- [Announcer 1] Montana Ag Live is made possible by the Montana Department of Agriculture, (energetic guitar music) the MSU Extension Service, the MSU Ag Experiment Stations of the College of Agriculture, the Montana Wheat and Barley Committee, Cashman Nursery and Landscaping, the Northern Pulse Growers Association, and the Gallatin Gardeners Club.

- You are tuned to Montana Ag Live, originating today from the studios of KUSM on the very vibrant campus of Montana State University, and coming to you over your Montana Public Television System.

I'm Jack Riesselman, retired professor of plant pathology.

Happy that you're joining us this evening.

I think we're gonna have an interesting program tonight.

I'm gonna learn a lot, I think you will too.

It'll be a lot about what we call carbon credits, and I've never understood them very well, so we're gonna really take an in-depth look at them tonight and see where they fit in what we call sustainability.

And those of you who have watched the program so far this fall know that we have kind of focused on the sustainability theme.

So with that, let me introduce tonight's esteemed panel.

Way to my left, there's Tim DelCurto.

Tim is a range livestock specialist here and actually is an endowed chair, Nancy Cameron Endowed Chair in animal science and range department.

Happy to have him here.

- Thanks.

- He's been here before.

Our special guest tonight, Chris Mehus.

Chris came over from Big Timber today.

He is program director for what we call the Western Sustainability Exchange.

And that's really interesting, I learned a little bit about that in an article in the Bozeman Chronicle not long ago by Isabel Hicks.

Great article.

And it intrigued me enough that I thought, we need to have Chris over here to talk about it.

Y'all will recognize Eric Belasco, Eric's been taking notes here, so I'm gonna throw him some curve balls tonight.

He's our ag economist who had a little bit of fun.

And filling in tonight, we had a cancellation.

Don Mathre, Don is a master gardener, he used to be in the plant pathology department.

If you have gardening questions, I know it's to the end of the gardening season, but you'll have some, I'm sure, of what to do next year, so forth and so on, get those questions in tonight, we'll get some answers.

Answering the phones this evening are Nikki and Joe Vradenburg, they're here in the studio.

And remote is Judge Bruce Loble, who used to be our chief water court judge.

Welcome to you all, let's go back to Chris.

Chris, tell us what the Western Sustainability Exchange is all about.

- Well, thank you, Jack.

We're an organization centered out of Livingston, Montana, and we serve all of Montana and parts of, we have ranches in Idaho and Wyoming that have participated.

We run the farmer's market over there, we've done that for 20 years or so.

Anyway, the organization will celebrate its 30th year next year, and so we're pretty proud of that successful history, and we've worked with ranchers most of that time to help them employ more sustainable practices on their property and in exchange for that, try to get better prices for their commodities and also participate in programs like the carbon program that I'll be describing tonight.

- If we could bring out that slide about the carbon, I know you're very interested in carbon, so I think we have an explanation that will be on screen here.

Tell us a little bit briefly what goes on with carbon trading.

- Yeah, so we've, just a little bit of background first, we've been working on this project for about seven years now with a company called Native.

They're out of Vermont, and they came to us because of our history of working with producers that are more innovative and maybe willing to accept some different ways of grazing their cattle.

And so starting on the left-hand side of the diagram there, you've got a company who's motivated, you can see the emoji there is looking upset or guilty or what have you, at any rate, they're motivated to make an investment in ranching, in improved management, because of their carbon footprint.

And this is not a political issue anymore, this has really become something that's driven by worldwide economics, consumers are demanding of companies that they clean up their act internally, so companies are working on that aspect of it.

But what they can't cover themselves with their own practices, they seek outside credits in the form of renewable energy credits, forestry credits, and then these agricultural credits that we're working on now.

And so as you move down toward the bottom of the diagram there, you can see that the funds are funneled through a project that's designed by both Native and my organization, Western Sustainability Exchange, and so we work with a ranch to design improvements to their grazing system.

Most of that comes from the ranch themselves, these are motivated folks that wanna make a change and they're looking for some assistance in order to do that.

The main impediment is usually water, fencing infrastructure is also a big consideration, as well as labor.

So the rancher uses those funds then over on the lower right portion of the diagram to go from a single pasture, you know, we're really trying to get people away from set stock grazing, turning the cattle out in the spring and then going and retrieving them in the fall on one pasture.

We're trying to get them to subdivide those pastures, improve the water, move them more frequently, because the big ingredient, the big driving factor, is rest and recovery, we wanna give those plants a chance to rest and recover enough to replenish their root systems.

And then in the top right part of the diagram, create a healthier soil biome.

And not only is the soil impacted there, but it affects the entire ecosystem.

That carbon unit, as you can see in the diagram in the center middle, is really the carbon, the soil, so it's organic material in the soil.

And a lot of people equate that with roots or degrading plant material, but it really is a biological system that lives underground, so it's all the microorganisms that live there.

And then the last part of that diagram, the money or the credit then is returned in the form of a certificate back to the company.

And so that's initially what they are purchasing, is that carbon certificate that then is there to offset the pollution or the carbon footprint that they're emitting.

- Are a lot of companies, businesses, buying carbon credits in today's world?

You see a lot of them saying we're gonna have neutral carbon emissions at given time.

Some of the companies that are involved, you wanna mention them?

- Yeah, sure, we work really closely in Montana with Xanterra Parks and Resorts.

They manage Yellowstone and Glacier, a lot of the world's resort areas and parks and natural ecosystems, and so it's in their DNA, it's part of the business, it's part of what they sell, so they have a real interest in preserving the environment and having a clean act themselves to be able to market.

We also, there's several clothing companies that have been involved in this project, a lot of them source their hides or, you know, different clothing materials from sustainable companies.

And so, you know, it is, a lot of the companies that are involved initially are ones that have a stake in it or their products are coming from ranches or farms that are more sustainable.

But really, it is a worldwide economic issue and something that is driving finance.

- We sure hear a lot more about it nowadays.

Quick question for Don and then I'm gonna run over to Eric and then I've got one here for Tim that just came in.

Quick one, Don, from Hamilton.

- [Don] Okay.

- This person follows a gardening group from the United Kingdom, in a recent post on strawberries, they say they should be fertilized in the fall for a better crop next season.

Your opinion?

- Well, my opinion would be I'd hold off on the fertilizer until spring.

You don't know whether that crop's gonna survive over the winter and you don't want excess growth right now, you want those plants to be going dormant, so fertilizing now would probably stimulate some fall growth, and I think I'd hold off on that till spring.

- Yeah, right now, it's getting cold enough, I don't think you really wanna put it on.

- It is definitely getting cold enough.

- Okay, I'm gonna skip Eric 'cause I've got a loaded question for him in a minute, but one that came in through Facebook.

Tim and Chris, you can both handle this one, what are the management strategies that beef producers might use to increase carbon sequestration, which means that carbon capture, basically, does it not?

- [Tim] Right, right.

- Tim, you wanna go first?

- Oh gosh, yeah, we could probably have a two-hour program on that.

But I think when you think about carbon sequestration, you have to think about photosynthesis.

And so by managing the forage, by managing the livestock in a way that optimizes photosynthetic processes is probably, you know, key.

So only graze, you know, a certain amount, you know, rotational grazing, which Chris has talked about, you know, previously.

I think true also, when you think of the western US, water is one of our real shortcomings.

So if you really wanna optimize plant growth, which is carbon sequestration, you need to figure out how to retain what little precious water we get.

So have the right kind of vegetation, the right kind of organic matter in the soil and functioning riparian areas and all those things.

You know, in range, we call it the safe capture, storage, and release of water.

And so how do we optimize water, and if we can optimize that, then you can optimize forage production.

- So Chris, if you optimize water by this little bit more of a rotational grazing, can you make better use of water doing it that way?

- Yes, definitely.

I guess the first thing I'd say, to expand on what Tim said, and I think he covered that really well, is that the goal of improving carbon in the soil is going to be to, you've gotta cover the soil first.

And so I mentioned earlier that rest and recovery period, how critical that is.

And on a lot of our range lands, especially ones that are compromised, it's or two or three to really build up enough biomass to cover that soil surface and so, you know, we really are talking about an opportunity to giving that land an opportunity to have that vegetation become dormant and drop to the ground and then cover that surface.

Once we've been able to do that, then we can, there'll be a lot better infiltration into the ground, so not as much of it will run off.

And then a lot of it is also retained because the sun isn't heating the soil surface nearly as much and and allowing a lot of that to transpire.

- Okay, thank you.

And here's a good one, and this person from Bozeman wants Eric to know where are food prices headed.

They know economists are good at predicting things.

She is recording this to make sure.

- Yeah, we are good, the old joke is that we have forecasted more recessions than there have been, so yeah, we're good at that.

Yeah, so as far as kind of where food inflation is going, I think, you've seen a lot of what the Fed has been doing lately, raising very aggressively the federal funds rate, and so that typically has this downward effect on price inflation, that's kind of their main mechanism to do that.

And so overall, you'd expect for prices to come down, although that's not kind of across the board.

Especially in Montana, beef products right now, if you look at the drought monitor calendar, it's the entire US almost.

And so, you know, when you have reduced inventories, you're gonna see higher prices coming, you know, not just to ranchers but then also, it's gonna be coming to consumers as well, so.

And then wheat, as long as we have conflict in the Ukraine region, you know, that's gonna disrupt those wheat prices.

So wheat and beef might not be coming down as quickly as some of those other commodities, but I think some of the others are definitely gonna slow down.

- [Jack] Avocados have come down.

- Have they?

- Yes, significantly, there's an oversupply, just- - That, yeah.

- Basic economics- - Yeah, that's basic economics.

I guess there's one thing, just to add on to what they were saying earlier about the carbon credits, and I thought it was interesting, you the companies and kind of what they were doing.

And one thing I've noticed is that companies are now putting on their labels of what the carbon footprint is.

So it seems like it's not just, you know, companies wanting to kind of do the right thing necessarily, but it's really, you know, I flew on a flight recently and it said what the carbon footprint of that flight was, I think this is coming from consumers to require companies to kind of put that information out there, and so this is a good way to, I think, help that.

- Yeah, and that's what we're hearing from Native with all the companies that call to inquire and ask questions about what this provides, is that it's claims that they're making to their customers, so this is about marketing and advertising and competing with their competitors, you know.

That's why I said earlier, it will continue to have a political aspect to it but overwhelmingly, this is an economic issue, this is companies competing to deliver a better product to consumers.

- Eric, I've got a question about the meat supply and prices, what about pork and chicken, are they following the same path as beef prices or are they different, and why?

- They are different, but they're substitutes, so they can kind of merge together a little bit.

But I think with the western part of the US being impacted by drought, that's specifically to the beef sector.

But other things are gonna impact all three sectors.

You know, high price of corn, high grain prices are gonna impact feed for all those sectors.

So yeah, some of the things are gonna impact, you know, across the board, but beef in particular just from the drought I think is gonna see a little bit more, yeah.

- Okay, thank you.

The question from near Billings.

They would like to know what a carbon credit is worth and how do you qualify to get carbon credits?

- So that's a very complex question about what a carbon credit is worth.

There's many different types of carbon credits, so I'll just give you the example of, you know, the company that we work with, Native, for decades has sold carbon credits for renewable energy projects, so solar and wind.

And they've also traded in forestry credits So they kind of have a set value of what they're worth per ton.

And I don't know the answer to that question, exactly what they're worth.

Our credits right now, the range land grazing credits that are being sold, I think are in the $12 to $15 per ton range.

And that is a pretty low value, I think, I think similar credits in Europe, natural resource conservation type credits, are sold in the 30s and $40 range.

Our project is very new, so there's a lot of the documentation and science that still needs to be proven up and made I guess legitimate, for lack of a better term, but.

So we expect that value to go up significantly, but that's kind of where the value's at right now.

- So you said per ton, so between Chris and Tim, so you have a good grazing system where you alternate and, you know, how much land, grazing land, do you need to sequester a ton of carbon?

Any clue there?

- Well.

- Go ahead.

- I'll just answer that really quick from our experience.

So what we've seen, so we've been doing this for four years now.

Right now, we've got seven ranches and about 95,000 acres that are part of the program.

We've seen, so it's not a matter of the number of acres to sequester a ton of carbon.

Each acre of our range land that we've seen with improved practices is sequestering about 0.7 tons per acre per year on average.

So I guess it would be a little over, you know, an acre and a half, but that's the average that we've seen, but we're really early into that process, like I said, we only have four or so years of experience, so we'll know more in three or four years when we go back and resample all of those ranches.

But that's about where our numbers are running.

- [Tim] Yeah, yeah.

- That's not bad, really.

If you have a large ranch, you're getting seven-eight bucks back per acre.

It makes a difference in your net bottom line, I would assume, and I've been told, and I'm not a rancher or know that much about cattle, but I've been told that they do better and graze better and have a more rapid rate of growth on good grazing systems, is that right?

- Yeah, to a degree, you know.

- Uh oh, I've been had.

- It depends, right?

- It depends.

You know, good scientists or good faculty, that's our standard answers, it depends.

I think though that the thing that's important here is I'm sort of excited about what Chris, you know, has to tell us tonight because in part, you know, most of Montana, our beef industry is a cow-calf forage base, in many cases, extensive range land, you know, system.

For lack of better word, what these people do is grow grass, you know, and the cattle really are just to harvest the grass.

And so what Chris is talking about is doing things that ultimately is going to enhance production of that forage base, perhaps make those plant communities more resilient, you know, and it's kind of a win-win for the cow-calf people.

There's certainly questions, you know, that they're gonna have about how do we establish baselines, how do we, you know, how do we start conversations about projects that will, you know, increase carbon sequestration, but by and large, they grow grass, and so anything that's gonna grow more grass is gonna fit, you know, in their production and philosophy.

- The only caveat I would say to that is, so I would compare it to that diagram, I showed you a single pasture.

So if you throw cows out in the spring on a single pasture and just allow them to graze throughout the year on that same pasture, they're gonna be selective, cattle are selective grazers, so they're gonna take the best stuff first.

- Right, right.

- And if you don't get any rain to allow those best plants to grow back, then their diet is gonna increasingly become compromised over the growing season because they're gonna be forced to other plants that are less desirable and thus less nutritious for them.

And so I'm speaking a little bit in Tim's camp right now, but alternative to that is that you split that one into numerous pastures and if you're able to move once a week or some of our ranches have gone to once a day, they're on fresh feed every day or at least once a week, and so they get to, once a week, graze those preferred plants where in this, you know, in the alternative scenario where they're just in a single pasture, they get grazed out pretty quick and they've gotta move to different forages, so.

- Okay.

Switch a little bit over to Don, a Facebook question.

Is it okay to transplant dormant shrubs now?

- Oh, probably, yeah, if you can get your shovel in the ground.

- [Jack] You better hurry.

That's gonna change quite quickly so, you know, if they're well dormant, yeah, you could go ahead and transplant them, but you could also wait till spring too.

- Yeah, I think, unless you get it done today, tonight, or tomorrow.

- Looks like things are gonna change quickly next week.

- Yeah, it's high time, it's been a beautiful fall.

Tim, this is kind of a general question.

It comes in from Bozeman.

How is the ranching industry responding to climate change?

- Oh gosh, good question.

The ranching industry, you know, and specifically the beef cattle industry's taken a lot of criticism for the perception of impact on climate change.

The truth is, I think, that's really not warranted to speak of.

The concern's primarily methane production.

And, but the reality is ruminates, you know, it doesn't matter if we're talking about cattle or bison or water buffalo or elk or deer or all those, have co-evolved with grasslands for millions of years.

And in fact, some of our large generalist grazers, which Chris has been talking about, the cattle, the bison, they're uniquely designed to use low-quality dormant forages.

Part of that process is they create methane.

And so it's ironic that that's a concern of a lot of people outside of agriculture when, in fact, they're a fairly insignificant contributor, particularly cattle, it's about 3% to 5%, depending on which, of the atmospheric methane.

In contrast, growth of the human population, fossil fuels, landfills, you know, contribute somewhere around 35 to 40% of the additional methane.

So, you know, it's a concern, but I think it's really not focused directly.

- Well, and I guess on the other side, just thinking about how ranchers might respond to a drier temperature, drier climate, have there been, have you guys seen- - Yeah, yeah, that's a really good question.

Jack, it's interesting, you know, people go, well, boy, how's climate change gonna impact ranching?

Well, the reality is, in the last six years, they're living through it right now.

We've had two 100-year winter events, we've had two significant droughts.

And I guess the way I'd answer that would be adapting management, you know.

Reduce stocking, change your grazing pattern, you know, find alternative forages, reduce your herd, you know, all those things become strategies that, they've done in the last three or four and they've reacted fairly quick to it.

The other thing, and I think gets back to what Chris is trying to do here tonight and talk about, is we have to encourage our managers, land managers, ranch managers, to create really resilient, diverse plant communities and soils.

And if you have those, then you have plant communities and soils that can withstand environmental extremes, which is what we're seeing with climate change, so.

- The other thing we're starting to see too is more operators looking at yearlings as an alternative.

Because during these drought years, a lot of people in Montana have severely destocked.

And so we've been in, we've actually been in communication with three or four ranches that have been running yearlings now for 15 or 20 years exclusively.

And they really, you know, they like not having a bunch of mouths to feed over the winter.

And I think as people restock their ranches and conditions get better, it's nice to look at yearlings as an alternative rather than just going with all pairs, because that gives you a little bit more flexibility and that way, it's not such a severe impact to destock when you just got animals there for six or eight months.

- We have a lot of people that watch that are not interested in agriculture.

What's a yearling?

- Go ahead, Tim, you're the cow guy.

- Yeah, yeah, basically, you know, we have cow-calf ranches.

And that means that they have mother calves and they raise calves and many of them will mark those calves in the fall as wean, wean calves.

But then there's others where they bring in yearlings, which would be those wean calves the following spring, and they bring them in, which allows that flexibility of managing the forage, you know, a little bit better and being a bit more responsive to the extreme weather.

You know, in Montana, everyone talks about, well, we're not having a normal year.

Well, there's no such thing as normal year, it's just different extremes, and how do we adjust to that?

And that's one of the ways you could do that.

- You know, I just finished teaching a course for the OLLI, Lifelong Institute Learning, and one of the things I've figured out, found out, is as temperatures have warmed significantly, for whatever reason, we're seeing a shift from cool season crops or grasses in the of the warm season, which I've been told are not quite as nutritious.

Is that gonna impact the industry long term, and do you see as much of it in your planned grazing type of rotation where you maybe slow down the movement of warm season grasses into a cool season environment?

- [Tim] Do you wanna answer the first part?

I'll take the second part.

- Well, I can start with the second part.

I mean, we definitely hope that that won't be the trend for operations that are utilizing these As I described before, there's better protection for the soil.

And so the soil, the microorganisms in the soil and the plants aren't experiencing near those temperature swings, I know the difference in bare ground in the summertime, bare ground versus ground that's got some kind of vegetation on it can be 30 or 40 degrees different on a hot summer day.

So those soil temperatures can be 130 degrees, 135 degrees on bare ground versus on a vegetated site where it's 75 or 80 degrees.

So hopefully, with that type of management, we can keep that shift from happening, but I think that it is definitely gonna become a factor if that trend continues, and it could be a big problem.

- I think, Jack, to add to what Chris said, yeah, there's always a possibility when temperatures rise that we're gonna see a shift towards more warm season.

You might also see a shift to different plant communities that might be more annuals and things like that and, you know, cheatgrass, medusahead, things like that, particularly in our more arid, semiarid sites.

But getting back to what Chris said, I think if you manage the vegetation correctly, you keep those desirable plants, those deep-rooted perennial grasses, those forbs, those shrubs, healthy, and then enough littering things to cover the soil, you know, I think there's a good chance they'll be more resilient and resist those transitional changes in plant composition.

- Okay, good answers, guys, thank you.

Don, huh, this is kind of a little bit of a curve ball for you.

From Belt, this person has a question for you, he wants to plant a bur oak and wants to know how much soil is required for it to grow, and bur oak has a taproot, as I remember, so I would think quite a bit of.

- Well, if that's true, the bur oaks that I've seen don't get very big, so I don't know that they need a ton of soil to grow in, but I don't know, what do you think, Jack?

- Well, if a taproot, you don't want a real hardpan or- - Well, that's true.

- Rocky base, so I think you'd want pretty good depth of soil for a bur oak.

And if, I'm not a horticulturalist, but what's known as a taproot.

- Taproot, okay, I didn't know that.

- Only because I grew up in the Midwest, so I know a little bit about oak.

- Bur oaks, yeah.

- And hunting squirrels in bur oaks, but anyway.

We don't know for sure, but I think you need a little bit more soil.

Couple questions here.

This is a good one for Eric.

This person from Miles City wants to know, why does the government pay farmers and/or ranchers to adopt conservation programs?

- Yeah, so there's a whole suite of conservation programs that are through the federal government.

The carbon trading program is kind of interesting in the same way.

You know, it's trying to find ways to pay ranchers to do things that maybe other people might value and just not them and themselves.

My guess is that a lot of ranchers would you know, better conservation practices, but if the incentives aren't quite there, then, you know, it needs to come from some external source.

I think of like the block management program in hunting where it's, you know, maybe there are some landowners that just, they like having people on their land.

But it's, you know, there's some incentive to allow people to do that because other people might value that opportunity, and so having either the government or the, you know, carbon program is just, it's allowing an intermediary to give those incentives, to give, you know, ranchers or farmers to do things that, you know, are in someone else's best interest.

- You know, we had one of the greatest conservation programs, it was called the Conservation Reserve Program, where 44 million acres where only 37 were ever used, but it was a huge program and it was quite successful.

It really did reduce some erosion.

- Yeah, and the Conservation Reserve Program, you know, was one where you, yeah, take land out of production to kind of, to let it rest and to, you know, heal.

And a lot of the funds now in the federal government are going towards what are called working lands programs, so trying to find ways, while you're, you know, producing on ag land, how can you adopt conservation practices that will enrich the soil quality while still producing a product on it?

- Yeah, on that note with, I've heard regenerative grazing, I don't know if that's the term I'm supposed to be using, but similar to what you guys are doing.

Is that beneficial conservation wise, if you're interested in livestock, the other aspects other than just sequestering carbon?

- It is, yes.

Back in that diagram I showed you, healthy soil results in a healthy ecosystem, a biodiverse ecosystem, both plants and animals, the things that we can observe, but then all those critters that live beneath our feet too benefit from that, so it definitely is, and the other thing I would echo about economics and why we pay people to put conservation practices in it, because I think historically, we've never considered whether the conservation practice was a for the farmer or the rancher.

And if you know many farmers or ranchers, you'll know that most of them are not the wealthy people in your community, they're hopefully making a profit, but if they wanna pass it on to the next generation, it's gotta make money.

And so when we look at conservation practices, we can't just put a program out there unless we know it's gonna be something that will keep them in business.

And so I think that's what's really exciting about the program that we're creating here, is that it's all incentives that are based on helping that ranch to be more profitable for the next generation and also in better condition.

And that benefits society and the public as well through those resources that are produced there.

- This is a question I have, and I'm more curious, and we may not have the answer, we have Tim here, we have Chris here.

If you have a cow-calf unit on one of your grazing rotations, is the rate of gain similar for that calf as it is in a traditional pasture, or is it better or worse?

- Yeah, I can answer those, there's actually been a lot of studies done on that.

They're about the same.

And the reason why is, when you have multiple pastures and much higher density and a shorter duration, those cattle are forced to graze, you know, all the vegetation without much selectivity.

And so initially, that's a little less than if they have full reign to pick whatever they want.

But as you rotate through those pastures, you maintain those plant communities in And then if you came back in that same rotation, that regrowth, you know, that you might have used later on, maybe that fall and dormant period, is actually gonna be better.

But most of the studies show continuous season-long grazing where you really have no rotational system gets similar kinds of results to more of these high-intensity rotational systems.

- Sounds good, I didn't know, I was curious, yeah, Don.

- I've got a question about rotational grazing that suggests to me with multiple pastures, you could have a lot of fences.

What kind of fences are growers using and how expensive are they?

- Really good question, and I'll throw out kind of my thoughts on that and then Chris can, you know.

Fences are really expensive right now, so building more fences is not necessarily in everyone's to-do list.

I think $10,000 to $20,000 a linear mile for four-strand barbed wire fence is what I'm hearing.

But there's alternatives and certainly, the electric fencing, things like that, you know, the developments I'm excited about and we talked about on this show in previous episodes is virtual fencing and things like that.

That really could be, you know, a big boost here.

And we're certainly working with some universities that's doing quite a bit of research with virtual fencing with pretty good success.

And that'd be just ear tags, GPS kind of technology, and creating zones where you want them to graze versus areas you don't, so.

- Yeah.

And I would just echo that to say that it does take some time for the cattle and your labor, whether it's yourself or the people that you have out there on the ground moving every day, to get adjusted to electric fence, it's not like people, the problem is, people expect it to be and act like a four-wire barbed wire fence, and it doesn't work that way.

You've gotta keep it hot, you've gotta train the cattle to use it, and they've gotta respect it.

And if you don't do those things, it isn't gonna work.

So people lose patience with them, they give up.

But there are very cost-effective and they've got rollers now and spools that you can keep that on, and that can be rolled out and rolled back up very quickly.

And then over time, a lot of people are replacing their barbed wire with single-strand high tensile wire, which is just a thicker cable, basically, that can carry the electricity out there, and then that can, that is actually rust resistant, so you can just drop that on the ground when you leave the pasture and then bring it and stretch it back up when you go back in.

So there are alternatives and people are getting pretty creative.

The other thing I'll say is that herding has become a lot more popular, you know, in some of these forest service and BLM allotments that are very remote and rugged, you know, they don't, you can't put fences in a lot of those places very easily and keep them up, especially with elk herds and wild animals and things like that, so herding can become a lot more effective too.

And so there are a lot of different alternatives and people are getting pretty creative.

- [Tim] Yep, yep.

- I also heard that you can get satellite-based electric fences that they're using for, well, basically keeping dogs within 30 or 40 acres.

And I suspect long term, you'll see a lot more of that in the cattle industry.

- Yeah, and Jack, that's the virtual fence here I'm talking about where they use GPS technology and they create maps.

And it's as simple as using like Google Maps where you create, here's the area I wanna graze versus not, and then you have a tower that then- - [Jack] That's amazing.

- Yeah, it's pretty exciting stuff.

- Neat technology, that beats 10 to $20,000 an acre or a mile.

- Well, and it's funny, when you think about land and the value of land, having a whole bunch of permanent fences may not necessarily be what you really want to- - Exactly.

There is a rancher up in Malta, the Barthelmess Ranch, who's been trialing that virtual, the collars.

The cattle actually wear shock collars and they either buzz or they shock them when they get near where that virtual fence is.

And he's had really good success with it, he's very impressed, and he's been patient, they've worked through a lot of issues, logistical issues, with collar problems and things like that, but he, I think he, we had him on one of our monthly calls that we have.

- There's still some issues with the system, but I think we're gonna work through them, so.

- Fascinating, okay, here's a question that I like too from Facebook.

Chris, how do you measure how much carbon is captured per acre?

What's the technology to measure it?

- Yeah, so we've got two ways with our project that we measure carbon sequestration over time.

So one is using a model approach, and then the other one is using a measurement approach.

And so the model approach, we use a model that was developed by Dr. Mark Ritchie out of Syracuse University.

The title of it is SNAPGRAZE, that team, you might be familiar with that.

Anyway, it's pretty complicated, but in a nutshell, what it does is it looks at your baseline management on a pasture-by-pasture basis.

And then it compares that with how you change that over the course of time.

And so essentially, what that is is if you start out with 10 pastures across the ranch and the first year, you go to 30 pastures and then to 60 pastures and then to 300 pastures, then the model can predict, based on that change in management, how much your carbon sequestration is in tons per acre over time.

And then the measured approach, basically, they go out on the ranch the first year and they take samples at several locations and they come up with an average tons per acre in the first year, so that's your baseline.

And then in 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, they'll remeasure and come up with a comparison of how that is changing over time.

Neither one of those, modeled or measured, is 100% percent accurate, but the measured amount will be used to reconcile the model and make it more accurate over time.

- So Chris, they do forage production clips.

Do they also look at that soil organic matter, things like that?

- That's actually what they're measuring, is the soil organic matter, so they're taking a sample of soil and sending it into a laboratory and having it analyzed for the amount of soil organic carbon in tons per acre- - Oh, okay.

- For a baseline, and then they measure how that changes over time.

- How do they deal with like litter on the soil surface?

- So they clear that away first.

So it's really just a soil carbon measure, down to 30 centimeters is what we're doing now.

- Okay.

- We're looking at moving to a full meter, and they might do that on the next iteration of samples that they take but so far, it's been to 30 centimeters, about a foot.

- Question from Missoula for Don.

They're getting their garden catalogs in the mail along with all their Christmas catalogs and boy, you get a lot of those this time of year.

This person wants to know, do you need to buy new seed every year or can they use some of the leftover seed?

- Well, that's a good question, Jack, because the price of seed has been going up.

But there are certain crops like spinach where after one year, the seed is basically non-viable, so yes, you need to get new spinach seed every year.

Tomato seed, I've kept some tomato seed for 50 years and have measured the germination on that, oh, maybe every 10 years.

And it finally died out after about 55 years.

So tomato seed, if you store it cool and dry, it'll be okay.

For other crops like corn, sweet corn, beans and peas, you're probably okay for a year or two.

But on the other hand, if you really wanna ensure that you're gonna get a good crop up, getting new seeds is probably cost effective.

- I agree with that, even though I know why my spinach didn't make it this year.

I got cheap and didn't buy new stuff.

- There you go.

- And you're right, it doesn't work.

From Bozeman, caller wonders what the benefit of buying or selling carbon credits in Montana is and then buying and selling them in coal country, in, say, like West Virginia.

Does this help the environment?

It's kind of a complicated question and I'm not sure we have a good answer for that.

- I mean, I think part of it is that it provides the incentives for people, it sounds like, to make, you know, someone, as a very simple example, you have a polluter and then you have a rancher who can, you know, offset some of that pollution by changing their management practice, so it's just giving them the incentive to, you know, take those types of actions and just connecting the, you know, those two parties together, and so I think that's really all it's doing.

- Okay, good answer.

Tim.

This person wants to know, they didn't say where they're from, what MSU is doing to increase the sustainability of beef production systems here in the state?

- Oh, gosh.

Yeah, you know, I think we're actually being very responsive to it, I think of our, you know, a lot of the beef research we have currently going on, Jack, is focused at extending the fall-winter grazing period.

And in fact, with our Red Bluff Research herd, we've moved calving to May calving.

The last two years, we've fed less than one month of hay to our cattle herd.

And the whole rationale of that, and it fits with what Chris is talking about tonight, is we think, as we look to the future for our beef cattle industry, if we can keep the cattle grazing longer, reduce our reliance on harvested hay, fossil fuels is the other big challenge in the ranching industry's labor.

And so when you keep the, when you have the cow do the work for you, you reduce labor.

The challenge, and for the last six years, Dr. Darrin Boss, myself, Sam Wyffels, Dr. Megan Van Emon, have been looking at, you know, how do you strategically supplement those cows in a way that optimize the use of that low-quality forage and then also optimize the use of fairly extensive range lands?

So we've been looking at that.

The other big challenge in Montana is winter environment.

And so we're also spending quite a bit of time looking at how the winter environment modifies beef cattle grazing behavior and performance during the winter period, so quite a bit of work, actually.

- Yeah, sounds good.

You got a lot of new people in the animal science department, a lot of new very sharp individuals.

- Yeah, we're pretty excited about our young faculty and the research programs that they're getting going.

- We're gonna look at the animal science part next spring quite a little bit on this program, so people that are interested, be prepared 'cause it's gonna be kind of fun.

Chris, how does a rancher qualify for carbon credits?

- So the program that we're putting out there is really based on two primary principles, that is of permanence and additionality.

And so the ranch needs to be committed to improving their grazing over the long term, so that's a big requirement, these are 30-year contracts.

It's a business contract, it's not an easement or a trust or anything like that, it's, but you are stating in the contract that you do plan on improving your practices over a 30-year period and that you won't go back and till any of those acres up.

So any farm ground or ground that you plan to keep in crop production that you wanna be able to till, we just leave that out of the program, but you're still eligible in all the acres that you graze.

And then the other big concept is additionality.

And so they have to be willing to make some significant changes to their grazing management, which basically just means, you know, splitting pastures or herding or managing differently so that those animals get more of a concentrated impact on the ground that they're on today.

And then they get off of it and allow it to rest and recover so that those plants can grow back up and go to seed and create a lot of vegetation and biomass so that can protect the soil surface and enhance the biodiversity that's there.

- So Chris, do you have any programs for like, I'm thinking like complimentary forages or legumes or something that might enhance production, have some soil benefits?

- Yeah, not yet, ours is really focused on grazing, and Native's tried to be really specific about the program so that we don't get distracted, we really wanna focus on the grazing aspect of it now.

But they are working on a cropping project in the Palouse region west of us in Washington and Idaho that would focus on cover crops, no-till, you know, different alternative tillage systems to, and our hope is actually, if we could get enough acres in Montana of interest in cropping programs, we could combine that with our grazing program but we're really, you know, because all of this is so new, we're trying to focus on what is in front of us first and really get that nailed down, and then we can hopefully expand it down the road, but not yet.

- Yeah, that's an interesting point.

And we're going to a lot more cover crops where we have water available to get them up and the ranchers are making good utilization and good grains, I'm told, off of cover crops.

There's a lot of acres in the state, and I know one company that's sold seed for 80,000 acres.

Why aren't we looking at cover crops more, because they definitely do trap a lot of carbon?

- Yeah.

- [Jack] Trick question.

- I think it's just not well understood yet or appreciated, the benefits of it.

I think... Go ahead.

- I agree, it's a difficult question.

You know, one thing we're actually trying to do here at Montana State is look at more integration between crops and beef production systems.

Somehow, we've allowed over the last 70 years for those two industries really to separate.

The reality is alternative forages, alternative crops, cover crops, even like winter annuals and things like that, could be integrated back into beef cattle management schemes and really be positive, you know.

- [Chris] Agreed.

- Winter annuals, for instance, create some winter forage, early spring forage, that these ranches don't have, and so we could figure out how to do that better.

- I think we're dealing with a little bit of lack of understanding too about the different options and the benefits of them, I think we've gotten used to really growing mono crop systems and then, when the crop isn't there, I think we're really worried about weeds and water retention.

And I think what we've lost sight of is that, when we don't have a crop there or something growing, then it's blowing away, all the water is actually evaporating, we're not saving water in the soil by not having a crop there.

So I think there's some misunderstandings, some paradigms that need to be shifted.

And I know of a rancher up by Turner, Montana, actually, who's talked their neighbor into seeding cover crops.

And they take their yearlings or their young cows and they'll graze that cover crop as long as they can in the fall months and into the winter.

And so they pay for the seed and the electric fence and they do all the work, and it's benefiting that crop ground and giving them a lot more opportunity for grazing in those months when there isn't a lot of good forage for them to be able to utilize.

So as I said before, with the fence and the herding, people are getting creative and looking at different alternatives.

I think up to this point, we just didn't know what we didn't know and we didn't appreciate how important soil health was.

- [Tim] Yeah.

- And a lot of people are getting into the soil health.

I think I know the guy at Turner, by the way.

From Anaconda, and they were interested in the virtual fencing.

They would like you to explain a little bit more how it works in the real world.

- Right.

Well, basically, how it works is you put essentially collars, ear tags, in many cases, on the cattle, they do have an audio response and an electric response.

The actual zones that you wanna graze are created by GPS technology.

They query the satellites and then basically, the Freudian principle of animal behavior is shock them so they'll know not to go to certain places.

Research that's being done, there's several entities doing it, you know, you talked that up at Glasgow.

Oregon State University, the East Oregon Ag Research Center, is doing quite a bit of work with this.

They published three or four papers where they've created things like where they had a wildfire where they created an area, you know, where the cattle couldn't go on to that wildfire, and it was very successful in doing that.

They also created grazing areas where they could essentially create fire breaks with cattle where you manage the fuels by the grazing and then get them off, and those all seemed to work pretty well.

It's not a perfect science at this point, one of the challenges is how many cows do you put it on?

And the answer is most of them, if not all.

And they're finding out, with pairs, it's a little bit problematic in that initially, you just put it on the cows and the cows will stay with them pretty well.

But after a month or so, the calves sort of learn that, it's almost like creep feeding, the calves can go eat wherever they want, which is maybe okay 'cause they grow up.

But yeah, so there's things we need to work out with this technology.

But I think you look at the price of it, you compare it to what traditional fences, not electric fences but, you know, barbed wire, four-five wire fences, yeah, it's becoming something to consider, yeah.

- And the labor savings also.

- Oh yeah, yeah.

- Yeah, labor is a huge issue, there's no doubt about that.

- Yep.

- Quick question for Don, this person has always grown nice big round hamburger-sized onions.

And this year, they were more like tiny onions that you throw into a stew, what happened?

- Well, that sounds like our garden club's experience with onions this year, they just didn't size up like they normally do, and now I've heard from a number of other people to think that this was a phenomenon that occurred maybe throughout southern Montana, maybe the rest of the state as well.

I don't know the exact answer, but I'm sure it had to do with our heat and moisture situation.

And when we got the onions planted, in our case, we had onions planted the 1st of May when normally, we would, or 1st of June, excuse me, normally, we'd have them in by the 10th of May.

So it could be the length of the growing season that happened, but we're hoping for a better year next year.

- I agree, it was not a good year.

And they're a little stronger this year, I don't know if you noticed that too.

- No, I haven't heard that, that's interesting.

- But I don't mind a good strong onion with a hamburger.

Eric, this person is curious.

Do ranchers have an opportunity to make more money, and Tim, you can jump in, or Chris, if they use conservation practices?

- Yeah, well, I mean, it's been a great discussion to hear kind of about the credit market and how ranchers can make some money from that.

We talked a little bit about the government programs which, again, are giving ranchers incentives to do what, you know, other people might want.

And I guess traditionally, you can just think of the premiums that ranchers would get for, you know, labeling certain conservation practices.

I think of like the range land beef product yielding a higher premium than a conventional beef product, mainly just because of the production practice.

So, you know, all these practices or I guess all these premiums, what they try to do is to link the people who value that type of production with the ranchers who are able to enable that production, giving the consumer signals back to the producer.

So yeah, I mean, I think there are a multitude of ways to make money in ranching by doing this.

You know, is ranching overall profitable?

I mean, this stuff certainly helps.

- [Chris] Yeah.

- [Jack] You guys wanna add anything?

- Yeah, I think, you know, there's a number of programs out there, NRCS, FSA, you know, Soil and Water Conservation Districts, fish and wildlife groups that all have conservation kinds of things.

You know, the decision for the rancher is, it's gonna require a little bit more time.

But in most cases, yeah, they're doing things that, quite frankly, good managers do.

You know, it's with grazing cattle, it's moving your salts around.

It's multiple, you know, rotational systems.

It's, you know, trying to calve at a time that coincides with the onset of green grass, you know.

I'm just thinking of programs that I'm aware of, you know.

And there's lots of fish and wildlife programs where, if you manage the vegetation for optimal beef production, you also enhance it for wildlife.

And so those kinds of things become, you know, beneficial to both the rancher as well as other values that you might put on that land, so.

- I agree entirely.

Quick question, Don, we're just down to a little bit of time left.

This person wants to know if you can put tulips in the garden yet.

- If the ground's not frozen, yeah.

But better hurry up.

- Yeah, you got about 24 hours.

- [Tim] Might have about six hours.

- Okay.

Folks, it's been a kind of interesting discussion tonight, I'm glad you've joined us.

It's the last program of the year.

If you get bored and wanna watch us, we do have reruns on Sunday morning at 11 AM.

(upbeat guitar music) After you get back from church, make sure you do that first.

And with that, we hope to see you next spring when we start up again on March 19th.

We have a lot of interesting guests, well, with that, thanks for watching for the year, have a good year, and see you next year, good night.

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