- [Narrator] "Montana Ag Live" is made possible by, the Montana Department of Agriculture, MSU Extension, 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.

(upbeat music) - Good evening.

Welcome to another new edition of "Montana Ag Live," originating today from the studios of KUSM on the very dynamic campus that we call Montana State University and coming to you, over your Montana Public Television system.

I'm Jack Reese, a retired professor of plant pathology.

We have a light theme this year.

We're gonna look at how conservation and agriculture interact to the benefit of all of 'em.

We're gonna kind of keep talking about that, through the rest of the fall, but as always, we have all kinds of people here to answer any questions that you want.

Some, they may not be here this week, but we'll get the question on next week.

For example, we don't have an entomologist here tonight, but if you have entomology questions, bug questions, send 'em in.

We'll have an entomologist here next week.

So, let's get started tonight by introducing our panel.

Way to my left is Uta Mckelvy.

Uta is our extension plant pathologist.

She's been here many, many times.

Special guest tonight.

He was here either last year or the year before.

Our memories are a little shaky anymore.

Chris Mehus, he is with the Western Sustainable He's the program director.

If you have questions about carbon credits, which I don't totally understand, carbon sequestration, regenerative agriculture, those questions can easily be answered by our expert, Chris, tonight.

So, I'm putting you on the spot and asking for some tough questions.

Sam Wyffels, Sam is here tonight.

He's been on the program several times.

He's our extension beef specialist.

If you have questions about rangeland, nutrition, anything about beef, good chance to get 'em answered.

And our resident economist, Eric Belasco, everybody is always asking economic questions, so get some tough ones in, because I really like to challenge this guy.

Yeah, it's fun when we do.

- Let's do it, yeah.

- Answering the phones tonight is Nancy Blake, here in the studio and remotely, Bruce Loble.

So, get that phone ringing, there's the phone number.

Before we go any farther, Chris, tell us what the Western Sustainability Exchange does.

- Yeah, thank you, Jack.

We're an organization that this year is celebrating our 30th year.

So, it's an exciting time for us.

We're basically in the ranch sustainability business.

So, as our name indicates, we're we're there to help ranchers be more conservation oriented in their practices.

And by doing that, they can have nature working with them, instead of against them hopefully all the time, committing less inputs and as consumers become more aware of the environment and what ranchers and farmers can do to benefit the environment, hopefully they get paid more for their commodities and rewarded for those practices.

So, that's what we've been in the business of for that amount of time, is education, connecting producers to markets and providing incentives to help incentivize those practices.

- I've been out here a little longer than 30 years, but when I first moved out here, I will have to say, and I don't wanna make anybody mad, but some of our ranching practices back then were a little marginal.

We probably overgrazed a little bit.

In today's world from what I've seen, ranchers are the best stewards of the land that I've seen in a long time.

That change has brought a lot of income into ranchers, I believe.

So if you guys want to comment, Sam, you too, you've been in the industry for a while, ranching's a lot better than it used to be, isn't it?

- Yeah, I think so.

I mean, so prior to coming to Montana State, I worked for the Natural Resources Conservation Service for a few years back in Oregon.

And I know back there and then it seems to be hold true here is just, I think ranchers have a better understanding of overall sustainability and that how that impacts or works back into the longevity of their ranch.

And that taking care of the land, takes care of their cattle, takes care of the ranch and the ability to pass that ranch on to the next generation.

So yeah, I would agree with that statement and that we've seen quite a bit better stewardship, probably in the last, I don't know, 20 years or so.

- Before the program started, we talked a little bit about the term regenerative agriculture and I'm not sure what that means.

So, I'm gonna challenge all of you to explain to the audience out there.

What do you mean by regenerative agriculture?

- Well, I can start, I guess you put me on the spot in the beginning, so I'll jump right into it.

- It's more fun when we do that.

- It's, yes.

I think it's kind of a new term.

We constantly invent new terms to make us feel smarter and that we are becoming more knowledgeable and that we are improving our practices over time.

So, sustainability is been a buzzword for a long time and we've always felt like that was a good thing to be sustainable over the long-term.

I think regenerative connotates a higher level of achievement.

And so it's not good enough just to sustain systems.

We really wanna work to regenerate them.

And so a lot of our, as you referred to Jack, a lot of our practices over time, have not been consistent with water cycling, with nutrient cycling, with things like biodiversity or with with carbon sequestration.

A lot of our ag practices have degenerated, some of those natural systems.

So, regenerative agriculture is about regenerating those systems.

Water, soil health, biodiversity, plant health, really ecosystem dynamics to make nature more healthy.

And then, as I said earlier, nature can work and be our friend, rather than our opponent or our nemesis.

- Yeah, that makes sense to me.

I think it's basically a higher level of sustainability is what we're looking at.

Okay, now I know I appreciate the answer.

Quick question from Great Falls and I'll throw this into Chris and then I've got a couple email questions that have come in that I want to touch on in a moment.

But from Great Falls, are carbon credits just pollution indulgences?

Does that make sense?

- That's a common conception or misconception, however you want to visualize it.

Some people use the terminology pay to pollute and that is definitely one way to look at this.

On the consumer side, the reason companies are buying carbon credits is to offsite their footprint.

So, obviously this is a way to reward someone growing a forest or planting trees or someone taking better care of their grass.

Anything that's a plant, pulls carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

So, the more of that we can promote, the more healthy all those plant systems are.

The more plant biomass that we can grow, the more carbon gets pulled outta the atmosphere.

If that carbon can go into plant tissue or better yet into the soil, that can be a permanent sink, a permanent place for that carbon to reside.

And so I guess it depends on who you're trying to blame and point a finger at.

But on the consumer side, most people are trying to do what they can to reduce their emissions and to burn less carbon.

But no one's ever gonna be able to clean up their act entirely.

And there are perfectly legitimate places to store and sequester carbon.

And so I think we can have both and it can be beneficial.

- Well, and just to add to that too, kind of from the economic side, you have the carbon sequestration, ranchers don't really see the kind of direct benefit from doing that a lot of times.

And so the exchange provides an opportunity for maybe the larger economy, people would might see the benefits to then kind of pay for that.

In economics we call it an externality.

So, to compensate the ranchers for that positive externality.

- Okay, we do have a question about the economics that we'll get to in a minute.

Before I wanna go to Uta, because last week we had an email from Great Falls and the email says, "The city has cut down hundreds of trees, "due to Dutch elm disease."

And I agree they probably have, this person says one of theirs was cut down and the others show symptoms.

They wanna know can they plant the same type of trees and if so, what precautions do they need to do?

And we have a photograph up of what Dutch elm disease actually does to the twigs, the tree.

- Right Maybe I can talk briefly, about what Dutch elm disease looks like for those of you out there who haven't seen it before.

So, the thing you'll notice in your elm trees first is what we call flagging.

So upper branches, the leaves will start wilting and then turning yellow and curling and maybe even gray.

And you would notice that in early summer.

So, that's a sign for that Dutch elm disease.

And so if you cut off a branch that wilted like that and you looked at it, if you peeled off the bark, you would see that brown discoloration that we saw in the first picture.

And if you cut through the twigs or branches, you would see that dark discoloration, the inner of that branch.

So, those are all symptoms that would indicate Dutch elm disease.

It's a serious disease that will cause plant tree death within a few years.

And so that's probably why the City of Great Falls, cut down so many trees.

Now to that question, what the person can do.

They could replant an elm tree, they certainly wanna look for a variety that is resistant to Dutch elm disease.

Fortunately there are a couple out there now, I would recommend to consult a local nursery and just ask them about varieties and their traits if they would wanna contact me, I happen to have some resources too.

I'm just really bad at memorizing elm variety names, so I have them not fluent.

If you had a tree that showed symptoms, you wanna prune out the branches that have those symptoms, prune them out entirely and make sure to clean your tools in between for sure.

So, we're not spreading the disease further.

- Yeah, it is.

I grew up and did my doctorate at Nebraska, during that period where Dutch elm was ravaging a city of Lincoln, which was known as the City of Elms.

You'd wake up at eight o'clock in the morning to the sound of chainsaws all summer long.

So, if you've got American elms, you're probably gonna lose 'em.

- Yeah.

- The one that I've heard is pretty new that's pretty good for this region is Prairie Expedition.

- [Uta] Yes.

- And that's I think available at several nurseries around the state.

- Yeah, so generally they're hybrids between American and Asian elms that are resistant, but there are some American elms that have good resistance, which through that devastating disease they could screen for that trait.

And so there are a couple of American ones that are resistant, yeah.

- Okay.

For Eric, this person wants to know the relative value of beef economically because it's so high right now, compared to say 10 or 20 years ago.

Is there a difference or is it kind of similar prices?

- So yeah, we had great prices almost, it was almost 10 years ago, 2014 or so we're, we're looking at like $2.50.

But yeah, inflation has changed.

The inputs have changed quite a bit.

And so yeah, the question of kind of the relative price, I think in real terms we're about where we were in those 2014 times.

I guess the one difference is there are much higher input costs out there.

So, the relative profitability might not quite be what it was at that time period.

But that being said, we're still above kind of what the long run price would be.

So, it's a above average time in the beef sector I'd say.

- It's good for ranchers?

- Yep, it's a good year.

- And feed lots.

So, okay, on that note, I've got a couple interesting calls here.

Number one, caller would like to know and Sam I'm gonna let you do this one, he would like to know the difference between, store-bought ground beef versus grass-fed ground beef that costs more.

He's heard that the grass-fed beef is better, but she's not sure if that's true.

It's a sticky question.

Have at it.

(panelists laughing) - Yeah, I think the best way to answer that is in terms of whether it's better or not is your preference.

Your general store-bought beef is probably going to be probably a higher fat content on average.

It's probably gonna come from a grain-fed system or a feedlot versus your grass-fed is that's probably been completely finished out on a forage base or a grass.

There's some caveats to how that's done and what that means for the meat.

Some of that is that it takes a lot longer to finish a cow on grass and it takes more or larger I would say resources in terms of it takes more acres per animal type thing to be able to graze them to a finishing point, versus a feed lot.

And in terms of whether it's better or better for you, typically grass fed is a little leaner.

It has a little bit of a different fatty acid profile and but I think and therefore, it's gonna have a little bit of a different flavor.

So, I think when it comes to grass fed or grain fed, that's more of a consumer preference.

There are some fatty acids changes that people go back and forth on quite often, but I don't know if we wanna go into that here.

- Put it this way, I like 'em both.

- Yeah, exactly.

- Grilled, grass-feed.

- [Sam] I disagree.

- Chris.

- The other comment I guess I'd add to that is your meat is going to be better, it's gonna taste better and you're gonna believe in it if you know where it came from.

So, do your homework and do pay more for a product that's raised in a way that you appreciate.

So, I think a more informed and educated customer is what we all would like to see.

And that's gonna reward the rancher that's doing a better job managing.

- And we have a question that did come in this person, another caller said they're seeing more, local produced grass-fed beef being sold around the state and they're curious is that beef have to be certified.

And I don't know if that's probably checked or I'm not sure what the term would be.

- So, USDA has a process for overseeing, labeling and the information that goes into a label.

As far as grass-fed goes, there is an American Grass Fed Association that has a certification process and there are numerous requirements.

I've actually become certified to be an auditor for that program.

So, I know a little bit about it.

I haven't done a lot of it, so I'm not an authority on that.

But there is a process and you can learn more about that by going online.

You can contact me and I can put you in onto some more resources about that.

But there is absolutely a certification process and it's pretty well policed and grass-fed certification has been around for a long time.

- Okay.

I've actually been doing a little work on history of agriculture.

Grass-fed beef has been around for a long time.

Let's go back to when mining and the ranchers, the Grant-Kohrs and people like that, that was all grass-fed beef.

And you know what?

People ate a lot of it and I'm sure they liked it.

Now another question and this is to set on an argument, between a husband and wife.

- [Uta] Oh gosh, no pressure.

(panelists laughing) - This gentleman says that a porterhouse and a T-bone steak is the same.

The wife says no, they're different.

Who's correct?

- Nobody wants to tackle that one.

- We should dial a friend and get Jane Boles on the phone here, meat scientists.

You'd be able to answer that better than anybody.

- I don't know for sure, but they look the same.

So Chris, you got a- - I really don't know.

I think that a porter house is just a really big T-bone.

- [Jack] I think it is.

- I might have totally botched that one, but I'll just swing at it anyway.

If I struck out, I'm good with that.

- Okay, well I'll check with Jane and we'll find out for sure.

But that is an interesting question.

Kohler wants to know the differences and similarities between organic ag, sustainable ag and regenerative ag.

We've touched sustainable, regenerative, organic is totally different.

So who wants to jump on that, Eric?

- Well, yeah, I mean, I think to me they sound like there are two different, production practices that might have quite a bit of overlap, but the organic process has very specific items in there that you need to achieve on your way.

And a lot of those production practices are very likely to be within the regenerative agriculture realm.

So, I guess there's probably a lot of overlap.

I know the organic has an official kinda USDA label and I'm not sure if the regenerative ag has the same label or not.

- I can answer that a little bit more.

So, the thing that's exclusive to organic that wouldn't be in the other certifications is kind of that chemical free label.

So, to be organic, you can't use any chemicals, really on your farmer ranch at all.

The downside of organic is that you can farm and do a lot to damage soil health.

So, it doesn't require any soil health practices.

Regenerative does.

And there's actually a regenerative organic label that requires, all the non-chemical certifications as well as the soil health and other components of regenerative agriculture.

- Okay, thank you.

I learned something there.

This person from Bozeman has heard the term wheat streak used on the program several times.

They wanna know what it is and is it a serious problem year in and year out here in Montana, right?

- Wheat streak is a viral disease that affects wheat and other small grains and grasses too.

In Montana, it's kind of a periodical issue.

It's not an issue every year, but it can become an issue.

I actually wrote an ag alert about it and sent it out earlier this week with some more information.

Right now, what would be something important to know, especially for those who are growing wheat, as you're preparing to plant your winter wheat crop, you wanna make sure that you manage the volunteer in grassy wheats that are in your field, because at this time of the year, they can harbor the disease, which is the virus and then a small mite that transmits that virus.

And so we need to remove the plants in which they live, so the mites can't move into our winter wheat crop and cause damage there.

And so that's what we call green bridge management and it's very critical to do that right now.

The rule of thumb is that we wanna make sure that the volunteer wheat is dead, well dead before our winter wheat crop emerges.

So, spraying and then planting immediately into that with our wheat seed is a higher risk practice than spraying, waiting a week or two and then planting our wheat seed.

- Okay, thank you.

Couple questions, one from Saddle and one from Bozeman.

These people would like to know the role that cattle play in regenerative agriculture.

You guys want to touch on that a little bit?

I know that a lot of ranchers are really into the regenerative phase of agriculture right now.

So, tell us a little bit how that works.

- Sure, so I think one of the reasons that regenerative agriculture is really coming on lately is because people are starting to understand the importance of soil health.

And so just really quickly, I'll go through the five soil health principles and Gabe Brown, "Dirt to Soil" is a really great book if people wanna learn more about this and I can get you that information.

But the five soil health principles are, provide soil cover, minimize disturbance, have a living root in the soil as many months of the year as possible, promoting biodiversity.

And that means both plants and animals.

So, as much diversity out there as possible.

And then the fifth one is to incorporate grazing animals.

And so that animal provides a recycling function.

They consume the plant material, they digest it, it comes out the back end and that allows that material to be broken down and kind of finish the lifecycle of the plant material.

So, in order to regenerate soil biology, water cycling, nutrient cycling, that grazing animal, whether it's a cow or a horse or a sheep or a goat or an elk or a bison or whatever, provides a really key function in taking that plant material from live to producing something that the rest of the ecosystem can utilize.

- [Jack] Okay, thank you.

- I add to that real quick too.

One of the things where I see this a lot and see this term a lot is, I guess just to take a step back is like ever since the 1950s and 60s, we've seen that cropping systems and livestock systems, have become more and more specialized.

Where prior to that there was a lot of cropping livestock integration.

And so where I've see a lot of producers, talking about regenerative ag and taking into these regenerative ag processes, actually reincorporating or reintegrating livestock on cropping systems.

And so I've seen where producers may be looking to put in a cover crop rotation into their system and then graze that cover crop rotation or grazing crop aftermath or things like that to do exactly like Chris said, to then take some of that vegetation or urine that can then offset, some of your fertilizer costs going into that next season.

- So, you mentioned cover crops and you carbon sequestration.

Is there any figures how much carbon say, average cover crop might pull out of the atmosphere?

Anybody have any?

No.

- I don't know that.

The only thing I guess I would say to that is that if you look at a typical monocrop system, I think, which is what Sam was kind of of referring to, is that that super efficient or super dialed in farming scenario where you grow wheat crop and then you put it in fallow, either for the rest of the season or for multiple seasons or corn or sugar beets or whatever it might be in this area.

The alternative to that, so that leaves the ground fallow for a majority of the time.

In other words, nothing's growing there.

You're really doing a lot to damage soil health in that situation and you're creating a lot of opportunity for erosion.

And so in the alternative to that is once you've harvested whatever crop it is as your primary cash crop to go in right away and plant some kind of a cover crop and economically, the only way to take advantage of that cover crop is to put it through a grazing animal.

And that grazing animal provides a really critical function for breaking that material down and returning it to the soil.

- Makes good sense to me.

Eric, the Farm Bill is due to be voted on, I think in the next couple weeks, isn't it?

- [Eric] It's set to expire, yeah.

- Yeah, set okay, expire.

That's a better term.

(panelists laughing) - It will not be footed on for a while.

- This individual would like to know, do you foresee any huge changes in this year's maybe Farm Bill?

- Yeah, so the farm bill is set to expire at the end of this month.

And what needs to happen before that is sort of the budget reconciliation process, which if you've been watching the news, has not been smooth running through Congress.

And so I think a lot of the talk is that there'll be an extension to push some of the Farm Bill, through maybe the end of the year to give a little bit more time.

As far as kind of what people are talking about big changes.

I mean, I don't think there's a whole lot of changes.

'cause one of the things with the Farm Bill, is if you're gonna make major changes in one area, if you're gonna add funds in one area, you've gotta kind of take from another area.

There was some conservation programs that were put into place a while back and so that was a while back was thought.

That's gonna be part of the Farm Bill discussion.

Right now there's some talk about maybe reference prices, finding a way to kind of get them higher than they are right now, but crop insurance and most of the programs seem like there's pretty little debate about major changes in there.

- It nothing really controversial that in the Farm Bill?

- No, I think when you, I think I'm pretty certain that it's not gonna be signed on time.

It'll probably be pushed down the road.

We have divided congress and a budget that's taking a little bit longer.

And so with that in mind, a lot of people on the committees are gonna wanna see it finished and the best way to get it finished is to not introduce controversial topics to it.

- [Jack] Okay.

- Yeah.

- I'll throw this one out, because none of us will have an answer for it, which is always kind of fun.

- [Uta] Right.

(panelists laughing) - This person from Houston has grown Brussels sprouts for 30 years, however, the last two years they've had good strong plants, but no sprouts.

Any ideal why?

I'll take a guess.

They changed varieties and that variety was not adaptable.

I've had the same problem with broccoli.

My broccoli did not head this year.

I'm probably wrong if I hear from somebody else, we'll put it on next week.

- Bring David on, David Baumbauer.

- Yeah, well I'll throw it to David.

Yeah, okay.

Sam, do cattle play a role in carbon issues?

Carbon sequestration?

- Yeah and I mean, I'm sure Chris would like to touch on this one too.

And he's kind of mentioned a little bit earlier that the way that we actually sequester carbon or get carbon out of the atmosphere and into the ground is actually through plants and photosynthesis.

And so in terms of cattle directly sequestering carbon, I suppose maybe there's a little bit here and there, just from trampling things, other things.

But the main thing is pulling carbon into those plants, having that go from atmospheric carbon to plant structure material.

And so the way cattle do play a big role in carbon sequestration is managing those cattle to be a more productive vegetation landscape.

So, basically manage the cattle grazing in a way that produces more photosynthetic material for those plants to then bring that carbon in and then store that in either plant material or root material and and so on.

And I'm sure you got a lot more to talk about there.

- Well, I can just dovetail into that really quickly.

So, I do have a couple of photos here that maybe we can refer to as visual aids.

I have, so as Sam started to say, there are grazing practices that we can implement that do promote plant health and vigor and diversity.

And so any grazing animal is a selective grazer.

So, at any time of the year, there are different plants that are more nutritious they're more palatable that those animals prefer.

And so as you can see in this photo, there are plants there that are being grazed, all the way to the ground and there are plants there.

So, the green is grazed all the way to the ground.

Those are the plants that are preferred.

They're also referred to as decreasors in the plant community, because as animals hit those year after year, their prevalence decreases in the plant community.

They're selected for again and again.

And so the ones that you see that are yellow or brown or sometimes even gray if they've been around for a couple years that are oxidizing, are plants that haven't been grazed at all.

And so if you go to the other slide there, there's an example of a plant that's been under grazed actually.

And what happens with those plants is they grow up all kinds of plant material or detritus we call it in the plant itself.

And I'm sorry for the photo, maybe it's not high enough quality, but if you look at the plant in the very center of that photo, you can see that the middle of it is all dead.

That plant is dying out.

It's basically choked itself out that, grazing plants need grazing animals.

And if they don't have that grazing activity, then they basically grow so much material up the new shoots can't get access to sunlight and they eventually die out.

So, plant can be overgrazed outta the community and under grazed out of the community.

And so if we use different types of rotational grazing, the more frequently we can move animals, the less selective they're gonna be on smaller plots of land, we put more pressure on them and the herd instinct makes them be more competitive when they graze.

And so they'll be less selective.

And what we wanna do when we go into a pasture is try to impact every plant, either through grazing or trampling or just having an impact on all the plants and then move out of that pasture, so that they have a chance to rest and recover.

So, there's a, I covered a lot of different beneficial grazing practices, but we've kind of taken grazing for granted I think, over the history of our management.

Cattle are put out on pasture and not managed that well.

And so there's a real opportunity there to promote plant health, which results in healthier soil.

- It makes good sense to me.

Eric from Kalispell, this person had heard that and read that the sugar beet factory in the eastern part of state, Sidney has closed.

What's replaced that and has it had a major impact on the economy in eastern Montana?

- Yeah, so I don't know what's gonna replace it.

I mean it was, I think outside of, kind of the production of sugar beets, you had a lot of jobs that were lost and that'll have a big impact on that local economy, like of a lot of other products it's, you kind of have the fluctuations and when when prices are low, people want to get out of certain industries and sugar beets are a little different, where especially if that cooperative setup where you're required to deliver a certain amount of acreage to the overall production and that kind of limits the ability of producers to produce kind of what's gonna make them the most profits within a given year.

So yeah, it's definitely gonna have an employment impact on that local economy.

- Do you think there's ever a chance sugar beets, will move back into that region?

- I mean, it seems like it's heading the other direction.

- Yeah, I agree.

- If you see prices going up.

I think there's a lot of competition in that area from other countries and also within the US, with cane sugar and so.

- Is there still a Sugar Act?

Is there still a subsidized sugar program in the United States?

- Yeah, there is a sugar policy.

I think the motto is that it's a policy that doesn't cost taxpayers a dime, which technically's correct, but it's a quota on a lot of imported sugars coming from countries that can produce it at a lower cost.

And so it's not a direct cost in this way that a lot of farm subsidies are, but by limiting the amount that comes in, you raise the price to consumers of some of those products.

- Okay, quick question for Uta.

This person has white mildew in their lawn, do they need to control it?

- White mildew, I'm guessing powdery mildew.

- [Jack] Probably, yeah.

- Well, it's that time of the year where you would see that, as the sun is not up for as long anymore and we have more shady areas, it's often related or it's related to moisture.

I wouldn't worry too much about it.

I'd say keep mowing your lawn, keep that biomass, under control and I think it's more cosmetic than anything.

- Okay, I early on this person says, you talked about the value of carbon credits and they've heard no dollar figures come from the panel this evening.

Let's talk about value of carbon credits.

It's all yours guys.

- Yeah.

So, I think in the United States we're really early into realizing the value of carbon credits and I would say mostly that's from an agriculturally produced standpoint.

We've had carbon credits in this country for a long time for wind, solar, forestry, agriculture is kind of a new horizon.

And so realizing the monetization of those credits is still early stage.

It's much more mature in countries like New Zealand, Australia and all across Europe.

So, we're really still learning.

I can just throw out that agricultural credits in the US are in the 12 to $25 range.

They can be up to two to three times that in other countries.

That's not the money that's coming back to the ranch necessarily, but there are a lot of verification, validation, documentation-based costs that go into that, that have to be paid before the ranch can see money for their benefit.

- [Eric] And as far as determining that price, there's some academic research that tries to relate kind of what the production practice ultimately results in on the cost saving side.

Like is there more research that's needed in some of those areas?

- I would say that's gonna be ongoing, yes.

Definitely.

And you guys have access there to the carbon trading diagram that I put together.

I think I showed that and walked through it on the last time that we spoke.

But basically what that depicts is, well how on the left side of the diagram, the money is coming from consumers and companies that want to offset their carbon in some way that goes through an organization, a We partner now with a company called NativeEnergy.

All the documentation of those credits, we're responsible for putting together grazing plans, documenting what the ranch's historical practice were, versus the future.

There's a lot of paperwork that has to go into documenting that the practices are additional and above what the ranch was doing before.

That money goes to the ranch then to invest in infrastructure improvements, which results then in a healthier ecosystem, a better environment as Sam was talking about before, better grazing practices grow more in healthier plants and those plants then that photosynthetic activity can produce more carbon in the soil, which is that credit that's returned to the consumer.

Right now everything in the US, except for California is a voluntary system.

It's not regulated.

I guess self-regulated is the best way to say that.

I'm sure at some point the government will get involved and the economics behind it, the value of that is all determined by all of those different types of factors.

- Okay.

Question from Highwood for Sam.

This person has noticed that there seems to be a lot more straw bales this year than in previous years.

Is that straw being used for livestock feed or what's the purpose of baling straw?

- Yeah, I mean there's a lot of things that straw can go into.

You can feed straw to livestock, believe that or not, it does take a little bit of caution.

You got to make sure you supplement that, that straw is gonna it's gonna be high in fiber and it is gonna be lacking in protein.

And so you're gonna need to make sure that you have a really good protein supplementation program to go on to utilize that straw as a feed source.

And then it's also really dry, straw is really dry.

And so we do worry sometimes about gut impaction issues from consuming too much straw.

So, we usually use that more of like a, as instead of feeding total straw, you incorporate it at a certain percent, depending on what your forage resources are.

So that could be, especially coming out of the droughts that Montana has been in and at least two years ago and then a big chunk of Montana last year, it wouldn't surprise me if folks were making sure that they had something on hand just as a safety net.

But yeah, if you do have straw and you are planning on feeding that, the nutritional value of straw is not great.

So, make sure that you work with a nutritionist or call your local extension agent and try to balance something out to make sure that those animals are gonna be meeting their nutrient requirements.

- Just to educate me a little bit, so say I wanted to feed some straw with say alfalfa to pregnant cattle, what would be a ratio of straw?

Just a rough guess.

- Yeah, so it all depends on the stage of pregnancy, where those animals are.

When you start getting into that third trimester, that's when your majority of your calf growth comes.

And so not only are you feeding, if you're feeding straw, not only is it not very digestible, you're also losing room and area, just from a growing calf restricting that.

And so as you get in that third trimester, you really want to start dropping the straw content quite substantially, because not only are they not gonna be able to have the room to digest it, but you also gotta get ready for that animal to calve.

And then we want that animal to re-breed in that third trimester.

So, I'm trying to remember my book values, (panelists laughing) but I wanna say like especially in that third trimester, I wanna say don't quote me on this, but I think the recommendations are less than 25% straw.

- [Jack] That makes sense.

- And you might be able to get away with a little bit more straw in that late second trimester into the beginning of the third trimester, but definitely want to drop that down as that calf growth begins.

- I have a curiosity question.

So Chris, you were mentioning how grazing livestock is selective on a pasture in terms of the plants they eat.

So, if you have a mix of straw and alfalfa, whatever other hay, are they as selective eating that cut plant material?

- [Chris] Yes.

- So, they'll pick out the alfalfa.

- They'll eat the alfalfa first guaranteed.

And so usually what you would do there is you're gonna be limit feeding these animals.

So, it's not like they have a mass amount.

So, you're gonna be calculating out, I have X amount a head, I want to use animals to get this percent alfalfa, versus this percent straw or whatever your rations are going to be.

And so then you'd ration that out on a per head base.

So, it's not like you're gonna be feeding, like a week's worth of material in one feeding and then letting them eat for a week.

Those kind of deals are gonna be more on a day-to-day basis, 'cause then yeah, as Chris probably knows too, like they'll go and they'll eat all that out.

If you did that, they would eat up on alfalfa and then switch over to the straw and you'd end up with some serious digestive problems by doing that probably.

- Okay, we had a comment from a caller from Townsend from a question that was called in earlier.

This Townsend caller Googled, porter house hyphen T-bone question.

Search engine said supposedly a difference.

Porter house is cut from the rear of the loin and T-bone from the front of the loin.

- [Chris] It's bigger.

- He said the marital argument may continue (panelists laughing) and thank you.

We do take comments, most of them, sometimes we edit them a little bit.

Here's one that I think is kind of interesting, because I've seen a hempfield between Bozeman and Belgrade and the amount of foliage is incredible.

This caller from Lewistown had a comment that he thinks growing a fast growing plant like hemp, would help sequester carbon and combat climate change.

And would those plants qualify for carbon credits?

Could they be sold if you grew hemp?

- That's a good possibility.

I work solely with grazing carbon programs and I don't know a lot about the farming side of things, but yes, the concept is the more plant material we can grow, the more photosynthesis happens.

That photosynthesis is pulling carbon out of the atmosphere.

The big thing is I think that, that carbon needs to get sunk somewhere.

It needs to go to a permanent place.

If it's just pulled in as biomass for plant, that plant material's gonna get consumed or go somewhere it could burn up and go right back into the atmosphere.

So, I'm a big advocate of promoting soil health.

Obviously I've talked about that several times.

But soil health is a much more permanent place, the soil to store that carbon than a lot of other end places for it to wind up.

So, good grazing is one of the best, there's no doubt about that.

From Gallatin County, Uta, this person has some black discoloration at the end of their grain.

Any idea what it is?

- Well, it sounds like it could be what we call black point, which is, well I guess you can call it a disease.

It's just more like a blemish on your grain that happens when you have moisture during grain fill or if you have rains like this year that prevent you from harvesting timely.

And so that moisture seems to trigger, some kind of stress response within the grain.

And so that causes this discoloration.

There are fungi involved in that too.

It shouldn't be an issue in terms of toxins that are in the grain.

It's mostly cosmetic, but it can lead to deductions of the grain, depending on what its intended use is.

So, if you are looking for something that it could darken that flower, give it black speckles.

And that's not desirable.

- Nutritionally, it's not an issue.

- [Uta] No.

- No, okay.

Here's one that we're gonna have a little discussion about.

And this color from Helena had to comment that in generations past cattle grazing was done in a way to keep streams and creeks healthy.

The cattle would graze along stream bed and keep it free flowing and cold.

This allowed trout to survive.

When cattle are removed completely from an area, creeks filled up and can no longer support fish.

I don't totally agree with that, but I'll let you guys jump on that.

- So, I do have a visual aid for that one actually.

And so thank you for the question.

Cattle graze plants and riparian areas that are dependent on grazing.

And so when we remove cattle from any area, whether it's a riparian area around a stream or an upland range steep, either way there are negative impacts if cattle are removed from areas.

There are ways to graze them well and there are ways to graze them that don't benefit riparian areas.

And so if you can pull up that visual aid.

So, you can see here the photo, this is on a county road in Montana, doesn't matter where, 'cause we're not pointing fingers, but this is an example on one side of the county road on the left there, as you could probably guess, the left side is not being grazed in a particularly good manner.

And so you can see there that the stream banks are broken down, it's super shallow, there's high salinity you can see on that.

That's not frost.

That's salinity that's coming leaching from the soil into this riparian area.

And it's a pretty straight stream section.

Interestingly on the right, that's a downstream section from the one on the left.

And so the salinity on the left there, should be draining into that area on the right and creating problems.

And you can actually see in that healthy riparian area, that's under a pretty intensive rotational grazing system and has been for 12 to 15 years, you can see how much healthier that is.

The banks are built up.

There's a lot more shade provided over the water, so it doesn't warm up as much.

There's access to the floodplain there.

And so you don't have as much sedimentation in those areas.

There's not nearly the level of erosion.

So, cattle or any kind of, the grazing animals are essential to a but they need to be managed properly.

And rotational grazing is the way to do that.

And the reason I say that the important aspect of a rotational grazing, everybody wants to talk about the cows and what the cows are doing, but it's actually that rest and recovery period and prioritizing plant health and soil health that allows for it to heal over time and become more resilient.

- So, they're right.

- They're right.

- Thank you for the comment.

- Yeah, I was gonna say we've seen this in the northwest quite a bit with salmon, especially looking at salmon and steelhead and spawning and their success and cattle grazing and riparian areas were scrutinized heavily in the past because of that.

And so there's been a lot of research done in the northwest on this exact topic.

And what we've kind of come to the conclusion of is that the impact in terms of a negative or positive interaction with livestock grazing in a riparian area, really comes down to timing and intensity of use.

And so we found like in these large allotments, like in the springtime, we may not spend as, the cattle may not spend as much time in those riparian areas, but if you have no off-stream watering system and you're gonna keep those cattle there for a long time and it's hot in the summer, then they're just gonna go camp right down in there and you'll have a bigger potential for a bigger impact.

And so to Chris's point is management's really I think the issue, not the grazing.

- Yeah, makes sense to me.

Eric from Missoula.

This person wants to know if the organic agricultural industry in the state is healthy and is it expanding?

And I'm not sure you have the expertise on that, but take a guess.

- I mean we're one of the top organic wheat producers in the country.

So, as far as its growth, I'm not quite sure if it's growing or not, but I would, yeah, there are plenty of producers that are growing organic wheat these days in Montana.

- I think we have several pretty good organic growers, around the state.

It's not an easy business to get into.

You speak of management, organic management is very, very difficult.

- Well yeah, and I think a lot of things we've been talking about today as far as like, nutrient soil quality probably comes into play when you have an organic system and you're not relying on chemicals to replenish the soil.

Using some of these other livestock methods to try to get higher soil quality.

- Okay.

Question from Fort Benton and I probably know who sent this one in.

This person would like to know if ranching has also benefited from precision ag as has production, grain farming so forth.

You guys want to try that one?

- Yeah, I can take a stab first.

So, part of my extension program is looking and relating precision agricultural techniques into the livestock industry.

And so I always tell people like, we compare precision ag to the agronomy and looking at variable rate technology and things like that.

But there's some things that have been very precise that have been done in the animal sector for a really long time, like artificial insemination or embryo transfer or just keeping individual animal records and breeding programs for those animals, which is kind of the definition of precision agriculture is managing on the animal basis.

In terms of the sensory and electronic, I actually meant to bring it today, but I completely airheaded it until I got here.

But yeah, there's companies out right now that have solar powered GPS ear tags that are designed to, where you can in real time look around and see where your animals are in allotment.

I know some producers that really want to try this with some bulls on large allotments, so that they don't spend a week riding these allotments, looking for their bulls.

They can find them and ride right to 'em and bring them in.

I got a student right now that I'm working with, developing some water sensor technology that can help producers look at water troughs, without having to go check every single water trough, all the time.

There's some accelerometer activity sensor applications that are shortly gonna be coming out that are looking at things like heat detection for animals or even calving detection.

And then there's the, obviously the virtual fence, which seems to be the big hot topic right now.

And I think I'll toss this over to Chris here shortly.

But one of the biggest issues we run into when we talk about some of these management, increasing management is just infrastructure and the cost of putting in a fence right now, just a physical fence is astronomical.

And I think the virtual fence has a real opportunity to be a game changer in some of these management strategies.

And I'm sure you have an opinion on that as well.

- No, I totally agree.

And I will add to that, that in a couple weeks we're gonna be hosting one of our, we'll start up again our Monthly Bull Sessions.

So, we have rancher chats once a month, over the winter months.

We don't do 'em in the summer, 'cause everybody's out in the field and too busy.

But this one coming up later in September is a discussion.

We've had numerous ranchers across the state that have been using a virtual electric fence system, which not to get too far into the weeds, 'cause I think we're about outta time, but it's basically a collar that a cow is equipped with and a rancher can draw in a fence line on the computer and through a GIS system, the collars know where that fence is.

As the cow gets closer to the fence line, they first receive an audio signal and then as they get into a zone that's basically on the fence line, then they get shocked and over time and it doesn't take that long, it's really interesting.

But they learn that as they start to hear that signal, they go back to the herd.

And so it's technology that works.

It's really effective.

They're working through a lot of the bugs.

But, but yeah, it's very interesting and people are super intrigued by it, especially given the cost of installing a new fence.

- I'll give you a figure, I had a high school friend of mine who farms in south central Nebraska, southeast Nebraska, put a half mile of five strand barbed wire fence in, just a half mile.

A little over half mile.

It was $15,000.

A virtual fence makes a lot of sense.

We're getting down toward the end, but I want to bring up a photo that you have of slow erosion and if we could get that picture, if we still have it.

Next week we have Sue Tallman, who is with the NRCS and she's gonna talk about soil erosion.

We've got a few seconds.

Tell us a little bit what occurred here.

- So, if you look at this photo, you might imagine that this was taken back in the Dust Bowl days, but it's not black and white.

So, you can see it definitely is not, I took this photo just two years ago.

I was driving through the north central part of the state and I had to pull over and turn around and go take a photo of this field.

So, as you can see on the left hand side of the photo, there's a plowed field.

This is just kind of right in the middle of the growing season.

You can see all the green there in the barrow ditch.

You can see on the left hand side of the photo.

There's no crop growing there.

It was a failed crop.

This is after a couple years worth of drought.

So again, there's no blame to be had here.

We're not pointing any fingers, but we're still doing things that can be improved.

And so as you can see in that photo, that's one winter, probably a few months worth of soil erosion and it's almost filled in the entire ditch.

So, we're losing a lot of topsoil and we need to do some things to address that.

- It's bad.

Folks where I bought out of time, wanna thank everybody here on the panel for showing up, especially Chris.

Chris, it's always good to have you here.

- Thank you.

- I learn every time you come.

I mean, I learn a lot next week as I mentioned, Sue Tallman with the NRCS, she is a state agronomist, she'll will be with us.

Have a good week, stay safe and please tune in again next week.

Good night.

- [Narrator] For information and resources, visit montanapbs.org/aglive.

(gentle guitar music) "Montana AG Live" is made possible by, the Montana Department of Agriculture, MSU Extension, 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.