called IAMP and Innovative Agricultural Marketing Practices. And so it's, you know, having funding to do projects, climate-smart practices such as cover cropping, cover crop grazing. So that's, I'm going to be hopefully getting that, you know, getting help with that.
And reducing synthetic fertilizers, getting funding for applying compost manure, something that I've already started doing the last couple of years. But to get support and funding for that, I've seen pretty good results with that. So, you know, it's just things that I'm always with research programs or conservation programs. I always look at, you know, things I'm already doing and where I can get help or funding to reduce the risk of stuff that I want to do, practices I want to do. And that's what these projects are really doing. There's a couple other things that it's going to have funding for is biochar applications and also intercropping. And that's something that I haven't tried yet, but would like to. Once again, adding more diversity out there and not monocropping. And so there's —
Ryan Boylan
I have an intercrop idea.
Eric Odberg
Okay. What's that?
Ryan Boylan
What do you think of clover below, it could probably like a spring grain maybe, if you could get, if you could interseed both. Or if you could do a biannual clover that you could just then seed into the next year. But then getting rid of it might be challenging.
Eric Odberg
Well, I think it's a good way to get the clover started. And then you have that as a —
Ryan Boylan
Nitrogen seeded.
Eric Odberg
You know, a cover crop for the next following year. And yeah, that's something that I think my neighbor, Clint Zenner, has done.
I'm not sure what the— I think he also started an alfalfa crop that way as well. And so, I mean, intercropping really can encompass a lot of things. It's not just seeding more than one crop at a time.
For actual cash crops, you can have a cover crop seeded with that crop like you're describing there with the clover and that qualifies as well. So I haven't decided if I'm going to pursue that practice or not. I've really been focusing on the ones that I've already been doing to get support for those. But I might.
Ryan Boylan
Yeah. It's funny you say that. It seems like there could be more work done on intercropping here. And I think one of the issues is just like the sorting of the seeds, like if you're going to harvest them together.
Eric Odberg
Right. And I think that our pulse processors really could help out with that. And I think that they are in the position that they could really help us out with that. And I've heard that one of them in the area is, Brocke & Sons, is willing to do that, to tackle it.
And then that's what we need. It's something that we're not doing on the Palouse, kind of like the green drying and separating more than one crop is another little bit of a roadblock. And that's just not being done.
But, I mean, you could have a setup on the farm. I've seen producers in other areas that have a whole setup on their farm where they separate the different crops as they are, after they're harvesting them and before they put them in bins. And so it's being done. And I'm just, I know that that's a goal and it's not quite there yet. Need to see it more, get more experience with it.
One of the, I think there's a couple other cover crop or intercropping ideas that are potential ideas that would work. And that's one of them is peaola, that's peas and canola. I've seen that that works really well.
Another one is flax and garbanzo beans. But, you know, with my Shepherd's Grain research project, I tried flax a couple of times and, you know, it's a pretty good crop to grow. It's not all that different than what we do grow here on the Palouse. But harvesting it has issues with combine fires because the stuff, the straw is very ropey and it just wraps around anything and everything. And so it would wrap around the feeder beater of my combine and then start heating. And I had fires in my combine.
Ryan Boylan
Oh, gosh. It sounds terrifying.
Eric Odberg
That really turned me off on flax, but soil health crop, bringing up phosphorus. But maybe if you are interseeding it with garbanzo beans and harvesting it with garbanzo beans, maybe you won't, that won't be a problem. Yeah. Won't know until you try it.
Ryan Boylan
Yeah, exactly.
Eric Odberg
So hopefully that's not. And so that's why it's good to, you know, try these things on limited acres and get your feet wet before you really dive into it.
Ryan Boylan
So since you've been trying all this stuff on the farm, do you ever have neighbors or people driving past asking what's happening out here?
Eric Odberg
Well, the cover crops with the goats, yeah, that got a lot of interest, I guess. And I don't know, I don't... I'm not much into... I don't go to the coffee shop and I don't pay much attention what neighbors think. You know, I go to these winter conferences and symposiums and never see any growers from my area at them.
Well, I take that back. It's usually Clint Zenner. Clint Zenner and I are the ones that are at them and I don't see anyone else.
But I get the most valuable information from them, the Spokane Conservation Food and Farm Symposium. That was a great one. The Direct Seed Conference, which I've been going to. I was on that board for 12 years and last year I didn't see any growers from our area that went to it.
And, you know, you have your cover crop or Alternative Cropping Symposium that comes up here in February. Very valuable and insightful to, you know, listen to and hear other growers that are experimenting, that you have something in common with, that are trying to push an envelope and committed to conservation agriculture.
Ryan Boylan
Yeah, that's great. I have, like, another question about the research. It sounds like you're so willing to participate in anything and everything. And is that... why is that, do you think? Like, conservation-wise, conservation practices, programs, whatever you want to call them, and, like, research projects. Is it because... yeah, I'm just wondering why.
Eric Odberg
Well, I guess I've always thought that if something is happening, if something is being implemented on our farm, I will have the first-hand, you know, experience of what's actually going out there and how it's... what it's doing to our farm ground. And just really having that first-hand account of what's being done with the research projects.
I had a football... I had a football coach that one of the sayings was that either you're green and you're growing, or you're ripe and you're rotting. And I've always... I think I'm green and growing. So always, you know, willing to try new and different things and being on the forefront of trying new things.
So, I guess that's what's driven me to collaborate. And like I said, I've always, you know, been cautious, limited acreage starting off with. Not betting the whole farm on it. And I guess also, I'm in kind of a unique position that, you know, we own our farm ground. And so, I know I'm not... I feel very blessed about that.
But that really, I guess, enables me and our farm to do these things and take more risks and try different practices. And I'm not, you know, I'm not having to answer to a landlord and...
Ryan Boylan
Just the CFO.
Eric Odberg
Yeah. I need to make sure to run things by more. And so, I've told her that I have... I've secured, you know, more funding for these conservation practices.
Ryan Boylan
I signed us up for more research projects.
Eric Odberg
Yeah. But then, now you hear about, oh, it might be freezing them. And we might not have them. And so, that concerns me now. But you can't really worry yourself and be concerned about that. Just got to move on ahead and do what you're going to do and adjust when things happen.
Another saying that the football coach said is that, you know, you got to get... Sometimes you got to get your ratchet wrench out there and adjust. And when you're doing these different practices and you're on the cutting edge that you usually have to do that.
Ryan Boylan
Yeah. On the fly. Yeah.
Eric Odberg
You just got to be ready to do that. Ready to adjust.
Ryan Boylan
It is really easy to calcify and get comfortable with what you know. That's why you guys always inspire me because you're constantly making changes.
And that's why, I say this a lot, but we're always like a couple of steps behind. We’re like, wait, what are you doing? Can we come out and like sample that? So, yeah, it's like good motivation for us too.
Eric Odberg
But I think your conservation district is right there with the growers, you know, with this FLOURISH project with cover crops. And then now your conservation district is trying to get this other grant, the NACD grant, that will help, you know, support fund winter pulses and liming. And both things that I'm currently doing now, but, you know, get support and funding to try more of. And so I think your conservation district is very in tune with what the growers want.
Your Alternative Cropping Symposium, you know, really focusing on different crops that we can grow and produce on the Palouse. And so I think, yeah, you're around the cutting edge with the growers that are doing it. So it's nice to have that help and support.
Ryan Boylan
Cool. Yeah. Thank you.
I just have one more question. We ask everyone this. In circling back to the FLOURISH cover crops, could you just talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly for the last two trials that you've done?
Eric Odberg
I don't know. I feel like I've had good success with them. I'm feeling more confident about growing cover crops because of it.
I guess I've decided that I want to just keep on growing a full season cover crop. I figured out when to seed it and what mixes they have out there, what different species that do well out there. And then, you know, trying to get this cover crop grazing integrated into our farm.
And it's really been, you know, allowing me to pursue that. And that, you know, I don't have to go back out and buy a bunch of cows or goats. And I can let someone else do this and come onto our farm and have a synergistic or cooperative arrangement with the rancher.
And, you know, they get the benefit of the cover crop. And one thing I learned from one of the speakers at the Farm and Food Symposium is that cattle that are being fed, you know, we call free-range, grass-fed beef, they have a higher omega-6-3 ratio, which is much more healthy to consume. And then you go beyond that and having them grazing on cover crops, that even gets better.
Then the meat is even more nutrient-dense. And so, I mean, that's exciting. So it's trying to make the food that we grow more nutrient-dense, better quality, taking care of our environment, being sustainable, being regenerative, sequestering more carbon from our atmosphere.
And, you know, that's my sons, they look at that, they see that, and they know for their generation and future generations is that, you know, that's what we need in order to be able to continue to do this. And so I'm doing it for them and hopefully future generations.
Ryan Boylan
Yeah, that's great.
Well, I think that's all we have. Eric, thanks so much for joining us today.
Eric Odberg
Yep. Thanks, Ryan.
Outro
This podcast was brought to you by the Palouse Conservation District. Funding is provided by USDA’s Conservation Innovation Grants program. To find out more information, check out the FLOURISH website at inwflourish.org. Thanks so much for listening, and keep an eye out for our next episode.
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CRP – Conservation Reserve Program
The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) provides a yearly rental payment to farmers who remove environmentally sensitive land from agricultural production and plant species that will improve environmental health and quality.
The Dakota Lakes Research Farm’s primary goal is to identify, research, and demonstrate methods of strengthening and stabilizing the agriculture economy. The research enterprise at the farm is operated by South Dakota State University. The not-for-profit Dakota Lakes Research Farm Corporation manages the production enterprise and owns the land, the fixed facilities, and much of the field equipment.
Local flour distributor selling grain products regeneratively grown.
REACCH – Regional Approaches to Climate Change
The REACCH project was initiated in 2011 to ensure sustainable cereal production in the Inland Pacific Northwest. The project was led by an interdisciplinary team of scientists and other professionals from three land grant institutions and the USDA Agricultural Research Service, with funding from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture’s Climate Variability and Change Program. Participants from many disciplines related to agricultural, climate, socioeconomics, and information sciences engaged in an integrated research, education, outreach and extension effort to study complex cereal production systems and their responses to drivers of change.
Climate Friendly Farming Project
CSANR established the Climate Friendly Farming Project (CFF) in 2003 with a grant of $3.75 million from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation to better understand carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural systems and to establish long-term agricultural research projects focused on improving the resiliency of agriculture to a changing climate. The early focus of the project was on dryland wheat, irrigated vegetable, and dairy production systems.
LIT – Landscapes in Transition
Landscapes in Transition (LIT) is a USDA-funded Coordinated Agricultural Project with integrated research, extension, and education components. The project aims to guide ongoing agricultural land use change in the IPNW toward sustainable, resilient landscapes and food systems by using interdisciplinary collaboration and research. In order to gain a systems-based understanding of the impacts of crop diversification, the LIT project employs a committee of scientists, farmers and other stakeholders in the local agriculture industry.
IAMP – Innovative Agriculture Marketing Partnership
This grant awarded to the University of Idaho, which was intended to provide payment directly to Idaho producers for developing sustainable agricultural practices, was terminated as a result of new criteria implemented by the United States Department of Agriculture.