Abraham Pratt came to what is now Sheridan County in 1878.

Why he came to this river valley we knew he liked.

And it was very similar to his homeland of Yorkshire, England and North Central England.

There were no trees.

The although Abraham Pratt was a sailor, a lot of people questioned why he was out here in the middle of the continent.

But the tall grass at the time, the waving grass, there was a reason they called it a sea of grass, because it gave the the illusion of the sea.

The south fork of the Solomon River was running water.

A lot of water.

It was fairly wide.

There were also at the location of Cottonwood Ranch, 20 live springs within a half mile radius.

So maybe Abraham Pratt saw there's water.

We need water, there's grass for growing something.

And if the bottomland was wide, the soil would probably be good.

It'd be good fertile soil, which it was.

How good did it look?

Probably pretty well.

Here in northwestern Kansas, we've gone from a sea of grass to mostly cultivated ground with a variety of crops.

By the first decade of the 20th century, there were big steam tractors.

They were big and slow.

But they could pull a plow that had 10 to 15 plowshares on it.

So they tore up a lot of land and then continued on into the second decade, when World War One hit.

We were feeding a lot of people in Europe with the surplus of the foods.

The commodity price or the price for the grains was very high because the demand was high.

And so there was a lot of land broken up and the shipping was good so they could export to other countries.

We were actually feeding the world for a while.

Well by breaking up all this, and then with the depression of the 1930s, combined with a drought, we turned the southern Great Plains, especially into the dustbowl.

This really wreaked havoc.

Population left.

Abandoned fields that were drifted deeply in dirt, covering fence lines.

Blown dust from the over farming of the ten years before.

Cultivated so much land that there was no stabilization.

Some say, Well, we've had a lot drier years since the thirties, but we haven't had the dust years.

Well, conservation in agriculture has improven that.

And one of the things is you plant the crop and you leave the residue on it, so it will go into the soil.

So that helps of fertility, but it also is a cover.

So hopefully the wind doesn't blow it off.

That turn of the century.

I mean, you had you had the the common practice, they would seed alfalfa and they bring oats with that and these other companion crops to establish the oats and protect the alfalfa as it was smaller.

So they knew some of these practices.

And as agriculture advanced and mechanized itself, it seemed like we forgot some of those things because it was much easier to just cover a large amount of acres from sitting on a seat and not actually studying what the soil was doing underneath as we walked on.

But we can't criticize them.

We can't throw shade at them because they were just doing the best that they could at the time with that information.

In the 1930s, when Franklin Roosevelt was president, he proposed a lot of government programs.

Again, the Dust Bowl was going on, depression was going on.

So he initiated a lot of government subsidies for the farmers and also put a lot of people to work.

Now, part of this was the Conservation Corps building ponds and dams for flooding, storage of water.

They also planted trees.

So there were a lot of government programs that went through and they didn't want to see another dust bowl.

And they found out that cultivation had really been part of the dustbowl years.

So one of the early programs was simply called the Soil Bank, and that was to plant grass in some of these fields that maybe had lost production or needed grass, something to hold them on.

And then in the 1980s, they called it the Conservation Reserve Program.

A government program which has been very successful, is still turning a lot of the cultivated ground back into grasslands.

But CRP is, it's a very important program because so much land has been converted to turn now, not so much cropland as being converted for the urban areas.

We will never be able to convert land back to the state it was before we got here.

But we can help try to try to implement some step of bringing the natural grasslands back to help out with with erosion, wildlife habitat.

And so the grass you're planning now just isn't bluegrass like you'd plant in your yard?

No.

Our mixes out here in this part of Kansas pertain Big Bluestem and Little Bluestem, which are the ones that we like Little and Big Bluestem are native to Kansas, and then we have Side Oats Gramma and we throw in some switchgrass and Indian grass, and then we do throw in buffalo grass.

But those are all native grasses.

They're all native grasses.

Before Euro-American settlement and stuff.

Personally, I like driving around see and CRP fields.

They have pretty flowers in them.

They're esthetically pleasing I guess.

So that started on and also what really came in then, although it was known before, is the contour terracing.

Do you have any record on when the contour terraces were started?

I don't know the exact year when they started.

I did find a design the other day that was dated 1955 because we do keep the original record that they drew out on paper and and staked and measured.

So how do you go about with your modern technology redesigning these instead of going out with somebody with a telescopic transit and somebody with a what we used to call an idiot stick or the range pole?

We do have lasers to help with that.

We have a program that we pull up to help us come up with an initial design to give us a rough guesstimate on what we're going to do in the field.

And it has pulled up the contours.

I do a lot of things on the technical side of designing and then implementing those designs regarding terraces, waterways, livestock water tanks, solar pumps, wells, shelter belts.

The trees planting during the dustbowl years.

Part of that was at the time to get more trees out in the area, but also to give people jobs, but to stop erosion.

And a lot of times they're built around the borders of crop fields to help with wind erosion on the soil.

And you'll also see them out in rangelands or pastures for livestock shelter.

Primarily they use the red cedar trees because they're quick growing, they spread out.

You might see producers start to implement, including shrubs such as sand plums for wildlife habitat.

So you aren't only concerned about the conservation of soil of keeping it.

It goes to other things.

Such as wildlife, huh?

Yes.

From 1950s on, we come in with shelter belts, you come in the soil bank of plant and grass back in the terracing.

Irrigation also came in, but it's adaptation in a lot of ways, too.

You have now the fifth and sixth generations out here have learned how to kind of control their crops.

They can't control the weather.

They are rotating crops and add back to the nutrients of the soil.

Different farmers take different approaches to soil enrichment.

We spoke with Mark Schamberger about his move toward organic You and LaNae, your wife said that you'd kind of started this about eight years ago on trying to get certified as organic.

And so you've been going organic.

I know that probably in the past were various sort of fertilizers and stuff used in this to be certified organic, do you have to let that disperse out, leach out or whatever and have it tested to make sure there aren't any synthetic fertilizers in the soil?

Or can you even get rid of it.

Does it go away?

I assume it does.

Because they given your three years to, you know, to get rid of the chemicals that's coming and get you sprayed all your your synthetic fertilizers, anything that you know.

And is it a state agency that tests to certify it, or is it some organic organization?

Well, actually, Eco Cert.

Okay.

The inspector comes out and investigates all your ground that you want to do.

You have to have a border around all your land and you have to verify that you're buying products such as beef manure.

Receipts, yeah.

Beef manure or chicken litter or fish oil or your biologicals or whatever.

You know, your seed.

And that's where it starts.

That's your first year.

And then you kind of have to learn.

They're giving you three years to also to learn how to farm again.

Got through the transition, got into our first year, and we planted soybeans and corn.

I think we raised 100 bushel palmer amaranth and about five bushels soybeans.

It was a fight.

But the palmer amaranth is usually considered a noxious weed, isn't it?

Well, yeah.

You know, it'll grow taler than me and you.

In two days.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's just.

It's a vivacious weed.

I just thought, where did this thing come from?

You know, and.

But, you know, we put that to wheat, and then we put the corn and corn again, and it's been our cleanest field.

Yeah, good.

You know, you always hear we want to leave it better for the next generation.

Well, you know, you got to take care of your soil because that's where all that's what we all came out of.

You know, you don't abuse your land.

You know, you've just got to take care of it.

That's where cover crops come in.

Your legumes, your plowed down, green manures.

There are some places where they'll where they I believe I've heard this from this friend of mine, that they'll take 250 bushel corn and shred it to the ground.

Just get that energy down into the ground.

That effort to get energy into the ground is also focused on retaining nutrients and moisture through methods like cover and companion crops and no till and dry land farming.

The function of of cover crops in our system is to one bring more diversity, keep everything mixed up for insects, weeds, water evaporation, everything.

So if we keep our soil covered either with with last year's residue or if we have an opportunity to put cover crops in there, will do the same thing.

They're going to add to the biomass.

They're going to add to the diversity.

The soil microbes are going to find something in there that's not normally fed to them.

And so ultimately, we want to just keep the residue on the soils for the for the water savings and keep the sunlight from cooking it all out.

But yet, we do have a purpose of feeding our biology, our our neighbors below us that we're walking on.

You know, when you get when you get out here and you start digging underneath this stuff, the soil coverage is what we're after.

That's where we're conserving moisture, keeping the soil cool and keeping our soil biology alive.

In the middle of the day stick a thermometer or an infrared thermometer and shoot the temperature of that soil versus something that's clean tilled 15, 20 degrees difference.

This will be cooler soils which less evaporation.

Soil biology and roots don't like anything above 95 degrees.

There's several inches of of residue on that.

So it's all underneath there.

And all the soil and all of the inhabitants of that soil and the roots, all our underneath that roof staying protected and cool.

Water is staying down there.

It's not on the surface evaporating off.

No till is using chemicals in place of tillage.

We're talking ounces per acre, an acre being the size, give or take of a football field.

Low concentration.

Many of these are very short residual.

They're not lasting long in the soils.

They have a purpose.

We're trying to use less and less of the chemical and the fertilizers as we go forth, because we understand that they can be a form of destruction as we go and look at possibly our our soil biology, our insects that are beneficial, all that can have a play on throwing the balance of nature out of sync.

So, you know, we always see resistant weeds, the palmer amaranth.

It's very difficult to control with chemicals at times.

Rotation is basically what keeps at bay.

Research and observations are is we can use some of the cover crops in place of the chemicals.

We have certain cover crops that work really well for weed suppression.

So we can bring these into our system.

They'll take place of some of the the chemistry.

I mean, our prairies are always covered in our prairie.

Grasses have grasses and Forbes And some broadleaf they have diversity to them also.

And they've been around for a long time and still produce every year with whatever rainfall they're given.

But they're covered.

We need to take some of those lessons that are in front of us and and pay attention to them.

Dry land You're at the mercy of rainfall.

You don't have the ability to to water your crops.

You're driving on dry land right here.

What we're here on this wheat stubble does not get any irrigation.

So what I do with this goes back to how much moisture can I bank in this ground with snow or rain will determine what I put into this.

So that's truly the difference.

Here On the irrigated side, you have the ability to turn an energy source on to pull water from the Ogalallah up and apply it.

Dry land you are strictly at the mercy of God and His rainwater and saving what He gives you.

That's key.

And what's what's the value of an inch of water if you plant a crop and you can't get it established, even though you plant it at a dry land rate or a less rate or less population one inch of water on that at the right time to establish a stand to give you a chance priceless.

So I think, you know, irrigation will be here for at least I hope for a while.

I hope, you know, for generations.

But we have to respect it.

Irrigation in western Kansas depends heavily on the health of the Ogallala Aquifer, an underground geological formation that stores water.

The Ogallala Aquifer itself is encased in shale.

There's a shale layer on the very bottom, and the water sits right on the top of that shale layer.

And then there's sand and rock formation.

And that's actually what the aquifer is is it's water encased in sand, Like a big sponge.

Like a big sponge.

Then above that of course is our dirt, you know, that we farm.

Local farmers, like you said, you know, we've talked that everybody knows everybody.

We all knew that there was an issue because as the water table declines, so does that well capacity.

So when you do that, that means less water can be pumped out of the ground.

Basically, too many straws got put in the cup to pump it out.

And we can't put the genie back in the bottle, but we can sure do better with with what we know now.

You know, some people run the argument of well It's it's it's like an oil well if you have oil underneath your property well pump until it's gone.

They want it all now.

And there are people with the water that have that same ideology.

I think it was given to us to use, but use wisely.

So we knew there was a problem.

I mean, you didn't have to be a scholar or a geologist or know water law.

I mean, you can see with your own two eyes that it's happening.

You had to be a farmer.

You had to be a farmer.

And so there was about 40 to 50 of us farmers collectively that got together and were like, we need to do something different.

We have to figure out what we need to do.

So we started working with Kansas Geological Surveys everything like that to figure out what what can be done, what needs to be done.

And then a goal.

Our goal is to extend the life of the aquifer.

That was our initial goal so that more future generations could have access.

I know that you and a bunch of people formed with the acronym of called L.E.M.A.

L.E.M.A.

means Local Enhanced Management Area.

So in the early 2000s the GMD 4 based in Colby Kansas that's the Groundwater Management District recognized six spots in the GMD that had high declines of water in the Ogallala Aquifer from irrigation, cattle, whatever that may be.

So they defined them as a high priority area.

We were called SD Six, Sheridan County, the sixth priority area that was founded.

The current water law at the time, all of the restrictions are going to be based in Topeka.

We enacted the L.E.M.A.

then Local Enhanced Management Area that gives the local people the power over the water.

The state still monitors everything, but we're kind of more in charge of it here.

Kansas Geological Survey came in and forecast that we would extend the life of the aquifer for an additional 20 years by saving 20%.

So that was our goal.

At the current time we were pumping a little over 14 inches of water is about 14.1 on average across the SD 6.

And so we picked 11 inches as our 20% decline then.

And we came in with a five year allocation that essentially I was given 55 inches of water over this five year period.

And the easiest way I explain it's kind of like a checking and a savings account.

I've got 55 inches in my savings account, and I can spend it in my checking account however I want it to.

But I just can't go over that 55 inch savings account then in this five year period.

Actually, we're just in our 10th year of doing this just finishing our second five year term this year, in 2022.

The first five year period, the data coming out was amazing.

We had actually had stopped the decline of the aquifer completely, which that wasn't even our initial goal.

There's actually certain spots inside the area that the water table is actually starting to come back up and recharge.

And what are some of the methods you use to reduce that?

So personally on our farm we utilized crop rotation, no till farming practices, drop nozzles, low pressure nozzles to soak more water and less evaporation.

And the nozzle is now down in the canopy of the crop.

There's humidity there from the plant, naturally transpiring.

So just that aspect alone decreases the amount evaporation.

And then because it's down in the crop canopy, that wind can no longer get to it.

So by utilizing these newer technologies, we're able to soak more water into the soil profile from what's pumped out of the aquifer.

Thus, we would ultimately need less water to grow the same crop.

So it's shading the water on the ground so it's there longer and soaks in better and doesn't heat up and and crust.

Over in the hot sunshine we have in the high plains.

Yep.

Our no till farming practices by leaving a crop residue surface, you know, layer of mat on the surface, once that water makes it to the ground, not only do you have the shading of the crop canopy, but you also have the residue to stop the heat and the transpiration.

And so we're naturally you're soaking more water into the crop.

And of course, you're using less.

Using less.

And that's what it's all about.

Yup.

How does this affect your net income?

By practicing this?

That's always been the biggest talking point of anybody is what's the financial hit going to be to Main Street America?

So Kansas State University and Dr. Bill Golden, they wanted to do a economic study of the economic impact of the SD 6 original L.E.M.A.

because like I said, we were the first ones ever.

So I was a great candidate because I had wells that were unrestricted and also wells that were restricted.

So we kept track and.

Comparison and control.

Yeah, the same farmer doing the same things.

Statistically, that's about as close as they could get, so they really liked that.

So at the end of the day, we ran all the economic data over this first five year period, tracked everything from fertilizer cost and usage to yields to, you know, changing oil in your irrigation motors, because that's going to be less times less pumping.

We took it very in-depth when we did this study.

When we got all said and done, I was honestly amazed.

Our net profit per acre was higher inside the SD 6 L.E.M.A.

boundary than it was outside the.

SD 6 L.E.M.A.

boundary.

So it convinced you?

It convinced me.

So since that original five year period in SD 6 and the Dr. Bill Golden study, we have adapted a whole entire process of crop rotation.

Everything I was talking about on to our whole entire farm now.

You go back, way back in history where if you were out the land and someplace where they weren't maybe doing adequate conservation, they could always move to somewhere else and start over.

We don't have that choice now.

There are probably lands that could be broken out more, but there are way too many lands that have been broken out.

And so I guess it's the job of the current generation to conserve that for the future and hopefully put in enough thought and technology and experimentation that it'll improve.

I mean, that's that's the reason that we need to preserve this conservation because if we don't have the irrigation to produce as much commodities, then much less corn, soybeans, wheat, sorghum, whatever it may be, then that will then have a negative effect on the amount of food supply for the general public and the world population.

So that's why we're trying to do what we do.

So the, you know, the shared kind of six of the Lima for the District wide 4 I think is a great thing.

Let's conserve what we have for the... to see how long we can use it.

Keep it.

And during that time, technology is going to continue to advance that.

I think we have we have many years left.

I mean, there is enough water currently for me to farm my whole life.

I mean, I can form it out.

Everything's fine.

I'll be fine.

It's just my kids, my grandkids, my great grandkids.

That's ultimately what we preserved it for, you know, that's what all of us when we did the original SD 6 L.E.M.A., it was not about us because we've got enough water for our personal generation.

It was all about future generations.

So we're we're given this, we're given this gift, these resources of soil and water, wind, sunlight, and we're given the ability to take all those resources that we've been given and entrusted with and feed others.

And we can do it.

And we can run our fingers through it and we can walk on it.

We can smell it, we can see it.

It's a wonderful thing.

And it's a beautiful design, how it was designed.

And, and we're, we're given the task to to use it, improve it, and if so called, to pass it on, hopefully better than we found it.