Keith Berns is a farmer by trade, but on Wednesday, he might as well have added scientist and economist to his business card.
Berns is founder and co-owner of Green Cover Seed, based in Bladen, Neb., and host of a two-day Southeast Kansas Soil Health Conference in Iola. The seed company opened a second site in Iola in early 2020.
The event started Wednesday and will wrap up today, and has drawn scores of producers from across Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, Nebraska and Colorado.
The Bernses’ philosophy of farming is to boost crop production by keeping the soil covered at all times with nutrient-producing secondary crops such as a variety of grasses and grains.
So although the dark brown expanses of recently turned fields may look rich; they have in fact stripped the soil of much needed nutrients as well as exposed it to soil depletion when high winds such as those on Wednesday occur, he contended.
Berns kicked off the conference with a presentation on “Carbonomics,” noting the parallels between a healthy economy and a healthy soil ecosystem are more than similar.
They’re identical.
The principles of a successful economy relies on several basic features, Berns explained.
It needs supply and demand, currency and capital, energy resources, infrastructure, and defense and protection.
And a healthy productive soil? It, too, relies on supply and demand, currency and capital, energy resources, infrastructure and defense and protection.
Berns further elaborated:
SUPPLY AND DEMAND
“You have to have something that you’re producing, something that you can sell in order to have a strong, healthy economy.”
For soil, what farmers are looking to “sell” to the soil is carbon, through photosynthesis.
“We’re turning sunlight into things that have value,” he said.
Photosynthesis uses sunlight to produce energy. More specifically, glucose and oxygen.
The oxygen is important, Berns deadpanned, “for any of us who like to breathe.”
The glucose — consisting primarily of carbon — is the other byproduct, which can be combined and recombined into thousands of forms, feeding various crop species.
“The carbon is going to drive the whole system,” Berns noted.
The soil itself offers up the demand side, requiring nutrients, minerals, and yes, carbon.
“Soil is a living active ecosystem and needs carbon to survive,” Berns noted.
As an aside, a productive economy also requires, well of course, production.
That’s where proper farming practices are vital.
The soil is perfectly capable of providing many of the resources needed for a bountiful harvest, Berns noted, if it has the right resources.
“For far too long, we’ve left out the biology,” Berns said, best maintained through no-till practices, and — ahem — cover crops.
The best economies have diversity, he noted. Same applies to soil. With various crop species being added into the rotation, more nutrients are available for the soil.
Farmers too often apply fertilizers and other artificial input chemicals. He compared it to giving the soil’s ecosystem welfare payments.
“The goal is not to eliminate inputs,” he clarified. “The goal is to reduce as much as possible these inputs.
“We need to allow the system to work the way that God created it,”Berns said. “That’s where the soil is, the plants and the biology all working together. When we ignore the biology, that’s when we have to provide all of these other inputs.”
CURRENCY AND CAPITAL
Currency allows goods and services to be exchanged efficiently.
“Otherwise you would spend all of your time haggling over what something is worth,” Berns noted.
In soil, the currency is carbon. “It’s the main food source for soil biology.”
If you produce enough carbon (currency) then it can be accumulated as capital.
“We need currency to buy things, but we need capital if we’re going to continue to grow,” Berns said.
Soils with the highest levels of organic matter are the ones best suited for long-term production with minimal outside inputs, Berns continued.
“That’s why we think cover crops are such an important part of our rotation,” to continue accumulating organic matter.
Even better, seeds are a far more efficient solar energy collector than any man-made panel, Berns added.
For proof, look at the grasslands across the High Plains that have thrived for thousands of years.
“There was nobody out here using diesel fuel or propane or electricity to build this system,” he said. “It just came from the energy from the sun.”
Berns also spoke on bacteria species to help draw other vital elements such as nitrogen into the soil. Typically, a farmer would need to use fertilizer to apply the nitrogen.
But the rhizobia bacteria functions in the same way, by forming a symbiotic relationship with certain plants (legumes mostly) to produce nitrogen.
As an aside, Berns also touched on another microorganism, the mycorrhiza fungi, which sounds obscure but actually provides the most efficient mining system in the world.
“I love this because when you think about a mining operation, you think about these giant trucks and these huge operations,” he said.
But in reality, the mycorrhiza fungi can cut little channels into organisms, allowing nutrients to be pumped into the system. “They’re providing liquid nutrients into the plants,” he said.
INFRASTRUCTURE
Berns cringes at the thought of deep-disking recently harvested fields, because it removes many of the organic materials brought about naturally. “What you’re doing is declaring war on the soil, because you’re destroying the infrastructure,” he said. “That’s an act of war.
“You try to farm in such a way that you get more mycorrhiza, so you get more earthworms because those infrastructures will really help the system grow,” he said.
DEFENSE AND PROTECTION
The healthiest soil, Berns offered, is covered at all times, and less prone to water or wind erosion.
Plants are fascinating creatures, capable of producing their own defenses against attackers, say aphids or too much (or too little) water supplies.
The plants and organisms can develop a symbiotic relationship, he added.
DIVERSITY
While it may be difficult to add a number of different cash crops into a farmer’s rotation, it’s significantly easier to take advantage of multiple cover crops, Berns said.
“You don’t need specialized equipment,” he said. “Diversity added into your system really helps the economies grow.”
BERNS started Green Cover Seed in south-central Nebraska with his brother in 2009. The business steadily grew, as did demand, to the point he opened the Iola office about two years ago.
So far, business in southeast Kansas has been a dream scenario, Berns said.
Sales doubled in year two.
“And we could probably double again this year,” he said.
He’s uncertain about expanding the Iola facility.
“We’d really like to have another employee,” he said, before further considering expansion.
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