Rick Clark is a fifth-generation farmer in Warren County, Indiana. His family has lived on the farm since the 1880s. He recently became a grandpa and is hopeful about what the next generation will bring to the farm, which now stretches 7,000 acres. The story of Rick s transition from chemical-dependent to regenerative practices has propelled demand from other farmers to learn his strategies. In 2017, Rick was honored as Danone's Sustainable Farmer of the Year. Additionally, Land of Lakes honored him with an outstanding sustainability award, and he was also the regional winner of the American Soybean Association s Conservation Legacy Award. Currently, Rick is the Fields to Market 2019 recipient of the Sustainable Farmer Of the Year Award. His farm runs on a five crop system, corn, soybean, wheat, alfalfa, and regen. Rick s story is featured in a new film called Common Ground, which is being shown across the country in theaters on April 22nd, Earth Day. But, Bobby, this is a lot of this is in a long time, this journey for a farmer who has been on this long time and has been a part of this community for a long, long time. And I'm so honored to have him on the show today. I can't wait to see what he does next! Thank you, Rick! -Bobby and the Crew at The Nature Conservancy Learn more about your ad choices. Rate/subscribe in Apple Podcasts! Rate, review, and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes. Thank you for supporting our podcast! If you like what you're listening to us, leave us a star rating and review on your podcast on social media or subscribe on a podcast episode on the PodCast? We'll be hearing about us on the good vibes and we'll be spreading the word about it everywhere else we do it on the Good Food and Good Things, Good Thoughts, Good Relationships, Good Things Restful Podcasts, and Good Blessings, Good G Rest Restful, Good Luck, Good Blesseed, Good Mornings, Good Dreams, Good Rest Rest, Good Reviews, Good Day, Good Co Rest, Great G Rest, etc., Good G Nights, Good R Rest, Thank Me & Good G R Good G Reviews, etc. - Thank You, Good Morning, Good Regeedeedeeded, Good Night, Good Evening, Good E Day, Great Day, G Night, G R R Out, Good K Night, Great Blesseedeedee, Good Effeedeed, Bless Me, Good F Night, etc, Good N Good G Day, Bless Blesseede, Good Will, Good Good Co Day, etc...
00:00:01.000Today I'm very excited about our guest.
00:00:03.000I've been wanting to get Rick on here for a long, long time.
00:00:06.000Rick Clark is a fifth-generation farmer in Warren County, Indiana.
00:00:10.000His family has lived on the farm since the 1880s.
00:00:13.000He recently became a grandpa and is hopeful about what the next generation will bring to the farm, which now stretches 7,000 acres.
00:00:22.000The story of Rick's transition from chemical dependency to regenerative practices has propelled demand from other farmers to learn his strategies, and he has gathered national attention.
00:00:38.000In 2017, Rick was honored as Danone's Sustainable Farmer of the Year.
00:00:44.000Additionally, Land of Lakes honored him With an outstanding sustainability award, and he was also the regional winner of the American Soybean Association's Conservation Legacy Award.
00:00:56.000Currently, Rick is the Fields to Market 2019 recipient of the Sustainable Farmer of the Year Award.
00:01:03.000His farm runs on a five crop system, corn, soybean, wheat, alfalfa and regen.
00:01:09.000I just want to read one other part of your biography because I think this is interesting.
00:01:15.000After Rick graduated from Purdue University with a degree in agriculture and economics, He took an unexpected path that, by choosing to leave the family farm and to pursue a career in finance, after a friend told him about the opportunity, he packed his bag, worked at the heart of Chicago's financial district for four years, learning the ins and outs of the market, and he traded municipal parts.
00:01:40.000That just adds another dimension to your bio.
00:01:45.000Tell us about that path, about what happened to you, and about how you made that transition from chemical agriculture that your family had been using to regenerative agriculture.
00:01:59.000Well, first of all, I'm absolutely honored to be on your show today.
00:02:05.000This is probably one of the most important topics that we have in the world today, is this regenerative-style farming that can mitigate climate and save our planet.
00:02:20.000You know, Bobby, the one thing that got me where we are today is one event, and it was a one-inch rain event, and it created so much erosion that I could not believe, why are we still doing this?
00:02:36.000And that is what woke me up to then start implementing the principles of soil health.
00:02:43.000Let me ask you something, because I've spent some time in Indiana.
00:02:49.000I haven't been to Warren County, but there are parts of Indiana that are like where I grew up in upstate New York in Massachusetts, which is Rolling Hills.
00:03:02.000Broken field and forest, which is my kind of, you know, favorite landscape, but a lot of Indiana is like classic Midwest flatland.
00:03:12.000So was the erosion occurring on that kind of flat?
00:04:26.000I remember reading as a kid that the Midwest soils had some of the deepest, richest soils in the world.
00:04:34.000I think 14 inches even more of sort of black topsoil from, you know, from the ages.
00:04:41.000And so what does that look like today?
00:04:45.000Yeah, I mean, there's obviously been erosion and that amount of deep, lush organic matter has been cut at least by half.
00:04:53.000I mean, if you think about the short amount of time that we've been on this United States farming and the amount of degradations that has occurred in that short amount of time is unfathomable.
00:05:12.000So we've lost at least a half of the parent material that has been washed down the river sitting in the Gulf of Mexico.
00:05:21.000But, you know, I'll tell you what really wakes you up, Bobby, is We just had a two-inch rain event in our area here within the last 10 days.
00:05:36.000A two-inch rain event should not get a major river out of its banks.
00:05:41.000That tells me that we don't have any water infiltration on our neighboring fields.
00:05:47.000I mean, on our fields, the last we've checked, which was a year ago, we've got water infiltration rates of over 20 inches an hour.
00:05:54.000That means we can take a 20-inch rain event in one hour and have no standing water or have no runoff.
00:06:02.000So that tells you what shape the rest of our landscape is in if a two-inch rain event floods the river basin.
00:06:12.000Yeah, and by the way, I've spent a lot of my lifetime working on streams and rivers and thinking about them.
00:06:21.000And the things that create healthy ecosystems is a lot of water infiltration, the capacity of the landscapes to store water, and then drip it slowly into the streams so that you have a constant flow year-round.
00:06:37.000One of the worst things you can do to a stream is to flood it when there's rain events and then dry it out and starve it whenever you have a dry spell.
00:06:51.000And if you want to build healthy, rich ecosystems, you need that water.
00:06:56.000So for flooding to reduce flooding downstream, to retain soil, to keep stream health and water health, all of those important things, you need healthy soils.
00:07:08.000It's really the answer to everything, right?
00:07:11.000And the other thing too there that I want to add to your thought is not only is the water going in slow and being pulled in through the profile, but it's cleaning that rainwater and it's leaving all of the nutrients and the minerals behind in your soil and only clean water is coming out the other end.
00:07:31.000That's what's so important about this is figuring out how to reduce the amount of nitrogen And potassium in the water, in the water supply.
00:07:51.000So, you know, If I may, let me continue with my journey.
00:07:56.000So we got this one-inch rain event, and now it's time to go do some research.
00:08:02.000So I start looking on the internet and I start asking some people.
00:08:06.000And there's not a lot of people at this time that are really highly visible yet.
00:08:12.000So a lot of the research I did was on my own.
00:08:15.000And I came up with a species, it was called tillage radish.
00:08:19.000And the reason why I came up with the tillage radish was because it will winter kill, meaning that when you get a frost event, so if you're in a zone that gets cold enough to freeze, it will terminate the radish with the cold weather.
00:08:37.000There wasn't going to be any material I was going to deal with next spring that was going to be alive.
00:08:41.000And number two, it was great mitigation for compaction and it puts on a deep taproot to sequester the nutrients that are deep within the profile and pull them back to the surface.
00:08:53.000And Bobby, when we did this, and then the proof was in the pudding the next year.
00:08:59.000So we take a 200-acre field and we plant these cover crops in that field in the fall before.
00:09:06.000Then in the spring, we cut the field in half.
00:09:09.000And we treat half of it our traditional way, the way we did the rest of the farm, and we treated the other half with no till, and that was the only difference.
00:09:18.000We still used chemistry and we still used fertility.
00:09:20.000We just took all the tillage out, okay?
00:09:24.000So we're already ahead of the game on cost just because the tillage aspect is being taken out.
00:09:30.000At the end of the year, that 100 acres that we did the no-till way was not only the best yielding cornfield in the farm, it was the best ROI. And that's what this is all about.
00:11:18.000In the spring, we split that 200 acres in half.
00:11:22.000So 100 of it was farmed like the rest of the farm.
00:11:25.000We came in, we did our spring tillage, we did all that.
00:11:28.000We got the ground prepped and then we planted corn.
00:11:31.000On the other side, we just no-tilled with no pre-plant tillage.
00:11:36.000We just no-tilled in and then we used our nitrogen program and we used our chemical program.
00:11:44.000And at the end of the day, that fall, the 100 acres that was no-tilled was not only the best yielding, but it had the best return on investment because of the reduced cost of the tillage.
00:12:33.000The number one thing we have to understand is A person out there cannot jeopardize the livelihood of their farm.
00:12:41.000They need to start slow, start with small acreage, make sure this is going to work in your operation, and then start to move it across the farm.
00:12:52.000But by four years, we were full-blown cover crops on every acre after four years.
00:13:09.000You just advised other people not to do what you did, but you had found success.
00:13:15.000It's hard to advise other people to be lucky.
00:13:21.000Now, I don't want to use the word risky, but it was a calculated risk, okay?
00:13:26.000And I don't want to, it's hard for me to advise other farmers to be on the level of incline that I was on because it's their farm that's at jeopardy, not mine.
00:13:36.000So I just want them to slow down a little bit.
00:13:40.000But Bobby, once you can see benefits of these cover crops after year one, I mean, you instantly start to see water infiltration pick up.
00:13:53.000You start to see earthworm counts go up.
00:13:55.000But another thing that we need to back up on is I would also highly recommend That anybody wanting to do this, they need to baseline their farm.
00:14:06.000So what I mean is they need to go out and they need to pull their soil samples.
00:14:11.000I would take SAP analysis, which is a whole other analysis.
00:14:15.000My good friend John Kempf is a master at SAP analysis.
00:14:19.000But I would baseline the farm, meaning Let's say you're going to put 500 acres into this program.
00:14:26.000Then you need to draw a line in the sand and say, look, that 500 acres, the fertility levels are right here.
00:14:32.000Now, as we move forward, what's happening to our fertility?
00:14:51.000But if you don't do that baseline, you won't have any idea if what you're doing is right or wrong.
00:14:59.000But you've gone farther than just tillage.
00:15:05.000You've actually cut back chemical use and fertilizer use, right?
00:15:11.000Yeah, we've been on the journey for about, I don't know, about 10 years.
00:15:16.000And after being in for 10 years, we were at 14-way cover crop mixes, meaning if you would go out in the fall and if you were planting a cocktail of a cover crop, we would have 14 different species in there.
00:15:31.000And what we're trying to develop here, Bobby, is what's called a quorum sensing.
00:15:36.000You're trying to get the combination of everything in the biological biome working together because you don't know which one of those 14 species that you're going to put out there are going to hit and make it and go.
00:15:48.000There may be seven of them that really take off and go and the other seven don't like the trigger environment that they're in.
00:15:54.000So you don't know that when you're planting, so you've got to maximize the amount of diversity you put in.
00:15:59.000So then when you do that, then we figured out how to use a roller crimper.
00:16:07.000Now a roller crimper is a device, it's a round barrel and it's got a chevron pattern on it.
00:16:13.000And when you get cover crops growing at a certain stage in their life, they are able to be rolled down with a roller crimper and terminated.
00:16:24.000So we started doing this with cereal rye.
00:16:29.000So now, we are up to this point now, we are almost off of everything, okay?
00:16:36.000We're down to 70% reduction of inputs.
00:16:40.000Well, we started to roll cover crop before the soybeans, and we were now letting this mat.
00:16:48.000Now, just imagine cereal rye gets six feet tall.
00:16:51.000That's how tall I am, and it's over my head.
00:17:52.000So if the tractor went that way, that's how we're going this way with the plant in the same direction.
00:17:57.000And then we're going to plant the beans right into this, and then the beans are going to come up and grow, and there's not going to be any weed pressure for the first 45 or 60 days, if any.
00:18:08.000So what we did was we did 1,000 acres like this of soybeans.
00:18:12.000We left 100-acre field that we sprayed no chemistry on just to see if it would work.
00:18:51.000Weeds are telling you something out there.
00:18:54.000Certain weeds will tell you, you get a yellow weed that comes up in your field, you've got a sulfur problem.
00:19:00.000Let that weed play out because that weed's there for a reason.
00:19:04.000That weed happens to be a good sequester of sulfur.
00:19:07.000Well, your profile is telling you you need sulfur so that yellow weed comes up and away it goes, does its thing, and you won't see it again.
00:19:17.000So one of the things that farmers are so tied up on is they can't drive down the road and see any weeds in their fields, so they've got to go get their sprayer and spray again to try to clean all the weeds up.
00:20:09.000When we went that route, we were then certified.
00:20:12.000I started with 500 acres, and it took us like four years to get, or five years to get the whole farm in, because again, I just come, you know, from 08, I just jumped in headfirst on cover, something I've never seen before, cover crops.
00:20:29.000And we're now at a point where we can go organic.
00:20:32.000And we've got to be a little more careful here because there's no more easy buttons to push.
00:22:09.000What I want to tell you is, look, we are working on a system that has taken everything away, and I'm way over there.
00:22:16.000Over here is the group that is doing nothing.
00:22:19.000Let's meet somewhere in the middle and let's get started on regenerative practices of farming.
00:22:26.000And then we'll decide within your context, which, by the way, is another principle, where can we take your farm safely and not jeopardize the livelihood of your farm?
00:22:39.000So are you, I mean, nowadays, almost all the soy and corn that you get in this country is GMO.
00:22:57.000We are now either buying certified organic seed, which would be all non-GMO, or what we're doing, we're doing something else that's pretty cool, I think, on the farm.
00:23:09.000We're doing what's called epigenetics.
00:23:13.000If you want me to go into that, I can.
00:23:15.000It'll take me a few minutes to get into it.
00:23:17.000I think that's really, I mean, to me, I'm fascinated by epigenetics.
00:23:22.000The epigenetics are the impacts of exposures That actually amplify over generations.
00:23:33.000So there are certain chemicals, and Roundup is one of them, where you infect or you expose a mother rat, and her babies will show some impact, but their babies show a much greater impact.
00:23:49.000And this is something that was dismissed by science even 15 years ago.
00:24:17.000When I'm sitting around thinking about the principles of soil health and being regenerative and being a good steward of the land and being conservation-minded, I'm always thinking, I'm not inventing anything new here.
00:24:35.000I'm trying to remember everything that we've forgotten.
00:24:38.000I mean, think about how the homesteaders farmed.
00:24:41.000They took their 80-acre plot and they divided it into fourths.
00:24:46.000And they had a fourth of alfalfa, or a clover.
00:24:50.000They had a fourth of wheat, a fourth of beans, and a fourth of corn.
00:24:53.000And the clover, they bailed two or three times a year.
00:26:42.000Now it took four years of growing these out to get to enough supply that we can now put it in our big John Deere planter and go out and plant a 40-acre field.
00:26:56.000Okay so we now we still kept these five separated this whole time so now we've got the five planted out in the field that we've legally grown ourselves and I decided on the day of harvest I said you know what How do I know which variety my farm is going to adapt to?
00:27:18.000So I just said, we're going to make a land race, and we combined all five together, and then we went out the next spring, and that was our supply for the whole bean crop on our farm.
00:27:33.000And we planted our beans out of our own supply.
00:27:36.000And not only that, Bobby, but it's a supply that is adapting to our system.
00:27:42.000And we're doing the same thing with cereal rye.
00:27:45.000And we're doing the same thing with livestock.
00:27:48.000We've got a cow herd and we've got a sheep herd.
00:27:51.000We do not introduce any outside genetics.
00:27:58.000All of the sires are being picked from inside the herd.
00:28:02.000And where do you market, and do you get a premium for selling organic, etc.?
00:28:09.000Yeah, we get a premium for selling organic, and it's typically been fairly high over the conventional corn and soybean guys, but there's been a lot of Supply coming in from overseas that has flooded our market and our prices are extremely depressed right now.
00:29:53.000And who, you know, when you say somebody put out a bid for $40 soybeans, who is that?
00:30:00.000Is that like Whole Foods or something?
00:30:02.000That was a processor that was looking for food grade soybeans to put into food that we would eat as a consumer.
00:30:11.000And does the Indian market respond to that bid?
00:30:17.000Are they going to change their crops over there, or is that just on the market?
00:30:26.000Well, that probably has already been, I mean, those are slow boats coming across, you know, those crops already had to have been figured out a year in advance.
00:30:37.000They were probably, their timing was good, but I think that flow is coming all the time, Bobby.
00:30:42.000I don't think it was just a spike in supply because the price ran up.
00:30:46.000I think there were other And I'm not a great one to discuss about this because I don't spend a lot of time on this because I've got so many other things to worry about.
00:30:55.000But I think it was one of those perfect storm situations where there was a lot of supply coming when the price was high and then they just slammed us with bushels and then the price just quickly tailed off.
00:31:09.000You know, I've heard smaller farmers, you have a big, you have like 10 sections, right?
00:31:18.000That's about 10 square miles, right, of farm.
00:31:24.000But I've heard that from smaller farmers, you know, who might have a section or a half a section, that it's much more difficult for them to do no-till and organic, for that matter.
00:31:39.000It's more difficult than for the bigger operations.
00:31:42.000Possibly, but I think, you know, I think the next big push in the regenerative movement is education.
00:31:55.000I think, Bobby, if you were to go on to that 500 acre producer's farm, and if you were able to implement a program with him, sit down and understand what his risk level is, understand where his context is, and figure understand where his context is, and figure out and come up with a game plan for him to get started.
00:32:17.000And remember, I said, we cannot jeopardize the farm.
00:32:21.000And it's my opinion that the first time anybody ever tries anything new, it better work, because if it doesn't, they're not coming back.
00:32:32.000So with all that being said, we've got to get the teachers out there to get this layer of support to help these farmers to get comfortable to move into these regenerative practices.
00:32:45.000Most of the time, Bobby, it's just a simple fact is they don't know what to do.
00:32:49.000They hear these podcasts like this, they go to conferences, but they still don't understand how do I come home and implement a program?
00:33:00.000And that's what we've got to figure out how to do is get this teaching layer.
00:33:05.000But you help young farmers or farmers who are trying to get into it, right?
00:33:31.000This teaching is what's driving this and what's moving this.
00:33:35.000I mean, Bobby, when I get a text message from somebody on the other side of the planet that says, thank you very much, I went and saw you speak somewhere.
00:33:45.000I went home and implemented what you said.
00:33:48.000I wish I would have done this 10 years ago.
00:34:07.000I mean, there's a point in the middle.
00:34:09.000When you do the transition from doing nothing to starting these regenerative practices, there may be a little bit of yield drag there, a little bit, but not enough to make it worrisome.
00:34:22.000But Bobby, when you then go into organic with no tillage, we really dropped on the yield.
00:34:30.000But you have to understand Right now, on our farm, we are saving close to $2.7 million a year on expenses because we're not buying fertilizer.
00:39:46.000I am always looking for validations, whatever that may be, okay?
00:39:52.000You know, you walk out into a field of ours and it is so loud out there because the bugs and the birds and everything's chirping and, I mean, it is literally that loud out in the middle of our field.
00:40:02.000That's a validation that you are growing a beautiful ecosystem, okay?
00:40:07.000Another validation is It's when I get a phone call from one of my neighbors who farms very, very, very large.
00:41:00.000Because honestly, Bobby, where I'm located, the neighbors are going to watch that guy more than they're going to watch me.
00:41:07.000So if that guy there starts implementing cover crops and no-till, they're all going to start saying, huh, maybe we better start getting involved.
00:41:17.000And lo and behold, as I drive around the community, I'm starting to see fields slowly popping up that are green with cover crops.
00:41:27.000So sometimes things happen, as you know, because of attrition.
00:41:32.000So maybe, you know, sometimes hounding on the table and browbeating does not work.
00:41:39.000We need to show them how you do this and explain to them how you do this.
00:42:02.000I mean, are you optimistic about the future, about us making this transition as a nation to this kind of, you know, sustainable agriculture?
00:42:14.000Yes, but I think what you need to understand here, Bobby, is we need to understand what does success look like, okay?
00:42:26.000Do you honestly think we could get 100% of the farmers to farm this way?
00:42:56.000I'm just going to use rough numbers here for my math in my head.
00:42:59.000It's not quite 200 million, but there's 180 million acres of corn and soybeans grown in the United States, plus or minus a few acres, okay?
00:45:39.000But what they're talking about is taking a food that has lost its nutrient density over the years and regaining that nutrient density through these farming practices.
00:46:25.000I can remember as a kid being 14 years old on the bus coming home from school and couldn't wait to get home and help dad because he's planting corn today.
00:46:34.000And I'm out there in the middle of insecticide boxes and all this caustic stuff and on the side of that insecticide box is a skull and crossbones.
00:47:52.000And once you start to think like this, I mean, you probably can think back through your family tree and some of the health issues coming through time.
00:48:29.000I am doing too many radical things that is not generating the yield that we need, but we are generating nutrient density to where that if you only have a small portion of food to supply to a third world country, It now is at least higher nutrient density.
00:48:49.000So that small portion goes further in their lifestyle.
00:49:11.000And the next frontier on this whole thing is biology.
00:49:16.000And it has already started and we need a systematic biology program running side by side our systematic principles of soil health building your farm into the future.
00:50:37.000Do you have any opinions about raw milk?
00:50:41.000I think raw milk is just fine to drink, if you understand the source words coming from.
00:50:48.000I've drank it in the past, and honestly, because of my diabetes, it kind of raises my sugar, but if I was a diabetic, I would be drinking raw milk, yes.