Our guest for this episode is Russ Zenner, a retired farmer from Genesee, Idaho. Listen to the conversation to hear him describe the trials from the early days of Direct Seeding in the region, value-added and identity-preserved marketing, and share his thoughts on climate change and goats, working with research and conservation partners, and the importance of life-long learning.
Carol McFarland
Today, we are on the homeplace of Mr. Russ Zenner, who has retired from the Russ and Kathy Zenner farm but is actively still engaged with vested interest in the Zenner Family Farms. And we’re really looking forward to hearing your career retrospective. Russ, Thank you so much for participating in the podcast and for having me out today.
Russ Zenner
Well, thank you for being here and I’m looking forward to sort of sharing our history.
Carol McFarland
I’m very excited to hear about it. You are a legend in the region. Would you please share a little bit about yourself, your farm, and who you did farm with and how you’re still engaged with Zenner family farms?
Russ Zenner
Yes, I was raised on the farm where my dad was a second generation. My grandfather immigrated from Luxembourg in 1908, ended up in Uniontown, Washington, and married a second generation German girl that had family ties that got them into farming in about 1911 and that they raised ten children.
My grandfather was was able to get all of his sons started farming in the North Idaho region and my grandparents set an example of opportunity for their children, a love for agriculture that I feel very blessed to have that stewardship and opportunity with my grandparents that was passed on to my father’s generation and we provided opportunity for our children.
None of them decided to be farmers. They all got degrees, master’s degrees and have had very successful professional careers. But we’ve ended up then the extended family Clint and Alisha Zenner farming our farm now. And I just feel very blessed to have had the opportunity to be in a profession that I just loved and an opportunity to manage natural resources.
And again, it was my grandparents that set the example.
Carol McFarland
That’s a great legacy. Thanks for sharing. So we are here at your place outside of Genesee. Would you describe a bit more about your farming conditions, the moisture and soil and of standard rotation? Some of the management history of that?
Russ Zenner
Yes. Well, for those of you that may not know where Genesee is, we’re just south of Moscow, Idaho, east of the Washington border, about 15 miles and high rainfall area, about 22 inch annual cropping.
You know, part of the winter wheat production region, still a primary crop, but raising spring grains, pulse crops got some alfalfa. Cattle have historically been a part of the farm In recent years we’ve not only been involved in Shepherd’s grain flour, but our son and daughter in law. Our son married a Lebanese girl from Miami whose mother had a very good hummus recipe, and they are now in the hummus business with Zacca hummus using garbanzo from our farm that we’ve taken sort of the the entire, you know, trying to cash in on the environmental benefit of no till farming reduced tillage and going to the marketplace with some food products.
Carol McFarland
Nice. I saw a little bit about that and being on the leading edge of the Vision project with three pillars of sustainability and thinking about climate change and crop nutrition as well as soil sustainability with that product and identity preservation as part of the values added space in the market. Do you want to talk any more about that?
Russ Zenner
Well, our first experience was with Shepherd’s Grain. We were one of the Karl Kupers and Fred Fleming, and then there was a handful of other growers that were involved in that very first year of Shepherd’s Grain, and it was sort of an outgrowth of that Pacific Northwest Direct Seed Association trying to perfect no-till cropping management.
That was a goal. One of our goals early on was to take advantage in the marketplace at the environmental benefit of direct seeding. And Karl and Fred had started this company on their own, and then some of the early growers in that group were the charter members, founding members, board members of PNDSA, and just was very fortunate to be part of that group.
And that sort of got us involved in the retail side of it being connected to consumers where we had- all of that group had been commodity growers for their entire career and getting into a market with consumers that had an interest in how the food was grown and, you know, the impact on the environment and how we grew food was a very rewarding experience for a commodity producer, and we all shared that.
That was in about 2003. Fast forward another ten years and our son and daughter in law started Zacca hummus, Janine does not have a competitor that can trace the beans back to the farm in the family. That whole journey has provided a lot of inspiration to do better with how we farm, be much more environmentally sensitive to how we’re producing food, price advantage in the marketplace by producing food that people are willing to pay a premium for. It takes financial risk out of it, but rewards you for doing good things.
Carol McFarland
Awesome. Okay. So I have to say, on this podcast, the Direct Seed association has come up quite a lot and as a founding member of the Direct Seed Association, would you be willing to share a little bit about the history of the inception of the Direct Seed association and how it came to be and why?
Russ Zenner
Certainly. I’m going to back up a little bit before then, because it has an influence on why I became involved with the Direct Seed Association. But I was very fortunate in my career. I got a BS in Ag Econ from University of Idaho, work in the farm credit system for a couple of years, planned eventually to come back to the farm.
But I was only two years in farm credit and we had a farm expansion opportunity and decided to come back. And one of the first volunteer positions I got hooked into was that Latah County Soil Conservation District Board of Supervisors. And what I learned as far as soil conservation. And that position had a profound influence over my natural resource management goals in my career.
Understanding the implications of topsoil loss, water erosion, wend, erosion, tillage erosion and the more I learned there, the more I became convinced that we’ve got to do a better job of farming to sustain the resource. And we are so blessed in this Palouse region with the incredibly productive sort of new soils, young soils that Mother Nature gave us.
And it was apparent that we were degrading this very rapidly. It’s not a criticism of all the farmers. My dad, my uncle farmed that way, my grandfather farm, that’s the best they knew. But I was convinced that we had to do better and that sort of, I guess, inspired me to be more involved in some of the research efforts and, I attended some of the early conservation tillage conferences that were prior to the STEEP research effort.
There’s probably a lot of you out there that don’t remember STEEP. It was a big part of my life in my productive careers. Combination of WSU, University of Idaho at Oregon State University, the RC Portland, the Pullman Land Management Unit, sort of a joint effort to the acronym STEEP was solutions to environmental and economic problems on agricultural land.
And during that time period, I was also involved in the USA Dry Pea and Lentil Council and served as chairman of the Research Committee for that group, which led to my position on the steep Research Advisory Committee. And the steep project was sort of successor to this Aboriginal conservation tillage effort, which there was a lot of frustration by growers that felt we needed to be moving towards less tillage.
No-till and a lot of the research effort was being done on conventional tillage ground and we needed to have variety trials in this environment and the other part of it was just even educating researchers on what we’re trying to do and no till and for them to have the equipment. That was a big hurdle early on to get the research community up to speed and have the funding for the equipment we needed to do all of this.
And the other part of it was to have more diversity in the rotations. I grew up in my early years, winter wheat and dry green peas primarily were the two commodities grown in this region and one of the early conservation tillage research effort projects was done in Pullman, Washington. Very similar rainfall that we have. And they went to a three year rotation, eliminated the moldboard plow and maintained very good yields and that- my interest in seeing what was going on there inspired me to do some very early rotation changes and reduced tillage changes, but it was because of public funding for research.
So that led into steep. And later on we put together a little partnership group called VICO, three like-minded friends. Ended up four of us being in this partnership that sort of carried on sharing equipment, trying new drills, ideas to sort of further the effort with…the incentive was we all believe that we’ve got to do a better job of managing this natural resource.
We could see that the implications of tillage on this ground was just not sustainable and we needed to farm with less tillage. And the other part of our goal in recent years is…we’ve got to dramatically reduce the amount of man made chemistry we’re introducing into the environment on an annual basis and the reliance on the extractive industries to provide the nutrients for these crops to grow.
This whole arena of soil biology is a very exciting field now and [we] do a lot of this stuff to produce nutrient dense food, which is our goal on the shelf, is to have the highest nutrient density of any hummus product on the shelf. You know, we aren’t there yet, but [we’re] doing a lot of things to hopefully get there.
But that’s sort of the history on sort of the research effort I was involved in part of the VICO group effort. We actually ended up hiring the Latah county extension agent, Dave Barton, in those days who came on board for our little partnership thing. Agronomists, and led us into the whole technology field. He, Dave is the one that started the No-Till Breakfast in Lewiston, Idaho, and they expanded in the Pacific Northwest region.
We were very fortunate and by or to have Dave’s leadership and organizational skills to help us in that partnership, that partnership has led into the next generation, but they don’t have a Dave Barton and you can, you can just see the efficiencies that Dave added to us and getting things done.
Carol McFarland
Do you want to expand on that a little bit more with details on, you know, what sort of things he introduced to your group as well as how?
Russ Zenner
Well, Dave left the University of Idaho because he believed in what we were doing.
He was very interested in being on the leading edge and just our meetings, you know, whether it was once a month or six times a year or whatever, he came with an agenda. We you know, we provided input on what we wanted to get done.
Carol McFarland
there’s some power just in making a little bit of structure.
Russ Zenner
Yeah. And you know, where do we want to go, What do we want to do, How are we going to do it? Those types of things.
We were very fortunate to have that asset and he’s still a great friend. we’re getting back occasionally for our annual bike or tours where we’re looking at what the partners have done leading edge stuff and failures, those types of things.
So that continues with Clint and the other guys in the second generation with that group still a very valuable asset for those young men in their operation.
Carol McFarland
So that definitely sounds like a lasting part of your legacy.
Russ Zenner
Well, just just very fortunate to be a part of it.
Carol McFarland
Yeah, it’s great. Well, I know with groups like that, too, especially if you’re sharing equipment, if somebody wanted to do a similar group, what makes it long term sustainable to have that kind of peer that we call it peer learning networks now?
Russ Zenner
Well, I would say one of the advantages we had, the four of us, Gary Esser, Wayne Jensen, Lee Druffel and myself, we were very good friends socially and we all had a passion for an understanding that we’ve got to do better in managing this natural resource and to be successful as far as any kind of sharing thing, there’s give and take that’s been a you know, it’s been a hurdle every year. There’s been a little- there’s been some bumps. Like now we have haying equipment, we’ve got a big baler, a very efficient swather getting around to a lot of acres break and that’s probably been the most challenging one for timing one one help fit for quite a few acres. They have a guy hired to run all that.
But just logistically, if we had a Dave Barton lead in that group, there would be less hurdles. But it has survived. You know, it’s been over 20 years now, 25 years that that partnership has survived. And originally it was sharing we’d rented. No till drill tried different or till drills.
Then it was spraying and had a self-propelled sprayer. One of the first big self-propelled sprayers in this country from their haying equipment trying to think of any other equipment. We’ve had all the other minor stuff, but nearly everything that VICO owned jointly was something to let us get into another arena of efficiency and try new things.
And typically a few years with a shared implement and everybody ended up having one. the farms have grown from from that day, dramatic an increase in acreage jointly of the acreage involved. But it’s been a very, in my view, efficient way to sort of move up the food chain and efficiencies and then just the sharing and knowledge pushing, you know, the values of this group is we all had the belief that we had to contribute to pushing the envelope, doing something that nobody else was doing and share every year.
And that was very powerful as you and then go around once a year and share the information on what was going on there. Probably one of the experiences in my career that’s been the most satisfying to work with that group. It was such great people and respect for them, to see that carrying on in the next generation is very satisfying.
Carol McFarland
That’s neat. And you were, from what I understand in this region, you were really at the leading edge and one of the first no-till farmers in this area. Would you like to talk a little bit about that?
Russ Zenner
Yeah, I wasn’t the earliest one. Some of the earliest efforts can trace back to Mark Swanson, Guy Swanson, the Exdesatrix.
His father is the one that really started no-till in this region. Dick Loyd down in the Nez Perce County area was one of the very early innovators. A lot of the yielder or drill guys that was the start of more of Swanson’s drill making career were the earliest leaders. And the challenge for those guys was the cost of glyphosate.
The lack of knowledge. It was going to take more rotation diversity to be really successful. And some of that knowledge came out of the publicly funded research effort and again, equipment more. It made a very good drill, but it was big and heavy and it was narrow, couldn’t cover the acres. But once the major manufacturers got into drill production, there was more opportunities there.
As we learned, as the price of glyphosate came down, the three year rotation and that early conservation tillage effort at Pullman, what we learned about rotation diversity and it was a very minor change, but it took a lot of the risk of disease influence on wheat production out of the equation.
If you just went to a three year rotation, that was huge back in the days when some of the foot rot type cephalosporin stripe was a was a very devastating disease back in those days in the two year rotation and especially with no till.
Carol McFarland
And that was sorry, just offer clarification then. That was like a winter wheat and then a spring crop.
Russ Zenner
Winter wheat and a pulse crop.
Carol McFarland
And a pulse crop? Okay, so then when you went to the three year rotation, that really helped break some of those cycles?.
Russ Zenner
It did.
Carol McFarland
What did that rotation look like?
Russ Zenner
Well, it was just a winter wheat spring grain pulse crop.
Carol mcFarland
Okay.
Russ Zenner
And then we had the introduction of garbanzo beans in the eighties, some more diversity in the crop leg of it.
But you could do less tillage, more surface soil surface residue and take out this huge yield drag risk of some of these diseases that prevailed in a two year rotation. Just going to one year more year away from winter wheat made a big difference. So that was a big deal in being able to make this thing work financially.
And to this day, you’re seeing a lot of the three year rotation influence in this annual cropping region is still pretty significant. And then one of the other things, this was in 1995, I can’t believe it’s approaching 30 years ago. Monsanto sponsored a trip to the Dakota Lakes Research Farm. It was about 15 growers from the Pacific Northwest went back to see what Duane Beck was doing with that annual cropping system.
Hit no-till system they were doing on that 700 acre farm and the implications it was having to that region. On going from spring wheat summer fallow to a very diverse rotation corn, soybeans, pulse crops, annual cropping. I was part of that group. That’s when I met Carl Kupers, who ended up being one of the founders of Shepherd’s Grain and a lot of that group ended up being on the DSA board.
But that was a very motivational trip back to see what Duane was having success with and his enthusiasm for the need to treat the land better and the productivity increase they had in that region. Doing what he was doing is profound, and I’ll say a kudo for Duane Beck. I don’t know of a man on this planet that has had more positive influence over cropping system sustainability than Duane Beck.
And I don’t think he’s gotten the awards he needs yet.
Carol McFarland
Speaking of being a legend,
Russ Zenner
Yeah, well, he’s inspired a lot of us and felt very fortunate to be a part of that group and that subsequent years there was more groups that went back.
They got funding to send. A lot of people went back to the Dakota Lakes Research Farm and it inspired us to try a lot of different things that we’re still doing today. There’s, you know, in today’s environment, we’re looking at multi-species cover crops with warm seasons in there and trying to find out which ones in our environment will work and a lot to learn there yet.
Carol McFarland
Yeah. Do you want to talk a little bit about your experience with that process, kind of of trial and error of trying to translate some of the practices that we see working in other regions into this cropping system? I know that you have trees right outside your door here, so maybe it’s a little bit easier,
Russ Zenner
We are high rainfall. And I feel very fortunate where my grandfather started farming. terrain here is steeper than a lot of that drier region in central Washington.
So tillage erosion, just moving topsoil downhill has been a significant contributor to resource degradation. But it’s there’s still plenty of fence lines around the country where there’s eight or 910 foot variation in soil height from one side to the other. And Mother Nature did not do that. That was smooth ground 130 years ago. So it’s pretty easy to see the implications of tillage and a lot of that was due to the moldboard plow that started lessening that influence, I would say eighties, nineties and it’s, you know, the moldboard plow has lost its value in this region.
There’s still some of it happening but dramatically less. But even some of these two-pass systems, very aggressive whole drills are moving a lot of dirt downhill every year. And I think it would be interesting, some research efforts on just evaluating the tons of topsoil that are moved down hill in a single event. They start adding up the tons that are moving downhill and you get up on the interface where there’s topsoil and there’s subsoil.
Every time you do that, you’re moving that subsoil strata farther down the hill, covering if there’s still topsoil there,, there’s still plenty of tillage erosion going on. we’ve got to get better than we’re doing now.
Carol McFarland
Soil is such an important resource, but it’s not exactly renewable. so I guess just to come back to the question of, you know, your experience of some of the trial and error of adapting some of these farming strategies that you see in other places and bringing them here to, to your place in Genesee.
Russ Zenner
Well, I had the motivation from early in my career believing that we’ve got to do a better job. And so in that regard, a lot of my educational activities were to address that, the no-till organizations, direct seed, those type of things. reading the No-till Farmer magazine, the main ag publications, always looking for ideas that we could maybe try on the farm the trip to the to go to Lakes Research farm was a powerful motivator.
Listening to people that are farming dry land, generally speaking, and, you know, what they’re trying in sort of our environment and then maybe even some of the warm seasons as we look at climate change. Now, one of the things I see is there may be less risk to doing re-crop winter, canola with milder winters.
That’s been a huge hurdle for our continuous crop region, is to successfully do winter canola without losing a crop year. Jack Brown worked on it for many years in his breeding program and just was…struggled to get consistent over winter survivability. A fall canola planted in to, you know, whatever, whether it’s garb ground or winter wheat ground, spring wheat ground.
But we’re starting to see more success with that. And I think it’s the climate change influence on that is going to maybe give us another fall seeded crop, a broadleaf crop that may be a big part of a rotation going forward.
Carol McFarland
Are you telling me you like the idea of climate change?
Russ Zenner
Well, it’s…
Carol McFarland
It’s all right. That was not a trick question.
Russ Zenner
You know, it’s a very good one. And, you know, those are some of the things my observations and in my career the last couple of decades especially, we have drier late summers, drier early falls than we used to have in my early career. And that has put some challenges into trying to do these multi-species cover crops between crops like they do in the summer rainfall regions has put more challenge to make that successful.
The productivity of the forage value of that, if we’re trying to do it even as a stand alone crop, has been more challenges with these very dry summers and one of the long range weather forecasts I was just looking at today is predicting a high probability of a very dry summer in this region. Starting early in spring. It’s going to be some challenge is to try to do some of this stuff.
As I’ve gotten closer to retirement, I’m doing a lot more reading now and I’m still very motivate motivated to inspire Clint to push to the edge on sustainable resource management regenerative AG.
I want our real estate asset to survive generation after generation, and I believe in the science of climate change. I believe in the human influence over that and we’ve been involved in some of the early carbon sequestration activities. In fact, PNDSA had one of the first crop land contracts to sequester carbon in the world. We did a pilot project with Entergy.
It’s an energy company out of Louisiana, sort of a pilot project where we were paid so much an acre to continue our our no cropping system. Since then we’ve been involved in Shepherd’s grain documenting. We had a group, did extensive soil sampling on shepherds green farms, and if I remember the numbers right, we were sequestering about a tonne per acre per year in that time period over the the farms that they get the data for, that’s the goal is that maybe we can cash in on some of that.
And you know, just this winter, one of the things I’ve read about is this enhanced weathering of basalt rock. The implications of spreading this rock dust on crop land has the potential to dramatically improve the carbon sequestration capability of those soils, things like that, that I think agriculture overall has to be taking a closer look at the environmental implications of how we’re producing food.
It’s as the population of this planet increases, as our reliance on the extractive industries is still a big part of how we produce food. There’s a lot that’s going to have to change in my view, I’m hoping that we can be a part of the effort to lessen the negative implications of all of this, these activities that are prevalent in how we produce this very cheap food.
Carol McFarland
I hear that part of that for in your mind, is also the responsibility to work toward growing more nutritious food.
Russ Zenner
Yes. Well, that’s yeah, the other side of it. David Montgomery’s book, What Your Food Ate. I would suggest that anybody that eats food sort of some history on what diet changes how we produce meats, especially dairy poultry in this country has changed since the 1940s and the implications to human health in this country compared to other advanced countries in the world.
Some of the disease issues that we’re dealing with these days that is related to our diet and, you know, being, you know, garbanzo beans in hummus on the shelf, shepherd’s grain flour on the shelf. Motivation that’s coming from the marketplace is going to inspire further effort to address climate change issues in how we produce food.
And I think there’s opportunities there for economic enhancement, too, if you address that. And as you look at that whole arena, there are a lot of the publicly funded genetic effort variety development programs are based on bulk yield and I think we need to be getting back to including nutritional density, maximizing, being more efficient in getting nutrients into that food that are healthy for the humans that are eating them or the livestock.
Science is learning about the implications of multi-species plant roots in the soil, what that does to sort of supercharge the soil biology activity where we get that nutrient cycling process going and our traditional monoculture crop cropping practices of the past.
You just don’t have that. The diversity of soil biology companion cropping I think maybe has some opportunities, but it’s going to maybe require more on farm cleaning care capabilities. The Canadians, it appears in some regions have been more successful than we have in the U.S. on that dryland regions, you know, wheat, winter, pea combination of garbanzo, millet I think it is or I can’t remember what the other one was with the Garbanzos is sort of a companion crop but you run up to the problem with you get a storage separate it’s usually small volume and then to get somebody to go work it through the cleaning process to separate them.
But, but again, it adds diversity to that soil biology and this whole arena of what science is learning about them, the microbiome in the soil and that the implications to nutrient density to human health, I think is is just going to provide more opportunity in the marketplace to concentrate on nutrient density, nutritional value, produced per acre, and then looking at in improving organic matter of the soil carbon sequestration capabilities of that soil and addressing what we have to do to pull carbon out of the atmosphere and let Mother Nature do the work is is to me is the frontier we’re on now. That’s exciting.
Carol McFarland
Thanks for sharing all those thoughts. I’m hearing from you that maybe as you’ve been thinking over the years about this, maybe they could be described as management goals of more soil carbon, more nutritious food. But would you describe some of your management goals from earlier in your career and how that’s evolved over the years?
Russ Zenner
Certainly, Well, early in my career, it was convinced that we had to do less tillage, so
Carol McFarland
I did hear that too.
Russ Zenner
So in that regard, as we got better at that, my my early thought was that we can master no till on my generation. The next generation is going to be able to coast.
Carol McFarland
How’s that borne out?.
Russ Zenner
It’s so unfortunate honestly, the last ten years of my career I described as the longer I farmed, the less I knew because of what science was learning that we didn’t know prior and and the implications of what science was learning, the implications of the human influence over the climate. And you start to work all of that into the equation.
And yes, no-till will be part of this, but it’s going to take dramatically more than that and it puts more pressure on the management. It’s very simple to raise two or three crops. Monocrops go on forever, but we know what that is doing to the resource. And again, we’ve got to have more diversity in these cropping systems and that the introduction of livestock back on the crop ground appears to be adding a lot of diversity to soil biology.
And I’ll reference one of your recent quotes here today that you cannot make topsoil. There’s been growers that are doing that with a very diverse rotations for forage intensive grazing.
So there’s there’s opportunities out there, but most of those people are direct marketing.
Carol McFarland
Now, for the record, I think you might have misquoted me a little bit.
Russ Zenner
Well, I gave you a chance to correct it. I figured I’d get a response.
Carol McFarland
I think you went in with a little bit of hyperbole there. I believe that I said that soil is not the most renewable of resources.
Russ Zenner
Okay. We can check that.
Carol McFarland
I think an intentional management, as you’re describing, there’s room for that to be different. But it has to be very intentional, I think.
Russ Zenner
It is. Well, and it’s difficult to do. And so it’s easy to move back and forth. And there’s just a lot of farms that don’t have that opportunity. And to move from the successful monocrop system to incorporating livestock, the forage value, if you’re selling commodity livestock, is just- is very difficult to compete. So there’s other things you’ve got to have in that equation to be successful as far as more value for what you’re selling and then the diversity of livestock even that Gabe is using on his farm, and that Will Harrison’s using on his farm and there’s, you know, what those people are learning and what science is learning now. It’s going to take a while to develop more successes there.
Carol McFarland
Now, you did say you had cows on your on your place, historically.
Russ Zenner
Yes.
Carol McFarland
And how was that integrated into your management at the time and how did that meet your management goals?
Russ Zenner
Very little, yeah, very. You know, I grew up with joy at taking out fences and a lot of people my age did a lot of that as farm consolidation, cleaned up the fence lines, keep the cattle and that can, you know, you know, for somebody that’s a farmer and the livestock’s a pain.
Carol McFarland
I’ve heard a little bit of that sentiment but also some lamentation about all the fences that got taken out, right?
Russ Zenner
Yeah, As we look at it now, insect species, habitat in those all fence lines, things like that, there’s there’s we’re probably going to wish we hadn’t done all of that. And, you know, so the survivors have been farmers, generally speaking, that’s their passion, skill set.
And they were glad to see the livestock gone. So my experience in our operation, my brother and I were partners. He took the livestock end of it and I did the farming end and we moved to a generation where Clint was involved with livestock on a pretty big scale and loved it, but the opportunities he had in farm land just did not lend him hiring a full time person to run the livestock.
So we rented that rangeland. But since Clint has taken over the farm, we have done several grazing cover crop grazing volunteer third cutting of alfalfa or grazing just with cattle. We have not done multi-species livestock on our farm,
Eric Odberg, my neighbor, he did a large field, had a huge goatherd in that and had a very successful multi-species cover crop mix…is just incredible forage value. We’re pretty excited about the success he had with that.
Carol McFarland
Wait, wait, wait. Now, Russ, when I interviewed Eric, who is the one who nominated you after watching over your fence line for years and being inspired, did I just hear you’re looking over the fence line at his place and getting inspiration?
Russ Zenner
Certainly. Yes. That’s you know, that’s been my career. You can learn from everybody. And it’s exciting to see him doing what he’s doing.
And it is so wonderful to see their success. And we can all learn from that has been the part of it. And that’s, you know, the thing that I’ve seen through the years. That guy’s trying to push the envelope and convinced we get to do it a better way. Very willing to share their knowledge because it’s for the good of everybody.
It is. And that attitude and passion has just been fun to work around.
Carol McFarland
Could we circle back, actually, as you talk about being one of the founding members of PDSA, I would really love to hear a little bit more about how that got going and that history.
So you talked a little bit about kind of the pre-history to that. Right. But really, how did that get going? What did it look like?
Russ Zenner
I can vividly remember after one of those conservation tillage meetings, annual meetings, annual research review, it was in the Tri-Cities.
There was several of us growers from Oregon, Washington, Idaho sort of got into sort of that conference evaluation. And we express significant frustration that there wasn’t more effort put into no-till practices and variety trials done on that. And I’ve talked a little bit about this already just having a research community that even believes what we’re doing is the direction to go.
And there was a lot of hurdles back then and it certainly isn’t as easy it is now,and there were other notable organizations already in existence on a North American continent, in Australia, very active, and that was sort of inspired. Some of the growers had been to some of those conferences in that the more we thought about it, we decided that we needed something like that and we had some very inspired researchers to facilitate, encourage, be a part of that effort.
Jim Cook was one of them. ARS in Pullman. Roger Viseth at the University of Idaho, Don Wysocki, was one of the early ones involved with that from Oregon, it was a very I guess, exciting time and just the passion of that leadership group involved there was very fun to be part of.
Carol McFarland
Sounds like it. So like your first board meeting, did you have a really good meeting agenda?
Russ Zenner
Barton wasn’t there, so yeah, I don’t know who developed the agenda for that, but Jim Cooke and Roger Viseth were very integral in facilitating that, that kept moving.
Carol McFarland
Yeah. So it sounds like-
Russ Zenner
And that there was grower leadership in it.
Carol McFarland
Yeah. Yeah. And that’s, I mean being able to support the vision.
Russ Zenner
Yeah. And they were part of that because. We that- Well, I presume the board’s the same today. I do not know if it is or not, but we had like nine grower members and then three research members also Jim Cooks, you know, he was a legend in his lifetime and just learned so many things from him. And there was many other researchers involved in that. You know, there’s a lot of names that I’ve forgotten, but I read obituaries and, man, we’re losing them and a long history with what they’ve done to improve agriculture in the Pacific Northwest.
Carol McFarland
So when your board first got together and really hashed out some of the vision for that organization, how is this- is what it is today a part of what you envisioned?
Russ Zenner
Well, the original vision, I would say it would have been tough to find somebody in that room that said we had to do more than no till that was the goal.
There was quite a lot of this stuff. Now, regenerative, ag multi-species, all of that stuff was not even mentioned back then. We were trying to master no-till, make it consistent, profitable, competitive. You know, that the implications to reducing topsoil loss was so apparent and provable and that was the easy part. But to be more efficient on input, use those type of things that was one of the hopes that we were going to improve organic matter quicker than it is happening just with no till.
There’s been some disappointment there that the process- and we know now why. So there was a lot of things there that we didn’t even envision that that is sort of the priority today. No-till’s just a small part of it.
Carol McFarland
So they’ve taken the vision and really run with it now.
Russ Zenner
Well, there’s I know there’s a group, they’re all part of that direct seed group that are sort of got a biological group set up. What Eric is doing with the goats, that was very successful. The other part of Eric’s experience here, he had a very good livestock walk Herdsman manager. She has both beef and goats and the way she managed that was very efficient, very impressed with what she did there and found out when I visited her up the road a couple of times.
She has sold goats to Will Harris in Georgia. So that indicates to me that she has some very good meat genetics in her goats.
Carol McFarland
Yeah, the good management is, I think, one of the critical pieces of that. I think there’s definitely some lessons to be learned in that. What did you see in the kind of good management, aside from the likelihood that there was good meat genetics there?
Russ Zenner
Well, the way she managed the herd. electrified net fencing guard dogs and she had a couple Peruvian herders in a camper on the field for the entire summer. She was there and, you know, the goats weren’t out. And I doubt if she had any predator loss. But then managing the rotation through probably 20 acre parcels that I think she ended up with around 800 goats, something like that on that before the summer was over, they quickly realized they quickly realized they didn’t have enough out there and brought some more in. It still wasn’t enough.
Carol McFarland
Wow. That’s it. That must have been a really great cover crop stand.
Russ Zenner
The regrowth. They had it down. It looked like there was nothing left. And by October, the regrowth on those first patches, they grazed two or three feet tall and thick.
It was just incredible. That gets you excited about the potential there.
Carol McFarland
What experiments or trials really stand out, as I said in retrospect over the course of your career, both that you’ve engaged with the public research community and on your own?
Russ Zenner
Well, I mentioned this conservation tillage effort, in Pullman that was way back probably in the seventies, early eighties, where they went just went to three rotation using the chisel plow.
That was the first one, changed how we did it and led us into no till, the visit to the Dakota Lakes Research Farm. Looking at incorporating warm season crops somehow into the rotation, trying to take advantage of what science is learning, you know, and we’re on the early stages of applying that to production practices and dealing with climate change is going to maybe provide some opportunities for more warm season crops to be part of the mix.
That challenge of less summer rainfall is a hurdle that’s getting higher. I think learning and having the livestock management capability available like this effort we had across the road with this 30 acre parcel, the livestock owner did the fencing and we had water available there. We didn’t have to haul water.
So that’s another big issue on the cropland, Eric had to haul water for the goats. And just a side note, Eric’s got a hired man that’s mostly retired, but he said close to 80. And this worked on their farm since he was 16 years old.
Carol McFarland
We heard about him on the podcast.
Russ Zenner
And I met Carl on the road one day. Carl was hauling water and I asked him, I said, Carl, did you ever imagine in your career on Odberg farms you’d be hauling water for goats?
Carol McFarland
What did he say to that?
Russ Zenner
Well, he says, No, I didn’t. that is that.
Carol McFarland
Yeah. So what is the most interesting thing you’ve learned from a past trial as it’s happened when you were farming? And in trying to kind of translate these and apply them, you know, the big ideas on the ground while you’re farming.
Russ Zenner
Well, a lot of Jim Cook’s work as far as root disease pathogens and just in the side from Jim Cook’s work, I’m very suspicious that our soil biology has changed pretty dramatically from the days that he did his work, because I’m seeing very vivid instances of no green bridge impact where 20, 30 years ago would have been very severe and I’ve been trying to get researchers interested in taking a look at that, because if you if you look at these farm publications now, a lot of the corn and soybean, what I call progressive cropping system management is they’re planting green.
They’re planning in the new crop in a living crop, and it’s getting either older, cramped or roller cramped and sprayed and seeding into that sod with a low disturbance drill to me is the absolute best way in an annual cropping system to have very little disturbance that that that top area with all the living roots growing, just would cut down in this part of the world tillage erosion those types of things your your seed zone would be a little drier than if it was it wasn’t a plant growing there.
Looking at one of our challenges is seed zone compaction in spring seeding has been a problem in this country because that top stays wet so long and we can get on there with these low disturbance drills and we can do a good job at seeding, get a stand where in the old days we had tillage if you if you seeded to wet, you paid for it. Poor stands and these single disk drills have allowed us to seed successfully into that but it’s led to seed zone compaction which has hurt us.
We’ve gone to a hoe drill and have less of that as an issue, but it’s moving too much dirt on steep ground. I don’t like that. If we didn’t have to worry about Green Bridge, it would give us some more flexibility in, in seeding activities and even rotation activities and the need to spray out everything before we plant gives us a longer window there.
It would have to be with a very low disturbance drill if you seed it before spraying. But I’m suspicious that something has changed in soil biology that we do not have the green bridge impact that we used to. But I’d like somebody to prove me wrong, but I’ve had Tim Paulitz to my farm and showed me the neighbor that seeded garbs the day after they sprayed very lush spring barley volunteer.
And this was after the beans had sprouted and were coming up and found no sign of any kind of disease on those calves. And the calves were pretty susceptible to green bridge disease activity. And I personally had it on my farm several times. Clint’s done a couple of things that in my generation would have been very risky for green for you had green bridge influence and saw no sign of it.
So I know it makes the wheat scientists nervous looking at Italian Rye survivability and all that kind of stuff. But if we can push out there and have less glyphosate and seed into a sod, it’s much better, I think, for soil quality and sustainable resource management.
Carol McFarlands
Maybe there will be some research colleagues listening to this podcast and hear your call but also you know, it is interesting of course in agriculture there’s tradeoffs for everything.
And one of the things you did just give a nod is the weeds scientists cringing. And one of the things I wanted to ask you about with your long term legacy and no till, what is your take on herbicide resistance and how do we, you know, continue to keep no till sustainable while also making sure that we’re managing that tradeoff?
Russ Zenner
Well, to me the weed resistance thing and and you know back in my days and be in advisory committees the overuse of specific herbicides that has created this problem. And as you look at what’s happening now with multi chemistry resistance in some of these plants were we’re spraying those chemicals on the crop later in the season, you know, when when the fruit is on the plant and we’re just getting more chemical in the food supply and you know Clint’s done some roundup resistant spring canola.
We’ve been fortunate in warding off Italian ryegrass we’ve stayed in the seed business we were one of the last winter wheat seed breeders in the Palouse region which left because of goat grass but a lot of it was,just a lot of effort to prevent escapes and the I think this multi-species cover cropping There’s an opportunity there to address wheat concern and the very successful ones are making that happen. But I don’t see any of that happening in the publicly funded land grant University arena research arena
Carol McFarland
The cover crops?
Russ Zenner
Well, utilizing Multi Species cover crop for weed control I think is in the PNW.
Carol McFarland
We’ll have to hear from Clint about how the PNW cover crop project. But I do think that’s one of their goals. But yeah, I guess what are other you know, are there some other management strategies that you’ve thought about or used throughout the years?
Russ Zenner
We’ve had plenty of not so great outcomes on some of the things we’re trying to do with cover crops and grazing.
We just were struggling to get the forage value. What’s so exciting about Eric’s just tremendous success with that and that’s exciting. Clint’s got his seed for next year already. We’re going to have it on our farm and I’m excited to see that.
Carol McFarland
That is one of the tools that you’re excited about.
Russ Zenner
I’m becoming more convinced that the quickest way to regenerating soils is going to include multi species livestock on the ground. That’s going to be a very slow integration likely because we still got a generation of farmers that were so glad to see the last head of livestock leave.
Carol McFarland
So they don’t have to get up Sunday morning when everything’s out on the road right in the neighborhood.
Russ Zenner
So you’re a Montana girl, but there’s there’s some people starting to have success. You know, the successes in the Pacific Northwest have been pretty limited compared to other regions with summer rainfall.
Carol McFarland
Yeah, it turns out rain helps.
Russ Zenner
Yeah, rain helps in dry land cropping regions. Yes. So we got more challenges, but we still have good dirt blessed with that.
Carol McFarland
What’s the most fun thing about trying new stuff on the farm?
Russ Zenner
Well, anticipation that you’re going to have success and be able to move the goalposts.
That’s the goal. like I said early on, we thought if we’ve mastered no till we wouldn’t have to move the goalposts. But we found out different and it’s going to take more and it’s going to take more management and the pressure for the next generation that really, truly want to keep the goalpost moving is a much bigger challenge than I had, in my view, and I’m just trying to help keep that generation inspired and motivated and contribute. You know, I’ve got time to read books, whatever. I still have a passion for contributing to that process.
Carol McFarland
Well, you’re one of those landlords now who’s excited about soil health.
Russ Zenner
Yeah, well, sometimes, Clint, I’m sure you he’s trying to sort out which idea should give some credence to.
I hear he has more than one landlord with this very passionate about how their ground is farmed.
Carol McFarland
Well, you know, I hear that it’s really great to have landlords who care about soil health and it’s a really important part of that journey. But it can sometimes be a mixed blessing. Yeah, that’s that’s the word on the street anyways. What’s the most annoying thing about trying new stuff on the farm?
Russ Zenner
Well, failures, you know, And that’s, that’s the other part of it was that any of this stuff we tried, I was very cautious about not taking too much financial risk. And because the last thing I wanted to do was to fail financially. And some of the ideas we’ve had through the years, you know, one day Barton was with us.
He was monitoring a lot of sugar level in the plants and trying foliar feeds. And we thought there was an opportunity to make a lot of progress there. And it was just tough to get any long lasting benefits on some of the stuff we were doing there. This SAP analysis that a lot of these biological guys are using now appears to me that it is going to be a very valuable management tool, which is a whole new arena that’s happened since I’m retired. So we’ll see. And then, you know, quicker analysis of soil, the biological activity to be able to monitor certain management practices. And the other part of that is some of this doesn’t happen quickly.
You do a one year trial and it’s not enough.
Carol McFarland
That’s replication?
Russ Zenner
Replication year over year over year cropping system changes. And it’s a challenge to I guess some things have short term success. Looks. There’s other things we may have given up on that we gave up too early. I can’t give you any specific. Well, we do like we did lime trials in VICO many years ago and we did not find a lick of crop yield difference on our farm.
Carol McFarland
Okay, careful here. Now, how-
Russ Zenner
Well, I’m telling you, we expected some.
Carol McFarland
Well, how much? How much lime did you put down? How did you decide?
Russ Zenner
Variable rates, we worked with- oh geez, he’s from the Midwest. Has a lab, sent him soil samples and did some micronutrient stuff.
We had two different lime components involved up to a couple of tons per acre, and I don’t remember what the bottom rate was, but this was one day. Barton was with us and we had the plots geo referenced and we did follow up yield data on that on our farm probably for six or eight years and did not get a lick of response. But it was not, you know, it was in the mid fives, something like that. It wasn’t real poor.
Carol McFarland
So maybe you averted a crisis rather that were like you, maybe you- not a crisis, but maybe you averted going down more where you would have lost more yield.
Russ Zenner
But we really haven’t got- we haven’t gone back to those plots. Eric Odberg did a field right next to us a ton of lime on. I actually had some pretty data there just on my farm. We our farm was a little higher disturbance whole drill versus Eric single disk drill to a neighbor that used to mow board plow to some cousins that were more minimum tillage and we did some two inch, four inch, six inch increments and saw the impact of Eric’s one ton application.
He had some advantage in the two inch and the rest of them, even though the moldboard plowed stuff was you thought there would have been more mixing, whatever, but very similar to our no till ground as far as the stratification of of the other thing that we have done is some of my looking at seeds and compaction, looking at soil amendments.
We’re using primarily gypsum now for our sulfur source and we feel we’re getting some soil amendment benefit from that weed. We don’t have measurable well, this is conjecture or whatever, but we feel for a number of reasons it’s the only soil sulfur, fertilizer, sulfur source that does not lower page it. It has an implication of influencing the aluminum toxicity impact.
Carol McFarland
It does, the sulfur complexes with the aluminum.
Russ Zenner
And there’s some things about calcium that we’re learning about, but we’ve been convinced that that’s helped us our soil analysis of sulfur has risen dramatically versus the days where we’re using liquid at higher rates even, but much better sulfur content in the soil.
So, you know, that’s why I pulled out looking for compaction issues that I think nearly all of the VICO group now is using gypsum now for their sulfur source.
Carol McFarland
And have you seen it affect the compaction?
Russ Zenner
You know, a hoe drill going in in the fall and dry conditions and it appears that ground does not have the hardness, you know, on real dry conditions that well well, we’ve we’ve got past that all the farms getting gypsum now.
But the first few years we we felt there was some benefit there that soil structure nice
But yeah, and there’s been times where it’s been cheaper, you know, But we feel that gypsum has been a good thing.
Carol McFarland
Neat. I will say with your lime experience out here in Genesee, you guys, I’m sure, have very high buffer capacity. And so I am going to guess that it probably would take an incredible amount of lime to really start impact just because of how high, especially high organic matter soils.
Russ Zenner
Eric Odberg has climbed most of his farm I think at a ton and and you might talk to him as far as what he’s seen and feels with the investment he’s made there.
Carol McFarland
So, Russ if you could talk to yourself when you were a beginning farmer, what would you tell yourself?
Russ Zenner
So I sort of fell into the situation on that conservation district board that was I guess it just opened up my eyes and the realization that, you know, I’ve got a lifetime here to make my mark. And it’s obvious we’ve got to change how we farm.that motivated me to sort what I say is do your homework, look for successes, go to conferences, travel, read.
And I was close to the research community. You know, we’re very blessed here with two land grant universities within a 25 mile radius of our farm.
Carol McFarland
And a lot of people that really care about doing good work.
Russ Zenner
The access to a lot of talented scientists, to me was something I should take advantage of and, you know, had input on projects and direction it was a internal motivation that something I recognized early in my career and I just was blessed to have to be into that situation and said, yes, and I’ll do it.
The other part of it for me to this day, I don’t think we have enough teaching in agriculture teaching the environmental implications of how we produce food and I’ve been to other countries, Switzerland and where you don’t you don’t have a right to be a farmer. You’ve got to go to school and pass tests, which is a very interesting thing.
You just don’t have the right with the inheritance to do that. I look at 4-H programs that, you know, I thought we should have an environmental stewardship track in those to get that whole process in the minds of people. Because I’m a firm believer at this stage of the game, we’ve got to treat the planet better than we are.
Agriculture is a major player in the implications of human influence over climate change. And if we would get young people looking at that, it would encourage more non ag people, it would encourage STEM students. We need all of those working with us to help us do a better job. FFA programs, recognizing the implications of tillage on topsoil loss, wherever it may be.
David Montgomery’s book, Dirt The Erosion of Civilizations. It was so comforting to read that book and, you just felt better about what you believed in because he’s got documentation over thousands of years of the rise and fall of human civilization based upon how they treated the natural resources. The problem with that is humans keep repeating past mistakes and somehow we’ve got to have the stewardship commitment, the recognition of the need on the producer level to be convinced that we’ve got to do a better job in not just raising cheap food, not just raising bushels, but foods that are nutrient dense, that are healthy, and and there’s opportunity there. If we have everybody moving in the same direction, we could be advancing much than we are.
That’s one of the things I’ve seen. You know, I don’t have any of my kids or farming got grandchildren and hopefully I have great grandchildren. But we’ve got to treat this planet better than we are now. If those succeeding generations are going to have the same opportunity we had for life on this planet. And we’re so blessed in this country, in this region, you know, our family got a start from an immigrant from Luxembourg in 1908, and he came to this North American continent, not knowing where he would end up.
But he wanted to farm some day. Just that legacy passed down. I’ve just felt that I just had a responsibility to respect that and carry it on and give the next generation the opportunity and the motivation and to continue to do better.
Carol McFarland
Thank you for sharing that. That was very well said.
Russ Zenner
You know that the other part of my career is we’ve we’ve had some good friends in Australia, actually the start of cycle 1998, we hosted an Australian exchange student on our farm, ended up running our first no till drill for the year and he went back to Australia and ended up being the executive director of one of the notable organizations down there
Carol McFarland
Are you saying your passion for no-till went viral? Because you’ve also been invited to speak a lot of places, you’ve been featured in magazines?
Russ Zenner
Well, I’ve had a passion for what I do.
Carol McFarland
And you’re in a textbook too!
Russ Zenner
I just feel so blessed to have the opportunity I’ve had and feel very passionate about the understanding that we’ve got to do better, we’ve got to do better, and we’ve got to look at the big picture stuff and look further out. Looking 100, 200 to 300 years out. We don’t do that. We’re pretty short term. And I served on the board of a publicly held corporation, and that was one of my frustrations with that. It’s all about near-term shareholder value, and it’s just a different situation than being the boss and making those yourself. And looking longer term.
Carol McFarland
Well, you’ve heard about the people in the rainforest who they plant seeds of tree, their traditional tree takes, 100 years or more to grow and mature. So they plant the seeds for that they’re never going to harvest from, but they do it for posterity. I mean, that’s really long term management.
Russ Zenner
It is, yeah.
Carol McFarland
Well, Mr. Zenner, I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for being on the podcast and sharing all of your thoughts and lessons learned throughout your long career as one of the leading cropping systems innovators in our region. Thank you so much for your time.
Russ Zenner
Yeah. Appreciate it. And I encourage you to keep up your good work. We need more scientists that believe in this and have a passion for it, and it helps us all.
Carol McFarland
Well it’s not possible alone. Really appreciate the support. Thank you so much again for being on the podcast and we’ll look forward to talking again soon.
Russ Zenner
We have talked a lot today about my activities through the years. And before we finish up here today, I would like to acknowledge the support of my wife, Kathy, of 58 years and our family that has supported and believed in what we were doing on our farm. My involvement in all the off farm activities wouldn’t have happened without her belief in the value of what we learned from the time spent in meetings locally and the travel to other regions.
She has been very involved in our Shepherd’s grain market promotion efforts in recent years. Our participation in everything from farmers market activities to meeting in-store promotions for Zarqa Hummus and her contribution to all the major decisions on our farm have been invaluable. Thank you, Kathy.