This episode of on-farm trials features Frank Wolf of Lester Wolf farms outside of Uniontown, Washington, and his collaboration as a PI on the PNW cover crops project alongside Subodh Adhikari of the University of Idaho. A conversation with them highlights years of working together that has resulted in these collaborative on-farm cover crop trials, how they are working together to look at various mixes, get them seeded, and what and how data is being collected to measure impact on subsequent crops, soil, weeds, and insects to create a regional decision-making tool based on their findings.
Carol McFarland
Today we’re with Dr. Subodh Adhikari and Mr. Frank Wolf of Lester Wolf Farms outside of Uniontown, Washington. And we are looking forward to talking more about their on farm trials as a research collaboration in answering questions important to innovation in the region’s cropping system. we’re going to talk more about the PNW cover crop project and how that research collaboration is looking. Welcome to the podcast, you two.
Frank Wolf
Thanks for having us.
Subodh Adhikari
Thank you.
Carol McFarland
Excellent. Frank! Would you please tell us a bit more about yourself, who you farm with, and more about your farm and farming conditions?
Frank Wolf
My name is Frank Wolf from Farm in southeast Washington State, just south of Pullman. I’m a fourth generation on our farm, I farm with my brother Ben.
We annual crop 100% of our cropping system, and we’re integrating cover crops without through that cropping system as well. Crops that we grow are winter wheat, spring wheat, spring barley, garbanzo beans, peas and canola. The rotation is determinant on kind of profitability levels. Our rainfall is anywhere from 16 to 22 inch rainfall for this. South farm is right on the bricks of the Lewiston Canyon and our more snow there. South is about five miles, seven miles south of Portland. Okay, that’s a good spread along this. So you find some pretty big hills. Can you talk a little bit more about your soil? So all the soils are extremely deep around here, but they have aspects of heavy clay on the ridges, clay knobs, very deep loam soils.
And the draws causes some issues with chemistries that we have to to deal with. On carryovers of rotations, weeds that we deal with as well as the north hillsides or colder.
Carol McFarland
Thanks so much for sharing all of that. Dr. Adhikari, Would you share a bit more about yourself and your position at University of Idaho, how you got involved in the PNW Cover Crops project? Because I believe you were one of the key people that initiated that. And your research interests in general?
Subodh Adhikari
Yes, sure. I’m Subodh Adhikari, the current research assistant professor at the University of Idaho. It’s been almost six years that I have been working at University of Idaho of before as a post doc. But right now as a faculty there, my primary research is to work on or develop some diversified climate change, resilient cropping system and how those diversify due to climate change and diversified systems can impact pest regulation, insect pests regulation, weed suppression, as well as supporting beneficial insects such as pollinators. And that’s what I work on.
Carol McFarland
Great, well, also looking forward to hearing more about some of the pollinators in the cover crop with this work. Great! So you guys have been collaborating on some on-farm trials. Would you give a bit of an overview on what you’ve been working with?
Subodh Adhikari
Sure. Back in 2019, I was looking for some early adopters adopting or trying cover crops in the region to collect some insects. Insect based on pollinators. And I found, Frank, one of them. So I visited his farm. He started to collect data. 2019, 2020. Since then, we have been collaborating in different farms and recently starting this 2023, we have this new project, a Western SARE funded project on cover cropping in order to develop a decision support tool based on our own data as well as some other work in the region.
So for this one, we initiated talking to eight different farmers in the region from Washington and Idaho, and then we had some questions to start with. But we started to discuss and then modify those questions on cover cropping. We came up with some covered crop mixes we wanted to try. I know successfully we completed our first year of cover crop trials on these eight farms in the region.
Carol McFarland
So 2023 is the first year of data collection around the this partnership toward developing and decision support aid.
Subodh Adhikari
Yes. This particular project is yes, but I mentioned 2019, 2020. That was a different project on farm. Those were all managed by farmers already, the early adopters like Frank, and then the management and everything was under their discretion.
We just use their farm to see, you know, whatever we can find in the cover crop as well as some business as usual, such as wheat or other crops. But this particular one, we started this project in…to write the proposal, develop the proposal and discuss around back in 2021. We got this grant in 2022 and then the first year we completed plan 2023 and it goes until 2025.
It’s, like, for three years.
Carol McFarland
Great. Well, it sounds like growers have been involved in this work throughout and have been helping to inform a lot of the processes along the way from kind of the one flavor of on farm experimentation where you were like, Hey, Frank, this looks like you’re growing cover crops. Can we come out and measure some stuff?
And then I’d like to hear more about how you’ve engaged with the process along the way, Frank.
Frank Wolf
So I was excited to have the University of Idaho take a look at what we’re doing with cover crops, because from 2013 we were experimenting with different types of cover cropping systems, whether it was intercropping or standalone cover crop, eliminating the cash crop cover crop, just various different aspects of it, trying to make it fit.
But all the data that we were collecting was on-farm anecdotal, basically visual. And then we tweaked it from there and we kind of quote unquote experts in the field and asked her what our experiences were, how would they change it? But there was no real true data set that was built on the Palouse. So once Subodh was in contact with us, I was excited about just that aspect that we were able to have boots on the ground of real research, to have scientific data to track what we’re doing, and then we also extrapolate information from that to move forward.
And then with this Western SARE grant, we put a lot of data set and protocols into place. That’s been a fun progression to go through this and being able to extrapolate some of the information that we’ve been using from 2013 to 2023. Now I feel like we’ve been able to move past some of the pitfalls to this project because we know what species work.
Kind of been able to help guide that process. And so now we can move forward collectively and with true scientific data.
Well, that’s a really exciting cooperative process, right? It sounds like, you know, the early data informed how to really guide asking more specific research questions that then can be a little bit more of the isolated variables. So we can really home in on those important research questions, probably some sort of moisture use and impact on next year’s crop and that sort of thing.
When you were first starting to grow cover crops, I’d love to know what initiated that for you and what your motivation was. And then also you mentioned that you were using visual assessments before you got roped into the research cooperation. Can you talk a bit more about those?
Sure. So 1998 is when we started. We converted our farm from a conventional type tillage system to a true no till one pass low disturbance. So we went through that transition. We had a lot of learning curve to that aspect. One of the big hopes was that we were going to start seeing less inputs in our synthetic fertilizer needs, but we actually never saw that transition happen.
We had a lot of weed management issues, rotational issues. Once we kind of figured those out, the next step was how do we get our soils to convert the carbon that has been storing into a usable form of nutrients? That kind of brought us to the cover crop that was back in the early teens. There was a lot of cover crop information coming out of back east in the Midwest that cover crops and really starting to convert that- the carbon nitrogen ratio.
And so that’s what got me interested in that. And the first cover crops that we really dealt with were interseeding because they were showing that there was a lot of components to inter-seeding, a radish or tillage type radish, daikon, deep rooted radish for nutrient cycling in the winter wheat, and they would see that 4 to 8 bushel response.
So the ROI on the cover crop seed or the radish seed paid for that. Also, we started to dabble with that on some pretty large acres and again, anecdotally we didn’t see the response. We had our checks- check fields in comparison to the fields that we did the inner seeding with. We just- our growing conditions had a tendency to winter kill the- or frost kill the radish before it actually had any ability to establish that deep breath.
So that was the start of it. And then as that progressed, we just wanted to keep going down that track of developing a cover crop system within our annual cropping system to try to get that nutrient cycling benefit. And so we’ve had some successes and we’ve had some big failures and I think we’re moving closer, moving that needle closer.
Carol McFarland
How did you dial in your rate for the radish?
Frank Wolf
So the rate- that was established by companies that were selling the radish and so it was a 2-4/lb to the acre rate, if I remember correctly, it was a long time ago.
And I just mix it in as we’re filling the drills, we have a hopper on the back that was able to mix the radish seed right there and it mixed with the wheat and then it just went down at the same time as seeding.
Carol McFarland
Okay.
Frank Wolf
And establishment was extremely easy. It was just we’re always bumping up against that frost deadline line in the middle of mid-October.
Carol McFarland
So you said you didn’t see a benefit to the radish at that time. And you’ve evolved since then, did you see a penalty to it?
Frank Wolf
No, no, no, we did have to get clarification from our army that we were going to be allowed to have an interseeded cover crop.
They were fine with it as long as it was terminated. So that was the only question. If we could do it on large scale acreage, that we had no detriment, though. I mean, for the most part it all winter killed. There were some hard coated seeds that might germinate after we’ve applied in crop chemistries, but they didn’t cause any problems. You just see a rogue radish plant growing out in the middle of the field.
Carol McFarland
As an early adopter of cover crops in the region, how did you guys meet?
Subodh Adhikari
Yeah, again, looks like Frank was trialing with cover crops since 2013 and actually at that time when I was a PhD student at Montana State University, I was also working on a project with cover cropping with some agronomics there.
But working together was again in my back in 2019 that we started to meet and then participate in different events. So that was the first time. When I was looking for innovative early adopters. I got Frank’s contact from, I believe, the NRCS, Stephen Johnson or maybe PCD for his conservation district. One of those people provided me contact and then I contacted him and then, hey, I’m always willing to work with you guys, willing to help and he was kind enough to support for our work.
I started to collect data from his field and then, in 2019 and 2020. And then in 2021 we wanted to develop this proposal and we were looking for grower collaborators. First thing is, for these Western SARE project, it’s a minimum three years. Since I already had a really good contact with the farmers like Frank, I just started to contact and then yeah, and now we have eight growers PIs in the project.
Carol McFarland
Yeah, in the PNW Cover Crop project, I really hear that growers are Co-PIs. So you guys are really helping drive the research questions. Can you, can we talk a little bit more about the research question and how that process has looked from both perspectives?
Subodh Adhikari
Sure yeah, one of the research questions is how these different cover crop mixes can impact on soil health, the different soil parameters as well as, you know, soil moisture and all of that.
An insect pest suppression or supporting beneficial insect weed suppression and all of that. And that’s one of the key questions of the research questions we have. But we also wanted to see how the different termination timings were impacting overall biomass, but mainly soil moisture, because for annual cropping zones, soil moisture may not be as big of a problem compared to annual transition cropping zones.
So we need to have a really right time when we terminate cover crops so that the current crop has enough biomass that we are looking for. And at the same time you’re not taking over any soil moisture because we need subsequent crops to grow and we don’t want to deplete that soil moisture level. So we really need the right termination timing. And right now we are testing with three different termination dates and then looking at how those three different termination dates impact on again those soil health, different soil health parameters, soil moisture, crop biomass, weed biomass insect and all of that across those different cover crop mixtures. When I say different color crop mixes, we have three different what we can call treatments, three different crop mixes.
One we call a low diversity mix. We have only three species there representing Brassica grasses and then legumes, three functional groups, but three species from each group. We also have a high diversity mix. Where we still have those same three functional groups again, brassicas are legumes and grasses, but we have three species from each of those functional groups, so in total nine species. So that’s the high diversity mix we have.
Carol McFarland
Seeding that sounds fun.
Frank Wolf
Super easy.
Subodh Adhikari
Yeah, it’s super easy, right? But we have one really unique, Frank can talk about that. But the unique treatment, the third treatment level is what we call producers choice mix. So whatever producers want for any sort of collaborators want to try on their, on their field they can do. We have so many different mixes there,
We will be collecting data on those. So we have those three different mixes, but we also collect data from BAU that is business as usual. In transition, annual transition cropping zone. It could be fallow, but in annual cropping it could be any crop. Garbs, or spring wheat or any other crops.
Frank Wolf
To add to what this is talking about as well as one of the intriguing things to me on this project as a PI is, we’re not just looking at eight farmers that are all doing business as usual the same.
We’ve got people that are on the southern portion of the Palouse that have annual cropping systems.
Carol McFarland
This study has producers from Genesee and here and up into St John representing that annual crop transition to fallow.
Frank Wolf
Then are extremely dry conditions down the sorting area.
So we all have different cropping systems, different major different soil types [and] rainfall. So being able to there’s going to be some commonalities that we’re already seeing and then there are some some differences that we’re already seeing too. So that was fun to see that data set kind of come to light.
Some of it was kind of surprising data to me on the water infiltration stuff. So that that is one other aspect to it on the PI side and, and the university allowed us to pick the cover crops that we thought were going to work well on our farm.
So I was able to pick the cover crops and stuff that we had been working with in the past. There were probably less traditional type plants that we put in there than what the university identified. And so it’s going to be interesting to see how we track and everybody was able to do a different mix. So we’ll all be able to have some completely different mixes to compare against the standard protocols would be.
Carol McFarland
Oh, that’s fascinating. Okay. So many questions, this is what happens. So I hear that you’re collecting data on soil health parameters and I’m assuming there’s the fertility and carbon and and all of that.
Subodh Adhikari
Yes, we have quite a bit of information that we are interested to collect. Like I said, soil moisture is a prime, very important one.
Soil temperature data we currently have sensors in the ground continuously monitoring soil moisture and temperature at different depths. Actually, we have three different depths. One is 8 inches, another one is 1.5 feet and then 2.5 feet. So three different depths. And then what we do is we also collect soils for soil in organic nitrogen, be it bulk density, organic matter usually these, these things we collect twice before seeding.
Also right after the last 30 minutes or so in fall. So we collect these data in two points by soil moisture and then temperature are continuously monitoring because the sensor probes are in the ground right now also. And also we have water infiltration. We measure that and then cover crop emergence because germination could be a problem with some particular species.
Yeah, which particular species do good in terms of biomass and then also weeds and insect pests. So since we have a like I said earlier, three different termination dates, we collect this biomass insect weed, all these data right before each of those termination dates.
So these are the data that we have been collecting from field. In fact, we have more research question on this project, but on field, this is what we are looking for.
Carol McFarland
Okay, so you’re collecting the soil health data, including moisture. That’s a big one, from what I understand. And the cover crop biomass with three different termination dates, the pest and beneficial insects that occur, including across the different termination dates and the weed species and biomass and as well as some germination of the cover crops.
How are you terminating the cover crops?
Frank Wolf
The cover crops are determined on the termination dates by the university, either by date or by the plant growth stage. And then we’re terminating with the chemistry, Roundup. We did that on two of the terminations and now on one termination I did a mow.
Carol McFarland
Okay. Is that your producers choice?
Subodh Adhikari
Sort of. The third termination can vary.
Carol McFarland
Okay. So I want to hear a little bit more about your producer’s choice mix, Frank.
Frank Wolf
I knew you were going to ask that.
Carol McFarland
The legend has it that you’re famous for like a 25 way cover crop mix.
Frank Wolf
So the way we came up with the cover crop mixes is in 2017 or 18, we put in a trial of roughly an acre. We identified 26 different either plant plant types or so they would. So some of them were dual up mustards or mixes. And when you put these in on with the plant, I worked with, collaborated with PNW Coop Up. So I identified the mixes or plant species and we wanted to track all the characteristics of each one of those plants or specific mixes and just try to do some data sets on it.
On growth characteristics. And then we track that all the way through the following year to the winter wheat crop. And wanted to see if we would see a difference and yield as well as we did soil testing on every plot. So that was really interesting to see because what we were able to extrapolate from that was some of them had a 100% weed control in them, others did not.
Some of them didn’t germinate their warm season, some of them just floundered, and some of them really robbed next year’s wheat crop for yield. So we were able to take all that data and then come up with the ones that I wanted and put that into a mix. So I think it was 11 that was in the mix on my growers choice, ranged from sunflowers to a couple different types of mustards, brassicas. So we had radishes and turnips, some clovers and some spring peas and spring oats.
Carol McFarland
Okay, I bet the pollinators loved that
Frank Wolf
There were quite a bit of pollinators out there.
Subodh Adhikari
Yeah, Yeah. And even from the past survey, we we have found that way more to pollinators in this cover crop mixture and other beneficial insects and predators like lady beetles and several other ones in these kind crop mixes.
So I wanted to add right now that as Frank said we didn’t really see visually that many benefits. But yeah, in terms of soil health. I don’t know about crop yield. He didn’t see anything, but we found that those crops were actually helping beneficial insects.
Carol McFarland
That’s cool. And it sounds like visually there is some weed suppression historically.
Frank Wolf
Yeah. So in the denser little trials that we had, we had extremely good weed control in some of them, but those would not make sense at those rates to seed on a cover crop basis because of the cost to just outweigh the benefit.
So we’ve had to tailor back some of those seeding rates. So we still have weed growth in our plots and I think that’s one of the datasets that you guys are collecting is the weed control or the weed aspect in each one of these plots.
Carol McFarland
So we’ll just have to wait to hear more of the official data outcomes on these things.
Okay. Now I’m going to have to pry into more of your secrets, Frank. My limited experience trying to seed cover crops and from what I’ve heard, when you have clover seeds and passives and sunflower seeds, how do you get your seeding rate and run all that through the drill so that you’re getting those multi-species mixes established at the right rate and spacing and all of that?
Frank Wolf
I’ve never experienced problems with it. I mean, this if it’s mixed correctly and you’ve got a diverse mix, some of those are going to stay as carriers. So like your oats any of your larger widebody seeds are going to help suspend those real small seeds. I would- on our large acreage seedings, I’ve got close to a thousand acres of cover crop growing on the rest of our farm, which is a very diverse mix
Carol McFarland
Right now?
Frank Wolf
Right now.
Subodh Adhikari
There’s a lot.
Carol McFarland
I want to go see that.
Frank Wolf
There’s enough of a large body carrier which I’d call like a barley that I put in there that it helps to spread out all those small seeds.
Carol McFarland
Okay, now I got to ask about your drill. What kind of drill are you running?
Frank Wolf
So for these blocks we’re running a cross slot like it’s a low disturbance no-till drill and it’s just got one seed box on it and the metering roll. Calibration is just a function of slowing down the metering rolls to put out the rate that you need.
And that’s just a calibration point you got to find, which is very easy to calibrate if you’ve done it enough times.
Carol McFarland
Do you have any pro tips and lessons learned in that calibration experience?
Frank Wolf
Well, for 15 years prior I was a grass fieldman, so I dealt with a lot of small seeds and small rates. So, yeah, there’s a lot of little tricks that I know that- on how to calibrate quickly, but it’s just a matter of putting in a little bit of seed and on one section of the seed rolls and turning the wheel out to about a 10th of an acre and you collect it.
And so it’s… I know some people probably, it’s a little more difficult because they haven’t done it as much. But it’s no different than calibrating it up for wheat. It’s just you’re using smaller numbers
Carol McFarland
And it’s worth it for the cover crops to just take a minute and make sure you’re calibrating before you’re seeding it.
Frank Wolf
Well, I mean, the cost of these cover crops or any worse, than $15 to $30 an acre, and there’s no especially in large scale acreage, I guess we’re getting a soil health benefit.
But that’s where we’re struggling right now, is figuring out what the ROI is on that and what the true benefit is. We’re trying to extrapolate a whole lot of information on what that $30 an acre treatment is getting me compared to business as usual. On these smaller plots when you have when you dump 25 lbs in the drill and that’s all you’ve got, if you run out, you’re up a creek.
So, yes. So we just got to make sure that you meter out correctly.
Carol McFarland
Thanks for sharing some of those thoughts on ROIas well. So it sounds like when you’re doing the farming operations for the PNW cover crops, trials, who’s who’s doing the farming? That’s you, you’re, you’re putting in all the seeding
Subodh Adhikari
Yeah. For our low diversity mix and high diversity mix. We provided seeds and then we offer them, “Hey, if you need any help while seeding, they are doing all of Frankie’s seeding and then whatever they’re spraying for termination, all of that. And then we come to collate all the, all the data.
Frank Wolf
And U of I sent out some techs to help seed it.
So we, they coordinated with us. They would…it was our choice when we wanted to see the plots and then when we agreed upon a time to meet, they would come out and help us handle the seed and lay the plots out to make sure that we were seeding in the right spot.
Carol McFarland
Great.
Subodh Adhikari
I’m sorry, I wanted to add that to that, since this is a collaboration and then working together even to set up the plots, every farmer, the dimension, the overall area is the same, but the dimensions are all different, which is all based on the size of the cultivator or a spray bloom, all of that.
So it means…Yeah. Just to accommodate that so that it won’t be too tedious for them. I think it’s working so far.
Carol McFarland
Yes definitely sounds like an on farm trial process to make sure that you’re accounting for the dimensions of the equipment. If you’re working directly with the farmer to run their equipment through these plots, make sure that they’re right sized for the farm.
Frank Wolf
And just to add to that, that was part of the PI component. That when they were setting up those parameters, they asked each one of us specifically what the width of our equipment was so that they could set each individual plot up separately to match the farmers’ needs.
Carol McFarland
That’s great. It sounds like know, there’s just a lot of really great, a great brain trust, the PNW cover crops project between our grower innovators and the research team.
It sounds like there’s some great synergy and working together.
We talked a little bit about how long you expect these projects to run. It sounds like the Western care groups like three years is what really drives that. What do you see happening at the end of three years? You’re reporting out your data, you have your decision aid system that hopefully can be then expanded and used by other people across the especially the annual cropping region, but hopefully into some of the transitional fallow regions as well.
Subodh Adhikari
Our goal is even though this particular project funds for three years, first of all the decision support tool, we want to continue with this, right? We have the website already built which is (pnwcovercrops.org). We also call for the decision support tool. We also have given the name is, which is PANDAS , which means Pacific Northwest Cover Crop Decision Aid System.
And then and once this project is over, we would still like to continue finding all the resources and do this type of work and at the same time continue this decision support tool. So that’s our goal. We didn’t want to stop right there. No.
Frank Wolf
I have to agree. So I’m excited about it, as we all are. We’re trying the traditional cover cropping and then we’ve all that our grower choice and all our data is getting collected. So as a PI we get to see what everybody else is doing and we get to talk about the successes and pitfalls to each one. But after this we’ll be able to extrapolate a lot of information of what worked for each different system and hopefully be able to tailor and hone in a little bit better on a successful cover crop on the Palouse.
Carol McFarland
As being one of the PIs for the project. You get that close and personal most relevant on site data and again, really appreciating your contribution because this is not just something you’re trying to tailor for your farm. It is really contributing on, you know, with this research collaboration. And you run the statistics of like, okay, well how likely is this to work on other farms as well? But so what, what data, Frank in this project is most important to you? We talked a little bit about that, but as you brought up ROI, like what is it that is going to evolve this forward for you as part of your farm, your working farm business?
Frank Wolf
There’s a whole lot of things on that.
Carol McFarland
Yeah.
Frank Wolf
And we’re already tracking that. So it’s going to be interesting to see if through the scientific protocols they can extrapolate the same for information that we’re seeing on the anecdotal side of the large acreage cover crops that we’re doing. So Patch is a big issue on the pollution. So I’ve got a lot of open cover cropping.
And what we’re seeing anecdotally in our farm is we’ve seen our pHs reverse. We’re 90% of our fields are between six and seven pH now with no liming. But there is a lot of management strategies that we’ve had to put in place to do that. But a large, large amount of that is cover cropping. So it’s very early in that data collection that I’ve been doing.
But in comparison to some of the farms around us, we’re probably a full percentage above them. On where the pHs are at.
Carol McFarland
And that’s logarithmic. So if you’re a full pH unit, that’s a big deal.
Frank Wolf
It is, so, that, so to me to have this running on our farm to collect the data and, and the protocols that they’ve put in place will hopefully help solidify what we’ve been working on and be able to help move that forward.
Carol McFarland
That’s exciting. Okay. So with your cover, do you ever put down any fertility with it? I know the seed investment is already pretty high
Frank Wolf
We didn’t put any down on these trials. And I have played with some fertility on cover cropping, which is impressive to see what the plant does.
But again, we’re trying to keep that cost component down. And a lot of these synthetic components have a salt content which contributes to our problem. So that growing plant and the microbiome that’s down below the soil surface, that is what’s converting these changes in our soil. So we’re staying away from it deliberately.
Okay, Thanks for that. Yeah, I mean, you know, pH and acidity contributions aren’t just about fixing it with lime, though the carbonate is definitely the neutralizing component of the carbonate in there. the carbonate is one side of it, but also just reducing the contributions to acidity as part of your management goals and just really acknowledging that
Okay. Subodh, how does this on-farm experiment complement the rest of your research portfolio? Because I’m sure this is not the only research project you’re working on.
You know, if you have things going on on a research, like a university research farm or in the greenhouse or in the lab, like what else you going on and how is this does this work? And how these other experiments are also contributing to answering broader innovation questions in that region?
Subodh Adhikari
Sure. Yeah. I mean, my background is also farming coming from a farming background and especially diversified farming background. I’m really, really interested in low input. But we talked about ROI, so low input and then diversified systems and see how that can impact. I mean, I have witnessed a lot of benefits of this diversification. So most of my work, my other works are also around that area. Sustainable farming, sustainable, ecologically based pest management. I work on helping pollinators, beneficial insects, but also managing insect pests more in a sustainable way, ecologically based instead of just like putting chemistries.
And then eventually we see so many other problems, so, this is a very good complementary project for me. And because this is all about diversification, cropping system diversification, and then looking at the impact of this and my previous background, my PhD was also about this. It was diversified but organically managed because it is conventional, but also delays versus no delays. And all of those comparisons.
Carol McFarland
Those great folks over there at Montana State.
Subodh Adhikari
Yes, so I’m just continuing that work and then I’m really, really excited with these projects working with growers. Yeah.
Frank Wolf
One thing that impressed me with Subodh You need to talk a little bit more about your farming background from where you grew up, because it’s not it’s not our typical farming system, but there is a lot of similarities. I think you said your family farm, is it 20 acres?
Subodh Adhikari
I mean, it was bigger than that for sure, but we used to have in most of the chunk of our farm three crops a year, not just one crop, but three crops, which means you are busy all the time, rotated throughout the season. What you rotate for example, we had wheat, corn, peas.
Many crops here are similar crops, certainly rice also. But when you diversify, when you rotate crops every time, and then utilize some of the unwanted weeds as a, you know, like some resources, I never heard that weeds can be a problem until I came here then see, which is a problem while farming. I never thought that weed was a problem to me because we used to graze before plantation and then after harvesting post harvest and then also used those weeds to feed cattle right?
So, but at the same time, you don’t really have much of the problem because of the crop rotation. And then many crops would easily outcompete those weeds. So using that knowledge is from my own farming. Now I want to test, because when I was farming I didn’t have any scientific background, scientific tools to measure. But now I can utilize that knowledge and then incorporate with the other, you know, like the system here.
And that’s what we are really doing right now in the lab that is still here. But rotation, diversification, I mean, all of that. I’m all about…big fan of a penny saved is a penny earned. Low input.
Frank Wolf
He told me that story I guess would have [been] in 2019 when we met, we just were visiting in the fields and I didn’t realize he had a farming background. I mean, he was a Ph.D student, and we just started talking about the similarities in their farming practices where he’s from and and one thing that made me go home and think was the wheat. It’s like we were looking at weeds all along sometimes. Yes, we know how to manage them so that they don’t go to seed. But those weeds are…those weeds are actually growing for a reason. They’re trying to fix the soil. They’re trying to think…they’re trying to do something, whether it’s the soil or it’s something that we created with chemistries that we put down.
So we’ll look at those weeds as a component of cover. And so once you got your head around that, leaving those weeds seeds out there to germinate they’re part of that. My large acreage right now cover cropping.
What we’re seeing was adding these cover crops into our farming practices is that we’re triggering these weeds to grow at a nontraditional time because we’ve mixed mess with their rotation.
And so we’re seeing a lot of weed banks being germinated that typically wouldn’t germinate at the time that we’re seeing it. So that gives us an opportunity to get those to grow, to terminate so that they’re not in crop again, they’re not will reduce overall our footprint of our chemistries.
Carol McFarland
So yeah, it sounds like and for folks that are doing grazing or something like that, then that becomes more of a resource.
When you talk about ecological pest management, whether that’s weeds or insects or whatever, you know, I mean that’s thinking about the agricultural system as an ecosystem and weeds, they’re part of succession. And so how do we build that into a profitable production system? And, you know, the idea of using them as resources, is pretty exciting that penny saved is a penny earned, yeah, that’s entirely part of farming, especially, you know, as we translate some of these Midwestern technologies or the Midwestern innovations into this agro ecosystem where the margins are narrower and our ecosystem is completely different.
We’ve touched on this, but if you’d like to expand on how these PNW cover crop trials are part of your on farm trial experiment experimental portfolio, if you will, and if you’ve gained anything immediately actionable from the experiment so far?
Frank Wolf
What I’m most interested in is getting that data collection of the soil, the soil benefit overall and the benefits to the beneficial insects. So to be able to have that, none of that data has been finalized or 100% collected yet, but that is going to be huge for us.
And again, to be able to use that data set along with all of the other datasets that are being collected through the other farms just to be able to extrapolate that information and put it back on into use on what we’re already doing, because I’m sure we’re going to have to tweak what we’re doing right now, but I won’t know until we collect all of that. So that’s, that’s really where I’m at on it.
Subodh Adhikari
Yeah. And I think I missed the one thing I should add in terms of our three cover crop treatments, I mentioned that we have this process twice, that producers are picking their own. But even these low diversity in high diversity, we didn’t make those things up. Those are also all based on Frank and other people.
I have their data from 26 different cover crops from 2019 nine 2020 that I visited on the way to Edwall, Washington. All the reasons, bigger, wider reasons than this. And then more people down from within, not just the collaborative side now. And then I also had crop mix that they were using and all of those farms that I visited and then crop mix, we used all of those mix to develop to build these low and high diversity. These are based on not just one farmer, maybe not just from Frank, but other farmers. And based on that we built, we just didn’t bring those from like mid-western crop systems. No, from here, right here.
Carol McFarland
And that’s why it’s so that I mean, I feel like that’s such a great testament to the value of incorporating producer knowledge and existing producer innovation and experience into the research space and how we move together in innovating in our agro ecosystem here in the inland Pacific Northwest. So just a big props to our early innovators.
Subodh Adhikari
Yeah. And now you can see, yes?
Carol McFarland
Yeah and and again I’m just I’m still amazed that, you know, you had all those producers and folks in the room and I just yeah, trying to get people to agree on what to do. But it sounds like you came in with a really good data set. So starting with a good baseline is a good way to launch that.
Frank Wolf
Yeah, we joked about it, but I’m glad we’re talking about the early innovators. I mean, these are all a good group of farmers that understand that there needs to be some heavy protocols. And I think that’s probably the disconnect between farmers and the PhD component is they’re trying to put the true protocols in there.
And for farmers, it’s like we need to just get this information now and move on. So but everybody worked very well together.
And I think that’s so important, too, because I think, you know, just how the operations are conducted on the working farm. And that is really invaluable knowledge, that, you know, producers are the only ones can bring because they’re the ones who know your farm’s the best, too, you know, and how those operations look, especially because they’re so diverse across the different farms.
And that experience is really strong to me. The experience is way more than our short term trial. Their long term experience is way more powerful. I visited somewhere and asked within County in 2019 in one cover crop farm. When I went there, I was looking around the cover crop.
I didn’t see any issues. Hundreds of acres of a large field. There was nothing. I called a grower and then we were- so that was the field that I pointed to you. The reason was he seeded a cover crop and his fallow field didn’t germinate. So it’s not just a success but in lower precipitation zone drier zone many seed many crop will germinate. that and experience level right there and other grower from you know like Edwall region he tried 30 different crops in cover crop mixes and when I went there and then literally checked every crop that was emerged I was able to find up to 19 or 20, the rest of them didn’t germinate.
The ten or 11 didn’t germinate. Right. So the openness and issue emergence issues also and we are just trying. Right. And based on that experience, our experience, we have to modify our mixes that what works best in our condition as well.
Carol McFarland
And I imagine that varies from year to year. And whether that’s a benefit or a drawback mean you want to be spending money on the seed in the ground that doesn’t grow. One of our previous podcasts we talked about when you use these very diverse species mixes, especially across a very variable landscape, you get different plants growing across the landscape and maybe there’s different emergence year to year as well. Have you seen that, Frank?
Frank Wolf
We have. That’s I mean, this year was…we took that very successful planning, our full planted cover just because we had early rains and have great moisture in our soils.
And then last year we still had covers grow but limited, limited germination. A lot of them didn’t germinate till early spring. They had adequate moisture in warm growing conditions. So yeah, it’s I mean, that’s kind of a toss up, but we were used to it and that’s the reason that we try to keep our cover crops seed cost low because of that success component.
Carol McFarland
I wanted to just throw a quick question, though, about…you had mentioned RMA in your very first adventures with the radish. I wanted to check in as well, like what your experience has been since then, working with crop insurance and cover cropping and also I know that there’s some termination dates and timing with that. I don’t want to get anyone in trouble, but I also want to acknowledge that that is part of the cover cropping potential barriers in our region because it likely looks different in practice than it does in other parts of the country.
Frank Wolf
I can comment on it. On our annual crop and system, it kind of depends on where you grow it, what the next crops are going to be. So I don’t I’m not running up against any RMA issues because all of our ground is in continuous cropping. And so it’s just a matter of how you classify it when you certify with the FSA.
The problem is with some of these drier region areas and Subodh can comment on that. But those are the ones that RMA, and RMA is looking at. But now there are the termination dates and there’s going to be a lag in yield, etc., etc.. So that’s one of the components, one of the constraints that we’ve actually we’re talking about in all these meetings.
Subodh Adhikari
Yes. Yeah. Well, even last week, exactly a week ago we had these annual meetings with other researchers there. Termination was one of the issues that we wanted to revisit or rethink, because that’s the item we did for our annual cropping, annual transition transition cropping system area. So that’s what we used last term, last time for first timers and the date was June 1st, but we had like 50% bloom of legumes in annual cropping, that’s the first time this mission did. And then we kept on adding like other dates. We thought we should revisit a little bit based on our experience for our first experience. So we need to do that somehow.
Carol McFarland
Yeah. Informing that termination date, maybe in a more risk region specific level with that with data might be one of the outcomes of the project.
Okay, I’ve got to ask Frank, what’s the most annoying thing about working with a researcher?
Frank Wolf
I’ve been fortunate that I came from a career that I work with researchers a lot. So I really don’t have any problems with it.
Sometimes it doesn’t move as quick as I’d like to see it move. But I mean, that’s agriculture.
Subodh Adhikari
Come on, you can be frank. You are Frank!
Carol McFarland
“You can be frank”, nice!
Frank Wolf
I’m pretty easygoing. We’re- we have an easy going farm and I understand that there’s just some of those things we have to work through. So the frustration levels more than just the time, but there’s nothing that they can control.
Carol McFarland
Yeah, research isn’t known to move super quickly because you want to get all the replication to make sure the data is good before you make your assertions. But I definitely can understand that time.
Frank Wolf
So, I mean, like this program has three years and for me I would probably say it’s one and done or we’re going to go on to something. I think all the data sets that we’ve learned and move on to the next level and they just need to do the scientific protocols.
Carol McFarland
Now, you know how variable year to year weather changes! All right. What’s the most annoying part about working with a farmer?
Subodh Adhikari
Yeah, for I’m being honest here. Being “Frank” here.
Carol McFarland
Frank with Frank?
Subodh Adhikari
Yeah, being frank with Frank here. If we realize the situation’s condition, [the] circumstances of farmers that we are collaborating with, I think we should be fine.
We don’t have to be annoyed. I mean, honestly, I am not annoyed at all. I’m so proud. I really enjoy whenever I see these people, I talk to them, I always enjoy and they’re all good to me, though I feel like, probably, sometimes producers could be annoyed from outside? Maybe, you know, like too much texting, calling, emailing, saying, “Hey, we need to come to your farm, to do this we need to collect this data”, that probably could be annoying for them. But for us, we know their condition. So if we, you know, like, work around in that situation, I think we are all good.
Carol McFarland
I can definitely relate on the annoying farmers by various contacting methods in order to come visit their farms.
Subodh Adhikari
One of the reasons why they’re innovators or early adopters, they want to try something new, want to work with researchers. That’s why we are working together. That may be the reason why we didn’t have that problem of [being] annoying.
Carol McFarland
Again, we just really appreciate our innovative collaborators across the region. Okay. What’s the most fun thing about working with a researcher, Frank?
Frank Wolf
I have a different insight on what we’re doing.
Carol McFarland
Sounds like you’ve enjoyed the conversations you’ve come to know when you were talking about Subodh sharing his background and diffrent perspectives and…
Frank Wolf
You get to meet new people and yeah, I mean it’s just that’s, that’s fun to build, use their experiences and, and, and learn from them.
Subodh Adhikari
You know, I think to me the fun part is, well, we get their land to work on right there. And also for us learning from their experience, different processes. They have their own experiences. So learning from their experience and how we can incorporate their, their issues, their problems into our research questions. Right. So that’s always a plus for us, learning from learning from them.
And again, coming from a farming background. I always enjoy it and hopefully for them it’s like a fresh off on their farm. Some of the data that they will get and then also they are a part of this new research, this new innovation that these results can be applied in a broader region, right? So other people, other peers can learn from them.
So there they are a part of this, which is also, I think, good for both of us.
Carol McFarland
I really appreciate you both being on this podcast to share the project and give all of the farmer colleagues who are interested in cover crops across the region a sneak peek in as well as some already shared experience in this space.
So thank you both for doing this work and exploring cropping systems, innovation for the region and sharing it with your listeners. We look forward to hearing more as the work progresses. [Are] there any final thoughts either of you have?
Subodh Adhikari
No. Thank you so much for this, you know, developing this podcast, especially getting up with a producer that I have been working [with] for five years or so.
I mean, yeah, when we have more data from our trials, we’ll be happy to share again, come back and share more.
Carol McFarland
I look forward to it.
Frank Wolf
Yeah. I would just like to add that communicating what we’re doing out to the public and other farmers is important because to get other farmers that are not early adopters to innovate, that’s huge that we’ve got podcasts that we can do that now and to be able that collect this data through the universities, it’s great that we’re moving that forward. Instead of just, we always seem to keep, farmers are pretty quiet about what they do once because they don’t want to be judged. And two, it’s kind of secretive what they’re doing on the farm in comparison to the guy across the fence. So we got to get past that little taboo, too.
Subodh Adhikari
Yeah. And then just to add on that, even though this is the On-Farm Trial Podcast, this this particular research also has some social components that we meeting with out of our PIs, but also other growers in like focus group discussion as well as individual discussion and then working on, you know, trying to identify the various challenges.
What motivated them if they’re early adopters and if they have not tried yet, why, why, why not all of that on this, this Western funded project?
Frank Wolf
Yeah, we didn’t talk about that at all, but we think that’s also a very neat component, because there’s a lot of similarities amongst all of the PIs that were shared.
Carol McFarland
Well, I always like that inspiration for subsequent podcasts and, and really, I think you spoke to, you know, the culture of keeping things a little bit more on the farm. But I’ve also heard that some producers can feel more alone in their innovation and, like the in the very rural areas, when all the neighbors are doing business as usual to get that inspiration to try something a little different and actually exciting, to be able to use tools in the digital space like this podcast to maybe encourage some folks. And so to hear about, you know, calibrating the cover crops, seed rollers, and share the pro tips from the experienced folks.
Subodh Adhikari
Yeah, yeah. And the final thoughts. As a researcher, I would like to tell everybody here that cover cropping is one of the many tools in the IPM toolbox since I’m insect pest management, IPM, person or if they want to try different tools, what we call many little hammer concept for weed management or for insect pest management if they want to try many hammers instead of one single big hammer.
And then if something happens with that big hammer, then we see so many problems, so cover cropping, crop rotation and all of that would be many little hammers here.
Carol McFarland
Well, having more of a diverse tool set too, I think contributes to resilience as well. You know, there’s changing conditions all around,
Well, thank you both, again, for the work you’re doing. And thank you so much for having us out to your farm, Frank, and really for sharing all of your knowledge and experience and you as well. Dr. Adhikari. And if you see Subodh at a conference, go tell him about all the many, many little hammers you’re trying.
Thanks so much.
Subodh Adhikari
Yeah, thank you.