In this episode of the On-Farm Trials podcast we hear from Clay Hutchens of Hutchens Family Farms outside of Dayton, Washington. Join the conversation to hear from Clay as the Washington Soil Health Initiative’s Soil Health Producer of the Year for 2023, what soil health means to him and his perspective on the imperative of a safe and abundant food supply. He shares his thoughts on soil acidification and his experience collaborating with the Columbia County Conservation District to ameliorate soil acidification with lime, and his experience as an early adopter of precision nutrient management technology – don’t miss his description of adapting his early computers to the tractor cab!
Carol McFarland
Today we’re with Clay Hutchens on the Hutchens family farm outside of Dayton, Washington. Thanks so much for having me out today, Clay.
Clay Hutchens
Glad to be here and glad to have you out to visit and talk about some farming.
Carol McFarland
Thanks. Welcome to the podcast.
Clay Hutchens
It’s a new experience for me.
Carol McFarland
Well, I do hear that you’re a little bit famous as the Washington Soil Health Initiatives Soil Health Producer of the Year Award winner from–
Clay Hutchens
Twenty twenty-three. It’s nice to be recognized sometimes for some of the good things that happen in our business with our family, and it was a nice honor to receive that award.
Carol McFarland
From what I hear, it sounds like it was well deserved. And I’m looking forward to hearing more about all that has went into that. Would you start by talking a little bit about yourself, your farm, and who you farm with?
Clay Hutchens
Sure. So our farm is all located in Columbia County, which is southeastern Washington, and my wife, Rachel and I are the operators of the farming business. And we farm all non-irrigated crops. We’re spread out around a twelve mile radius of the small town of Dayton. Our elevation that we farm ranges from fourteen hundred feet up to almost thirty-five hundred feet. So the growing seasons– they vary a little bit. The annual rainfall varies between fourteen inches and twenty-two to twenty-four inches. It’s a family farm for sure. My father was a farmer, my grandfather and my great grandfather. So that makes me fourth generation, and trying to keep the farm going and not just keep it going, but trying to trying to improve it, trying to put our own thumbprint on it as to, just how the– hopefully there will be a next generation and they’ll be able to look back and see how how, how Rachel and I impacted the farm in positive ways. We have– right now we have two full time employees, and so we’re operating our farm to support our own family, but we’re also trying to support other families in our small community. We hire several seasonal employees too for harvest and seeding season. So it’s not just about our family, but it’s about our, our employees’ families and our community as well.
Carol McFarland
It’s one of the great things about the family farm is that it can have those ripple effects into the community.
Clay Hutchens
It’s pretty important in small communities to have every little bit of economic activity you can have.
Carol McFarland
Great. We’ve got to talk about your soil as well. What kind of soil you got out here on your place?
Clay Hutchens
So we’re really fortunate, in my mind. We’ve got overall very high quality soil for a non-irrigated farm. They’re, they’re loam soil– silt loam soil, primarily, formed, you know, largely by wind currents way back when, you know.
Carol McFarland
All that wind deposited loess.
Clay Hutchens
Yeah. And it’s, it’s– most of them are the Athena silt. I don’t know how deep we want to get into the actual soil series and what they are, but Athena silt loams and primarily with some Palouse silt loam. Organic matter is two to three and a half percent. Pretty capable soil. We grow good wheat crops. Sometimes yielding is into the one hundred twenty to one hundred thirty or plus bushel– not average, but, we’re pretty fortunate with what what our soils can produce.
Carol McFarland
Great. Well, I mean, I am a soil scientist, so I’m not going to shy away from digging deep into that soil data. So wondering a little bit more about some of your management history. Also crop rotation
Clay Hutchens
Sure
Carol McFarland
That sort of thing.
Clay Hutchens
So I guess I’ll give you just a little bit of history. You know, the farm has evolved its management practices over generations. I think, I think pretty much everything in society evolves a little bit over time. Because it has to, but also because, the people that are in charge of innovating, they’re trying to find ways to be more efficient, to do things better, improve things so that when they’re gone, the next generation to take it over has something as good or better to work with than what they had. And so historically, the farming methods in eastern Washington primarily involved a lot of tillage. That was pretty much the only way to try to have some sort of control over weeds. So I would say they were– our previous generations were working with the technology that they had available, and they were doing a very good job at what they could. I would not want to downtalk previous methods of farming because everybody’s working with the tools that they have at hand, and it evolves over time and, you know, over time, the conservation farming methods have adapted and continue to adapt.
Going from wheat, summer fallow rotations where there was, many, many tillage passes or to control weeds and, and try to conserve moisture to get a crop to then in the in the eighties and early nineties– maybe late seventies as well when my father was operating the farm– trying to have some really leave the– when tillage was done, leave the ground really rough. Big clods, try to create pockets for water to sit and be able to infiltrate. But still a lot of intensive tillage. And then as, as some things innovated– since the late nineties, early two-thousands, our farm has been some level of direct seed or no till. It’s had various things that looked differently sometimes, but at this point, we are at a point where we went one hundred percent direct seed and no-till for ten to fifteen years, and we’ve backed off that just a little bit. We’ve added a little bit of tillage back in our rotation, but with a prescription. Tilling with a purpose in a time in the rotation with an intended purpose, not just tilling because we’re throwing our hands up in the air saying we don’t know what else to do, but hey, what are we trying to achieve? Why are we doing this? Asking all those questions before we choose to do it. And then if the positives of adding that level of tillage outweigh the negatives, then that’s a good reason to go ahead and do it.
Crop rotation wise has been a key to the evolution of the farming practices as well. It hasn’t just been tillage, but adding different crops in the system has allowed us to change some of our tillage methods. We grow not only winter wheat, but we grow spring wheat, spring barley and spring peas. I have grown some winter peas. I haven’t for several years. We grow spring canola. We grow garbanzo beans. And, grow some yellow mustard as well. So as far as a non irrigated farm goes, we’re pretty diversified.
I’m sure there’s a few other things that could be grown. You’ve got to balance out the complexity of the operation as well. What can you fit in the rotation with and still have some level of sanity– I guess might be a good way to say it, but crop rotation has been really important as well. Not only for impacting how much tillage goes on, but looking at the actual impacts– the physical and biological impacts it’s had on the soil to the different crops, the different rotations, the change in tillage practices. The base soil is the same on our farm as it was thirty, fourty, sixty, eighty years ago, but how that soil structure is– the biology of the soil, how it handles precipitation, how it handles drought– those things are all different than it used to be. And we can see it in our production methods. We can see it in our yields. We can see it when environmental impacts come along, whether it’s heavy rain, storms or drought, we can see the soil be more resilient than it used to be as well. And that’s the trend we’re trying to achieve is continuing to I guess, build on that resilience.
Carol McFarland
That’s amazing. It’s really interesting to hear the tools that you’re using in your toolbox to achieve more resilience in your system and what that looks like and means on your farm. Do you want to expand a little bit more?
Clay Hutchens
I guess one thing I’d like to point out, too, is our the methods that we’re using on our farm right now, they’re not organic, and I’m okay with that. They’re not– I guess the term sustainable gets thrown around a lot as a buzzword, and some people equate organic and sustainable to the same thing. And I guess we get into definitions and how people define things, the details of how definitions really, really are what matter. And so no matter what buzzword you put on it, we’re trying to look at our scenario, look at our systems, make decisions that have a balanced approach to create environmental benefits. That’s a big mouthful, I know, but I want to point out that that we are, we’re working in an environment that includes nature, animals, plants, people. We’re working in an environment and utilizing chemicals, but we’re not utilizing chemicals in a way– once again, just recklessly. The decisions we make to use herbicides or fertilizers, they’re calculated. You know, there’s science, a lot of science that goes into it, a lot of research. But I’m also not going to sit here and pretend that everything we do is perfect, because it’s not. And as we as farmers, as researchers, as scientists learn more, we should have the right to adjust the practices we’re using because we will learn later on, “Hey, that was a good, good thing that we were doing. Oh, that had some side effects that maybe we didn’t know about at the time.” That’s going to happen. But with what we know, with what we continue to learn, with what research continues to come out, the methods that we’re using, they’re winning. They are better than they used to be. And I expect they will continue to get better. But I unapologetically use fertilizers and herbicides. I know what it takes to manage farming on a fairly large scale. And I also know what would happen if you took those tools out of the toolbox. I understand what that can do to production, what it can do to efficiency, what it can do to, the quality of food as far as contamination with weeds. I understand the economics of it– what it means for, for farms to be able to survive and to be able to build up some financial reserves to weather the financial storms. So I’m unapologetic about using them. Chemicals, they have a place. They’re used carefully and I think that’s okay. So we have evidence on our farm that, you know, we’re not destroying wildlife. In fact, we struggle with wildlife maybe more than we used to because we’re feeding elk and we’re feeding deer and we’re feeding rodents, and we’re feeding all these animals. So we have good evidence that wildlife is coexisting with this, maybe better than they ever have while we’re using chemicals.
Hopefully sometime in the future we will have better methods than we have now– and I don’t know what that’s going to look like exactly– but maybe they’ll be better than what we are now. And in twenty years or thirty years, or sometime in the future, somebody will find this podcast somewhere in a dusty library somewhere and say, man, why were those guys using chemicals? That was stupid. But with what we know right now, they have a really important place. And it’d be a shame if those tools were taken away from us.
Carol McFarland
So what does healthy soil mean to you?
Clay Hutchens
Healthy soil?
Carol McFarland
Like, what does it look like? What’s it do?
Clay Hutchens
Yeah, I’ll. I’ll go with what it does first. Healthy soil…it fulfills a purpose. In my case, my purpose is largely growing crops. I’m trying to grow crops to produce food for people. I mean, we’re not just farmers, dang it. We’re farmers. And I’m proud of it. But that– but being a farmer means we’re growing crops. But ultimately that turns into food for people. So the purpose of most of my soil is to produce food, and that soil has to be kept in such a condition and improved so that it can continue to do that intended purpose and intended to do it well or better than it has in the past. Healthy soil for me and my fields does have some physical characteristics. It has the ability to– I’ve already used the word resilience. It has the ability to weather some storms, both, figuratively and literally. Me, as a farmer, I make mistakes. That’s not shocking. Everybody makes mistakes. So I’m going to make a management mistake, and I’m going to do something to the soil that I may regret. That’s just going to happen. If I’ve been working really diligently to keep my soil in place in the field, keep from washing or blowing away, continue to add nutrition to the soil in the form of previous crop residues. Keep it covered as much as I can. If I’ve been doing that consistently, that soil is going to be able to maintain its health in spite of some of the mistakes that I make. So it’s a process to try to keep it not only the status quo, but try to improve it. So when you do have setbacks, that soil is healthy enough that it can, it can push through the storm. It’s not that different than any other biological system. You know your human body if if you’re taking good care of it and and feeding it the right nutrients and you’re exercising properly, if you’ve got a track record of doing that over time, then when you do have an injury or you you have an illness, more than likely your body is going to push through that and recover. Soil, I think, is similar to another biological system. Give it the right things, take care of it. And, it seems to be able to take care of not only me as a, as an operator on a farm, but it takes care of the world, too, by providing food.
Carol McFarland
Yeah. I’ve heard, you know, on the podcast before, just the ability to not just weather the storms, so to speak, in terms of infiltration, and reduced erodibility, but also in dry very dry years, increased water holding capacity. And that’s one of the things that I hear people talk about with resilience. Have you noticed some of that on your farm or what does that look like for you down here in Dayton?
Clay Hutchens
I have noticed that, but at the same time, I don’t have some data set that I can quantify for you. And what I can compare with are either fields on my farm or maybe my fields to neighboring fields that have been under some sort of different management. And on a, on a dry year, oftentimes you can see a difference on some of the– between some of the soils or some of the practices. You can see that certain fields are holding on, trying to sustain a little better under one management scheme than under another management scheme. But I’ll also say that there’s, there’s limits. The bottom line as well as is we do revolve around moisture. We do revolve around Mother Nature. And water is our limiting factor most of the time. Not every time, but most of the time. And there’s only so much even the healthiest soil, if it doesn’t rain, it just flat out doesn’t rain. it can hang on for longer than if it’s unhealthy, but it’s you still need water to produce a crop. So we’ve seen crops. We’ve seeded in the heavy crop residue to be able to hang on, hang on better and, sustain themselves into drought conditions and, and do well. But we still need that rain.
Carol McFarland
I think they call that Liebig’s law of the minimum. There’s always a limiting factor. And out here it does seem to usually be moisture.
Clay Hutchens
It is. And I’ve had somebody tell me that when they’re talking about managing a farm– well you can’t manage the moisture. So you don’t don’t worry about that one. You know Mother Nature, you can’t control it. So don’t worry about managing it. It’s true we can’t add it, but I also think it’s, I also think it’s a false move to not consider it or to not worry about it. I don’t think that was their point, necessarily. But man, what we get for precipitation and when we get it is our number one factor. And thankfully historically where we farm, we’re very fortunate.
Carol McFarland
Now, it sounds like your part of your soil health goals are also around catching it and keeping it as much as possible.
Clay Hutchens
Absolutely, absolutely. If I’m talking to, maybe a beginning farmer or a farmer who’s considering some, some transitions on their farm, the first step you’ve got to consider is soil conservation is keeping the soil in place. You’ve got to get it conserved first, and then you’ve got to make the next steps towards what are you looking at for the soil quality so that you can not only retain your soil, but you can retain anything that falls from the sky too. But soil conservation has to be right there and then soil quality right after that.
Carol McFarland
Well you did get that award. And clearly there’s a reason for that. You also serve on your local conservation district board, don’t you?
Clay Hutchens
That’s true. I’ve been on there a long time. I’ve spent a lot of time in meetings and, it’s been a good experience, been an educational experience. Probably the best part is I’ve gotten to sit shoulder to shoulder meetings with some of my neighboring farmers over the years. I’ve been on the board for twenty plus years, and it’s been a learning experience and a good experience.
Carol McFarland
Is that the Columbia County Conservation District?
Clay Hutchens
It is. I’m the old guy on the board now.
Carol McFarland
You’re not that old.
Clay Hutchens
Well, no, but I started when I was twenty-three, maybe. And so I’ve been on it a long time, and I won’t be on that board forever, but I have learned a lot. But like I said, some of the best part of that was, was learning from the other, other farmers. You know, there’s a lot of smart farmers out there.
Carol McFarland
I actually I’ve heard of a few of those.
Clay Hutchens
And the more that, the more that I can glean from them, you know, pick things up from what they’re doing, what their perspectives are– I don’t mind, I don’t mind borrowing some of their ideas. I’m not going to ever try to copy anybody else exactly. I think that’d be a mistake and wouldn’t necessarily be true to who I am. But, I don’t need to reinvent the wheel on every little thing. If I can pull pieces from good things other people are doing and implement those into my operation, I think that’s smart.
Carol McFarland
Let’s hope so. You know, in the experience, like creating this space, you know, that’s definitely part of our mission: is to help encourage and support that sort of thing, but while also recognizing that each farm is different. And so trying things on the farm to figure out what works for your context, and whether that’s a field being different from another field or this farm being different than another one. So with that, would you maybe talk about some of the experiments or trials you currently have going on your farm?
Clay Hutchens
Let me start by saying that I view the farm as a continual experiment. Now, it’s not an experiment in the way that a researcher might look at it, where there’s hard data collected all the time. But farming in its own right is an experiment, largely because the variables are different not only every year, but they’re different maybe every week or every season. And so it’s a continual experiment. It’s a challenge trying to gather the data– whether it’s quantitative or qualitative– trying to gather the data to then transfer that into something that helps you make management decisions in the future. Because farming, it has all those variables and it’s not a linear occupation at all. That’s how I view it. I do believe it’s a continual experiment.
Now, right now we do have an experiment that’s been ongoing through the Columbia Conservation District that has to do with soil quality, soil pH. We’ve taken a field that I operate and divided it up into a test plot, I guess, but it’s a forty-eight acre test plot in the midst of a seven hundred seventy acre field. And we, as the district have, taken extra effort to pull a lot of soil samples very often out of this. So we’ve got three geo reference soil sample sites per acre, and we’ve pulled a lot of baseline samples out of it. Continue to pull samples every year as we have done some different treatments to it as well to see if we can establish any long term impacts to the treatments we’re doing, and therefore, maybe we can learn something that can be applied to other farms in our county in the northwest, maybe beyond that. But some of the treatments that we’re doing having to do with adding lime or dolomite or high levels of zinc, high levels of phosphorus. To be honest, the economics of getting those applied on every acre right now without some sort of cost share program, it just doesn’t make a lot of sense.The risk is way too high for the amount of dollars that we’re putting into it. But as a conservation district we’ve sought out this funding to be able to invest in it, trying to figure out what we can learn from it on a relatively small scale, forty-eight acres. And then compare it to the rest of the field. But continue to monitor these soil sample sites and then also track crop yield and maybe eventually crop quality too to see if we’ve made any impacts.
Sometimes the experiments that you learn the most are– learn the most from are experiments that don’t turn out how you maybe hope they would. We’ve been doing things for several years now. To this point, we haven’t seen a positive impact in yield. We’ve seen some results in soil samples of the pH change a little bit and some of the other levels. But we’re, we’re also there’s just so much we don’t know. And that’s the honest truth. We’re trying to work with some different scientists, soil scientists to help give us direction. But we don’t even know for sure what the right direction to go is. Sometimes when you’re pushing, pushing like that and you talk to two different soil scientists, you get two completely different answers about what you should be doing. So we’re doing this experiment. It’s exciting, but at the same time, it’s a lot of data to try to push through and sort through, and then it’s a challenge to try to find the right experts to help you through some of the data and try to figure out what the next steps are. So once again, it goes back to there’s so many variables. It’s encouraging that somebody like the conservation is willing to be a partner and, and take some of the financial risk off the table. And I guess, hopefully we don’t make a wrong decision and add some soil amendment that we get advice or we think is going to be something that’s an improvement. Hopefully don’t do something and take things backwards. So far, we haven’t gone backwards, but we’re still not sure if we’re going forwards.
Carol McFarland
I hear you talking about the question of soil acidity can be very confounding. Have you done mixing on your site or is that kind of that stratified no till situation?
Clay Hutchens
We’ve done some mixing. We’ve done some chisel plowing. It’s not a complete moldboard plow, but an aggressive chisel plowing to mix. Not every year, that’s been chisel plowed I think once in the last ten years maybe. And so it’s gotten some, some mixing to some of that to try to incorporate some of the product that we put down and, but some it’s just to get it mixed in there too to try to destratify if that’s the– that’s probably not the right word– but to de stratify it. So we’ll make up new words to add to the Urban Dictionary.
Carol McFarland
That’s probably better than some of the other ones.
Clay Hutchens
I’ve– an experiment that I’m not directly involved in, but I’m but I’m involved in some because I’m the farmer farming the ground now but I wasn’t involved in doing the applications. We’ve on, on this other pretty, pretty well laid out research plot with different applications of lime. The soil test showed a perfect linear response to, as you increase the levels of lime that was put on, you increase the pH more towards basic. But when it has come to yield so far nothing. So it’s and in the, when the pH increased the free aluminum decreased which you would expect. But so far, when it came to yield, nothing. And so those are challenging. Those are challenges there because it’s not inexpensive to do some of these treatments. So at some point it’s got to be either an economic win where it makes sense because you’re getting either higher production or a higher quality; therefore you’re getting a premium for your crop, which is very difficult to do in commodity farming. Nearly impossible. Not impossible, nearly impossible, very difficult. So it’s got to either create enough increase that it makes it worth it, including the risk factor worth it, or you can look at it the other way. It’s got to save you from losing so much that you have a choice that you have to do it. And so far, we’re not there yet either. Now there’s the proverbial pH cliff that gets talked about and gets written about, and that’s actually I’ve pushed this by several researchers in the past four or five years. I want a researcher to take regional small plots of soil, get together with the people that are very, very smart, experienced and put together a plan to simulate, dropping the pH and trying to find where the cliff is. But I think it’s got to be done in a way that mimics, mimics how we’re acidifying our soils in farming.
Carol McFarland
Yeah. I mean, you could do like a downward titration with a bunch of soil samples from around the region with HCl. That’s like it’s a unit of acidity that still translates to like the hydrogen ions that are added when ammonium unbinds itself and goes into the soil.
Clay Hutchens
So, so but I think the regional approach, the regional approach is really important to that because what all is going on in the soil. We understand soil differently. I mean, we’re, we’re, we’re we’re both working with soil. You’re a trained soil scientist. I know some things, and I’ve got some soil background and classes when I got my degree, but I’m not at the level you are.
Carol McFarland
I just went down the rabbit hole really hard. Grad school made me do it.
Clay Hutchens
But there’s so many variables going on in there, in the soil that maybe can be overcome. In my soil here in Columbia County, I might be able to overcome a low pH better than somebody three counties away. The pH may be the same, but the other variables in our soil are different, whether it’s exchange sites, buffering capacity. For it to be more effective, if we I think we need to find out where the cliff is.This pH cliff, where does it exist? You know, I’ve seen research out of, I think, Montana or one of the Dakotas, we’ve hit the cliff and there’s a study that cited very often up in, you know, just south of Spokane. Those are the continual examples that get cited a lot for where we’ve reached a point where production is in trouble. Well, our long term trend right now still is over time, our yields have been– or at least our yield ceilings have been increasing. But a lot of that’s maybe because of the varieties. I guess, are we going to continue to produce and select varieties that can produce in lower acidic? So are we never going to reach the cliff because we’re selecting with varieties? I doubt it. However, where is the cliff? It seems, has seemed at times, a little bit like Chicken Little. We’re toast, we’re toast, we’re toast. Our fields are going to be absolute, a wasteland if we don’t do something right now. Right now, right now. Well, we need to find out where it becomes a wasteland. If that even is even a thing. Don’t ignore it, but also, we don’t need to react to it. I’m challenging the idea a little bit. They’ve been adding lime in soils all over the world for years. Right? It’s a standard practice in a lot of places, but that’s another subject we could touch on– weather patterns, topography, climate based soils– those vary within regions in the world. And so things may not react exactly the same in Columbia County, Washington as they react in Des Moines, Iowa. So I don’t know what do you have to say about that?
Carol McFarland
That’s a big conversation.
Clay Hutchens
I’m sure it is.
Carol McFarland
The way you spoke about resilience of soil in general and you brought up buffer capacity– you know, it sounds like if you’re having three and a half percent organic matter on a silt loam, you’ve got some pretty solid buffering capacity in your soil. The way buffer capacity works around soil pH in general, though, is that, you know, it’s kind of, you know, you talked about, like, the cation exchange sites because you’ve had your soil classes too. And they’re kind of like, you know, I’ve heard them equated as, colloquially as, like a parking spot for ions. So that can be hydrogen ions. It can be nutrient ions. But if we have a lot of hydrogen or aluminum– aluminum is really fun because it has that plus three charges and it really is a very strong binder on those sites as well. And I again, I’m, I am an agroecologist, just, you know, I have studied soil acidity, but I’m also not a soil chemist. We have one of those now, in the crop and soil science department, and I’m looking forward to him doing some more research in that space as well. But as you fill up your exchange sites, especially with acidity– like, if you have more buffer capacity
yeah, you have more room to buffer acidity, but at some point then you just have a very big problem with acid ions, aluminum ions, that sort of thing. So that is the way that the logic goes. So and you acknowledge as well, as pH’s across the landscape have been in decline I’m sure that our breeding programs reflect that.
Clay Hutchens
Absolutely. But just naturally, if we’re selecting for, selecting for varieties that are performing well, well, the soils have gradually been decreasing their pH, increasing acidity, so it’s pretty natural for the variety for the testing and selecting programs to select varieties that perform better under higher acidity.
Carol McFarland
And also we know that there’s tradeoffs for everything. And I’m not a plant physiologist, but I do know that some of the mechanisms that plants use to overcome challenges in their environment, might have some sort of biological penalty for the plant as well. So it really does change. Like what’s the upper limit of what’s possible for yield and on a variety to variety level?
It’s really easy to go into a rabbit hole of soil acidity, very deep. One of the things that I also think about, just in terms of climbing as you do– you do want to make sure that you’re accounting for your soil specific buffer capacity. And there are buffer tests so that you can actually account for your individual soils like acidity and buffer capacity and knowing, to target the right amount of lime to apply. And we talk about the four Rs of nutrient management. Right. We have the right rate, right place at the right time. And so it’s not that different when you’re considering like your lime applications. I think what I heard from the conservation district and what you’re trying on your farm is really fantastic in that there is a huge financial burden in a very low margin system.
And this is a land degradation challenge that I think has the potential to really not be Chicken Little, but, you know, I think it it’s very possible that this will affect our entire region. I mean, the way it– the way it’s been measured over several decades now, it is affecting our system on a regional level. And, you know, who bears the cost of remediating that? And if it is just left up to the farmers, it’s a very different situation than nitrogen management or other nutrient management, as a soil amendment. And you know, how it’s handled in any lease agreements or, you know, if it’s amortized over as like a capital investment in the farm, all of these things are things that have come up in this conversation over the years that I’ve been having the conversation.
Clay Hutchens
Well, and the infrastructure, this so so if we all immediately agreed and we waved our magic wand and the economy could, could just come up with the money to to put lime on every acre to the perfect prescription that it required, the infrastructure to, to have the lime in place and to move it. The infrastructure has to take time to develop as well. And so it’s good that work is being done regarding pH, regarding liming, but there’s a lot more that needs to be developed, both from a research standpoint and from an infrastructure standpoint. So we’re not just, we’re not just going out and throwing money at a problem that we really don’t know if it’s the right way to to approach the solution to it or not. I’m not discounting pH as an issue totally. I am a little bit, but I do think it can be a problem. But I just don’t want to jump so far so fast. But I’d really like to know how far it is until we really start to see the major impacts. And that’s why I think if, if, if we knew with a really high probability on our soils– when I say we the farmers in general– if we knew where it was going to be the cliff, that would spur everything else forward, it really would. And I just don’t think that that’s very clear right now.
Carol McFarland
I’m one hundred percent on board with that idea.
Clay Hutchens
So what’s, what’s the hang up?
Carol McFarland
Well, actually, as it happens, acidity research is can be very difficult to get funding for because your soil is acidic because you add nitrogen and then you lime it back up to neutral pH. Like that’s what they do everywhere else. And unfortunately, that is one of the difficult things about being in our region, because our margins are very different than they are in the Midwest, and our infrastructure is very different than it is in the Midwest. And so, you know, there’s also like the like pedagogically, the soils of the southeast where it rains a lot. You know, those are more naturally acidified soils versus, you know, the Midwest. Yes, maybe more natural acidification. They get a lot more rain there. So they leach their base cations in a whole different way than we do, but I’m really with you on that. You know, where is the danger zone and and also what is the role because soil pH, they call it one of the master variables alongside organic matter. I’m sure you’ve heard of that before. And I think it can really drive a lot around nutrient use, nutrient use efficiency, how how nutrients are stored. And like I said, that aluminum binding up, it would very strongly, the cation exchange sites.That’s kind of a big deal. And also the biology, when we’re excited about maintaining a vital living ecosystem in the soil, pH is one of the biggest drivers of the microbiome and habitat there. And there is some capacity of the plants to, you know, change the root, change the pH around the rhizosphere, but the bulk soil pH does have a role to play in that.
You just opened a big old can of worms there. But it’s very exciting. And I like I said, it’s neat that the conservation district is there and bearing some of that cost burden to allow you to explore that idea on the farm. And it sounds like they’ve been really supportive.I do think that part of the, some of how we see, impact around soil acidification can be dependent on how we’re soil sampling as well. And then also, again, getting that rate right. But you know, if your soil actually isn’t going to respond unless you put down like four thousand pounds of lime, that’s a really big number that nobody wants to hear. It’s worse if it’s even higher. The results are suggesting that the buffer capacity, the fantastic buffer capacity of these high organic matter malic soils, the silt loams, the buffer capacity is really high. And that means that it’s a pretty big bump to maybe actually see meaningful results. And so some of the kind of null results around people maybe, is that if they’re not using tests to get the right amount on, maybe that’s part of why the results aren’t being seen. Maybe like what’s your, what’s your highest lime rate? Do you want to share that?
Clay Hutchens
Three ton.
Carol McFarland
You know, that’s pretty good.
Clay Hutchens
I mean that’s quite a bit, right. And it’s, I don’t know, like I said, I’m no soil scientist and so I could get in way over my head and I’m not going to try to fool anybody that, to make them think that I’m smarter or anything, but…
Carol McFarland
It’s okay, I’m not here to try to like–
Clay Hutchens
But it’s more than just lime to, right. It’s, you put magnesium in there and dolomitic lime, and how that interacts with the system. It’s a– it goes back to there are lots of variables and trying to figure out how those variables affect another variable, and once you’ve affected another variable, well maybe that variable affects two more. And so it’s definitely not simple. And so it’s not just a matter of putting– from what I’m learning– it’s not just a matter of putting lime out there. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a management program. It’s a, it’s a long term look. It’s what products are the right products in the right amounts. And then it may,– it needs to be reevaluated after some treatments to decide what the next steps are. It’s not simple. Yeah. It’s not straightforward. If it were straightforward, then there’d be a recipe and people would be following and people being successful with it. There’s no recipe that’s been created yet, and I don’t know if there ever will be a perfect recipe
Carol McFarland
That’s why you’re doing trials on your farm.
Clay Hutchens
It’s why we’re doing trials, and it was a…it’s a good idea. I’m glad we’re doing it. It’s got value.
Now we need to invent a time machine so that we can pause time for a little bit, to have enough time to go through the data and to collaborate with enough researchers. And then we need to create a money machine so we can have enough money to hire people and pay people to, to go through it and to help put all the heads together in one room to sort through what are the next steps. And that is proving to be a significant challenge because we can produce data and we have produced some data, but then what to do with that data is, is the challenge. We don’t always know what the next step is. I’m a farmer. If I get a, if I get a spreadsheet emailed to me with, with all the soil sample results, whether it’s in just a chart or it’s, in a table. My time, my time I have to analyze that is between the hours of ten p.m. and four thirty in the morning. Because during harvest, in a way, the rest of my day is all packed. And so then you’ve got, you know– every season isn’t quite that busy. But make no mistake, every season is busy. People ask me, well have things slowed down? This is your slow time of the year. I don’t know how every farm runs, but ask my wife. There’s not much of a slow time. It’s just a different pace or a different set of activities. It’s not all the same as harvest or the same as spring work, but, I don’t have the expertise and I don’t have as much time as maybe I wish I did to go through data like that. So we need help. We need research,
Carol McFarland
I think there’s folks that are trying to work on it, but I guess that unfortunately, really regionally relevant research, that it’s difficult to get funding for that, that isn’t regionally based. And so that does bring, you know, importance to some of the different commissions that are more regionally focused. know my, you know, big shout out to the Washington Grain Commission that funded all of my graduate work, on the topic and that was great and really tried to, you know, we really tried to serve the region with that work. But, yeah, local work matters in a case like this where it has been kind of solved in other places, but we’re still trying to solve it here and don’t have the framework of a liming program. And again, that’s why we do trials.
Clay Hutchens
The term you use solved is an interesting term, and I don’t want to get super far off that. But but but in agriculture in general, when somebody says they’ve solved the problem, a small part in the back of my brain chuckles a little bit, because as soon as a farmer thinks they’ve solved the problem, they better be on guard, because that’s about when something’s going to happen in the environment, with with Mother Nature, that’s going to come around and, and show you that you’re not quite as smart as you thought you were.
Carol McFarland
I don’t think they have those problems in the Midwest. They get rain there, we’re different.
Clay Hutchens
They get rain is a different time, different time of the year. But definitely the summer rainfall versus winter preset makes a difference. But, but, but solving things in farming, it’s a continual process, I think. I think it’s a process of working towards things. I don’t know that we ever solve anything because there’s trade offs and everything. Like you said
Carol McFarland
No, and that’s well said there. I definitely acknowledge.
Clay Hutchens
To your point here– you said low margin– here, the economic factor is a big challenge of it, too, of whether we can, quote, solve it or not.
Carol McFarland
Oh yeah.
Clay Hutchens
And so if you can, if you can fix something environmentally but it’s not economic, then I question as to whether it’s truly a solution or not. Economics has to play a part. It’s not the end all be all. I really believe that. But it’s got to be a part of it because you can grit your teeth and keep banging your head on the wall as, as hard as you want, but if you can’t economically sustain, eventually you’re going to go away. And if you go away, then all of the hard-headedness that you had and the grit and the determination to do it– if you can’t economically stay relevant and stay functional, then it’s not a solution either. It’s got to be part of it.
Carol McFarland
Yes. Again, well said. I think one of the things that’s interesting to me about lime in particular, as a soil amendment, is– and soil amendments, because they’re different than things like fertilizer. Like, you know, nitrogen is such a convenient input because it’s like, you put it in your crop grows better, calcium carbonate is a rock. It’s not on ag time. It’s on geologic time.
Clay Hutchens
It’s a good point. And that’s a, that’s a fair point.
Carol McFarland
It, it’s really difficult when we’re running on ag time and we need to run on ag time. You were talking about the you need to see the short term and then you have to like shift your focus and make sure you’re thinking about the long term.But really like the year-to-year production goals is what’s going to keep the farm in business. And I get that. And it’s just hard to tell the rocks that
Clay Hutchens
Yeah I, I tell people, I look at the I look at what’s right in front of me. I look at the daily management decisions, the weekly, the seasonal. So, you know, spring, summer, fall, winter management decisions. But then you got to balance it with, with the annual, with the five year, with the twenty-five year, and then maybe with the, the generational. And it’s working backwards sometimes from those twenty-five years plus– because we don’t know there’s so much that can happen in the next twenty-five years.I mean that’s so far out there. However, on geologic time, that’s just a a blip. But from a human perspective, that’s a long, long time. And so we’re trying to make projections out that far.They’re probably not going to be perfectly accurate. And so we’ve got to put enough flexibility in the system that we can change things between now and twenty-five years from now as well. It’s got to it’s got to be a, a management system that can be adaptable and changeable over time, but I do think you need to keep your eye on it, because I, I don’t know, a farmer that would be willing to– if they knew that our farm– if we all knew that our farms were going to be surface of the moon non-productive in twenty-five years because of practices that were going on, every farmer I know would do what they can in their power to change it, to prevent that from happening. But because farmers care, we do it. It’s not only economic. Nobody wants to take something that they probably have had in generations prior to in their family that’s been passed on, and nobody wants to be the one who, who has their name tied to ruining it or having it become something that’s, that’s not usable or not quality soil anymore. Everybody wants it to, to to sustain and maintain, be productive for now, in the future. I really believe that’s true. And we’ve got to keep forging ahead to try to use the best information we have to to do a better job than we are. But I’m not saying we’re doing a bad job now. That’s not what I’m saying either. We’re doing a great job now as farming in general. We’re doing great things. The soil conservation that’s gone on, that’s been involved, the the, the production methods, the efficiencies. It’s so much better than it was when I was a little kid the amount of water erosion that happened in this county, and these were all good farmers. But what was available for technology and methods, what we’ve learned and the things we’ve accomplished have been fantastic, and that should not be, that should not be shied away from either. We should be proud of that. It’s been great. What are the next improvements we’re going to make to be determined? Right. We’re going to keep looking for those. But we’ve made a ton of progress, and people need to be willing to shout that from the mountaintops of what quality farming is going on right now.
Carol McFarland
I see a lot of folks who really are working to do their best and continue to learn and, you know, I talk with other farmers and learn from and, you know, experiment. And also, you know, you describe this legacy of the land and stewarding the land. And it sounds like it can be kind of a tough burden to take on alone, especially, you know, we’re talking about these cost share programs. Gosh, that’s sure nice to have available. So I’m glad that you guys have been able to make that work. I feel like when I asked you about some of the experiments that you have going on in your farm, we started with that one, and then you started talking about soil acidification. And then I got all excited and maybe we derailed. Do you have some others that are going on in your farm you’d like to talk about?
Clay Hutchens
I don’t know that I have anything specific right now. I guess I’d like to shout out to my grandfather and my father. They’ve always– in my mind, and I think most everybody else’s mind– they’ve been pretty progressive and trying things. Almost every year we have something we’re trying, whether it’s, whether it’s a fungicide trial. You know, we’ve we’ve had an aerial applicator split fields before, and you know, apply a fungicide on this half the field, but not this, and then get them to get them to give us a GIS file of what they had and then go out and market right where they applied and right where they did, and then take, take weigh wagons. And when we’re harvesting and go, go measure, go measure yields from one side of the others and as much as I didn’t want to see the results, this was five or six years ago. There was no nothing visual we could see from the field. But when it came down to the yield, there was a difference on that particular year in that situation, a different year, the results might have been different because we might have had a different limiting factor. But we’re we’ll take trials like that and we’ll, we’ll grab a weigh wagon and, and, measure results.
We’ve put on some different topdress fertilizers. Some of the same, some of the experiments we’re trying to measure now, we’re trying to pick them up on a yield monitor on a combine, because it takes a lot of time to, to go out there and try to measure, other ways. And so if there’s a real slight change in yield from a practice we’ve done, it may not show up on the yield data. And from a, from a monitor on a combine, but that those are the types of things we’re trying to do. It might be a different, different fertilizer. I’m not giving anything specific, I guess, that we’re doing right now, but yes, we’re always trying something.
Carol McFarland
You talked a little bit about some of your kind of farm science pro tips, and I just, I really love those because you’ve talked a little bit about, oh, I’m not a scientist, and, you know, it looks different to do research as a scientist. And there’s a whole spectrum of different ways to do on-farm trials. A lot of times we are talking about what you’re doing on your farm that you’re trying by yourself or, you know, you were talking about your partnership with the conservation district, and that’s going to look different and what and how things are laid out and measured and, you know, and then you get researchers and, there’s a whole spectrum. We’ve actually put that on a presentation somewhere off on farm trials. But, what’s your favorite way to get meaningful results out of things? You try by yourself on the farm?
Clay Hutchens
While it’s somewhat cumbersome, I think it’s taking as much spatial spatial variability out of it as possible. And because we know from our yield data, we know from experience, we know from sitting in a combine seed and watching the crop roll in in different, different rates in different parts of the field. We know that if there’s variability within our fields, we don’t always know exactly why it’s variable. We have some pretty good ideas, right. Largely it’s soil depth, soil type aspect, some of those things. But if we take a field and treat a whole hundred acre field and try to compare it with another hundred acre field, of how they did with it, with a different treatment, that’s not my favorite way to do it, because I don’t think that gives the best data, because I think there’s enough variability from one field to the next that I don’t think the data is real good. And so I like to have trials on each side of a line in the same field to limit the spatial variability, with the weigh wagon or with a yield monitor. Doesn’t matter a ton to me, as long as we’re making it close in the field so that we’re trying to get a similar aspect, a similar elevation, a similar slope, similar soil type. That’s what I want to see. What’s it look like on this side of the line versus the other side of the line? Because I think that’s the most accurate reflection of whether your treatment had an impact or not. That’s what I think, those– the downside is they take time to set them up, to monitor, to collect data, to look at the data. All those things take time and one thing that is the most valuable commodity to a farmer is time. If time wasn’t a factor, I mean, go back to our time machine. We’d be doing all kinds of things. But you’ve got to put a realistic, time factor in there because there’s so much management that has to be done farm wide that you can devote a certain amount of time to experimentation, but you can’t let that time that you devote to experimentation drag the rest of your farm management down, because you’re cutting off your nose to spite your face, they say. I like experiments, but you’ve got to figure out a way to do them that fits in the time management scope of your whole operation. Otherwise it’s not going to be an overall benefit.
Carol McFarland
Are you an all in, right away sort of innovator, or do you kind of like to do more of a stepwise? Progressive?
Clay Hutchens
I’ve been both. And that’s the fact. One example is with some of the GPS, technology that was evolving autosteer variable rate fertility. I was an all in guy in about two thousand one or two. The industry was very much in its infancy at that point, at least in our area, the Pacific Northwest. And so I was an all in guy because I saw the potential, the variable rate from both a production standpoint and an economic standpoint. I still think we have a lot to learn on, on the information side of variable rate technology, and we’re continuing to try to figure some of that out. But I was an all in guy there. And the amount of things I learned from that was good. But an example trying to get one computer to talk to, another computer to talk to another computer inside a tractor cab, was a challenge. And then trying to find the right people that could lead me to the next to the next point, I guess. I come up with a problem with the system and they say, well, you need to do this. I go do that and then it creates another problem. And so the amount of wires and cables and screens and all kinds of things that I had in the cab, it was crazy. It drove me nuts. But I figured it out and it was, it was rewarding to make it all work, but it took a crazy amount of hours and phone calls and personal visits to try to make everything work. And so that’s just one example of being an all in. And doggone it, we had some successes and we won. But that’s one example that showed sometimes you need to wait just a little bit, keep current, keep abreast of the information and be ready to adapt. That’s more I’ve learned that that’s more important than being the first in is staying up on it from an information standpoint. Having the equipment close to ready to implement all in, but you don’t have to be all in right away, but be ready, because if you just say, well, I’ll wait till everybody else figures it out and then I’ll do it to be the last one in. I think that’s too late also. I think you want to be, instead of being on the very front edge all the time. Being second or third in line isn’t a bad place to be all the time. That may sound like I’m not progressive and that I’m lazy and a slacker. But that’s not that’s not the truth. I think there’s some smarts to sometimes pushing hard, but then, hey, be patient a little bit, too. Let’s let a few things develop, because it might end up getting you to your end goal faster. And with a path of least resistance, or path of lower resistance than if you were the first one in.
Carol McFarland
I mean, in all fairness, I think we’re more than twenty years out from what you’re describing, and it’s still really hard to get computers to talk to each other when we want them to.
Clay Hutchens
But it’s different than it was. I’ve shown some pictures of my early tractor cabs to some people who are dealing in the ag computer space now, and they just shake their head at me and they laugh. And I’ve actually one of my first field computers. I had one guy who was a former Microsoft employee who is no longer with them, but so he’s been in the computer space, right? He saw that. He goes, can I take a picture of that? He laughed. He let out this big laugh because it was, it was a computer held together with plywood and cable sticking out the back of it with, with a homemade metal case stuck to it to be able to adapt and hold everything together. He just said, that is awesome. I’ve never seen anything like that. I said, it’s what we had to try to make things work.
Carol McFarland
You farmerized it.
Clay Hutchens
Well, had to because there was an attempt to go from, and like I said, it’s something that you can laugh at and maybe not everybody’s willing to, to do that and maybe they shouldn’t be willing to do that. Maybe they were smarter than I was, but I will say I value what I learned through that from both a process standpoint and from the process of when to be an adapter. I learned a lot through that, but I also did learn a lot of the baseline of what’s going on in the background. And so that’s helped me sort through sales pitches versus things that are really applicable, that are practical, that are going to be a benefit, because there’s a lot of sales pitches that can be presented to a farmer that, well, if you do this, it’s going to save you this or it’s going to make you this. Well, when you understand the baseline of what’s actually going on, I think that knowledge gives you an information base to sort through some of the valuable information versus some of the, the, that sounds good, but that I don’t think that’s actually full truth. So that’s been beneficial. I value education, I value learning, I value knowing as much as I can.I just need to be sure that I don’t don’t get too far ahead of myself. You know, with, with adaptation, but, you know, learning or learning is really important.
Carol McFarland
No that’s great. Well, yeah, there is a lot there. I bet that can be. I mean, that computer should be in a museum somewhere.
Clay Hutchens
Nah, probably not. It’s probably going to stay in my office. Some people would probably look at and say, boy, that guy was an idiot. He would have just done this, it would have made his life a whole lot easier. But I never found that person that could tell me that.
Carol McFarland
No, we do need the people really, really out front working on those things.
Clay Hutchens
And that’s true. I think. Then we need to take turns of who’s the one out there on– the one of my advisors at Washington state and he said, there’s the leading edge and there’s the bleeding edge. And sometimes you want to be not quite on the bleeding edge, be right and behind that.
Carol McFarland
Like kind of relay style, you just take turns like who’s going to lead the innovation on this one.
Clay Hutchens
Kind of like– what do they call it? A gaggle of geese. Is that what geese are? The one that’s out in front and they take turns. Yeah. So
Carol McFarland
Thank you for your service.
Clay Hutchens
Yeah. You’re welcome. You’re welcome. Yeah. Some of the, some of the innovation I’ve done is I’ve been with computers and I’m no longer in the innovative space on computers because a lot of it’s evolved so much that now you can go find somebody that’s put the package together and you can make it work in your tractor a lot easier. Really nice.
Carol McFarland
Is there anything you got your eye on now that we kind of got looking at thinking about,
Clay Hutchens
No, I think I’m looking to take the next steps with more variable rate technology. It’s really the technology to vary the applications of products is there. Now it’s more the whys and the, the why should we vary and what products should we vary and and analyzing that, taking that to a higher level, I think is where I’m kind of focused. Because just because you can do something functionally, logistically doesn’t really answer the question of why, of why you should do it and, and what the probability of, of a benefit is. That’s, I think, the trick.
Carol McFarland
So what does it take for you to be interested enough in something you’ve tried to try it again or to scale it up?
Clay Hutchens
You have to have a little bit of hope I’m not trying to be funny, but you’ve got to have some….you’ve got to have enough positive outcomes from something to see that you know what? That has potential. If you, if you lose that hope that it has some potential to be a benefit to the farm, or to the soil, or to my family, or to agriculture in general, if it has, if it has some, some hope that it’s going to lead to a path of something better, that’s what I need. And I think that translates beyond just agriculture too. If you, if you have hope, it’ll spur you on to keep moving. If you don’t, then you’re going to fizzle out pretty quickly. So I think you need to see some potential. It’s not just that soil resilience you’re going for.
Carol McFarland
It’s not like internal?
Clay Hutchens
Some, I mean it’s it could it goes off goes hand in hand. I think you need to see enough outcomes.Farming is hard. For anybody that doesn’t know that, farming is not easy. As a farmer, there are many times where you feel like you’re just getting beat down. You don’t know what, you don’t know what the next thing that’s going to come around the corner and smack you on the top of the head is. There’s enough of those that happen, whether it’s equipment or people or finances, or whether there’s just lots of things lurking in the shadows that are going to try to try to knock you down. It’s what it feels like sometimes. And you’ve got to have enough encouraging things happen to to want to continue to, to fight. It is a battle. I don’t want to say that with a total negative connotation because battles can be great when you feel like you’re having some wins. But farming is a battle, and so you’ve got to have enough encouragement to keep going. Because I’ve had years– I was talking with a farmer– in the middle of harvest this year, we had a short rain delay, and he’s having one of those harvests that was just…every which way he turned, he was getting kicked. And I shared with him a little bit. I’ve had those harvest too, and twenty seventeen was to date that was my harvest. And I don’t say that in a great way. It was rough. And you just, you get shell shocked. You’re waiting for the phone to ring, the next phone call from an employee about what’s broken or what engine went out, or what transmission is laying on the ground, or what
Carol McFarland
Is on fire.
Clay Hutchens
What’s on fire? Yeah, that was part of it, too. One combine was on fire several times.
Carol McFarland
Several times?
Clay Hutchens
Tractor engine was gone and the combine engine was gone. A combine transmission was gone. It’s just it’s one thing after another, and that’s just from the mechanical side of things. So there’s enough, there’s enough things that can go wrong on a farm that you’ve got to have enough positive things happen that you’re like, you know what? It can get better. If not, you’re eventually going to say, you know, what is is are the blood, sweat, and tears worth it? And for me, so far, they are. There’s enough of a high, I guess, out of taking a system, being able to work with it, design it, play with it, mold it, adjust it, to try to put systems in place and try to just run hard, run fast, run well, be smart. Try to improve things. Be inventive. Be creative. There’s enough, enough of a high out of all of that that it usually helps sustain me through the times where you just feel like you’re getting beat up all the time. It’s a little bit of a gambler’s mentality, I suppose. You know, there’s people that get addicted to gambling. I think there’s a lot of that in farmers. They have this, they have this rush that they always think they can win, and they always think they can beat the house, even when the house feels like it’s got the odds stacked against you. But I think deep down you kind of have to have that if you don’t have some of that inside of you, I don’t know that you’re going to be able to push through because it’s that hard.
Carol McFarland
What would Warren Buffett say?
Clay Hutchens
He’d say, invest your money consistently a little bit at a time. In index funds. And you don’t need to go out and play the stock market. Just be steady and consistent. That’s what Warren Buffett would say.
Carol McFarland
How does that translate to farming, though? In your analogy?
Clay Hutchens
Consistency. I mean, you gotta, you gotta push through and try to be consistent. Whether it’s with your cropping systems, your marketing plans, how you treat people, the growth of your business. You need to have some level of consistency. For me anyway, that is how I view it. I need to have some level of consistency and not try to get too high or too low emotionally. When you do win, don’t don’t think that you’re invincible. And when you lose, don’t think that you’re always going to be, you know, at the bottom of the barrel. Just know that you, be steady. You keep your head on your shoulders. You may continue to do your best to make good decisions. Surround yourself with a team of people. The right kind of people have a big network of people who are smarter than you, who are willing to work hard, who respect you, depend on that team. But be consistent. I think Warren Buffett would appreciate that part of it.
Carol McFarland
We’ll give him a call and let him know that translates.
Clay Hutchens
Okay. Okay. Fair enough, fair enough.
Carol McFarland
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Oh, it you know, I, I do think even you know, you’re talking about the lows. It seems like that’s its own form of hubris.
Clay Hutchens
I have a I do have a, a heart and a passion for farmers and what they’re trying to do, what we I mean, I say they I’m, I’m in I’m on the team. I’m on the team farm. But what they’re trying to do and the stakes that are out there, I mean, we’re trying to feed, feed the world with a lot of people. We’re trying to support our families, support our communities. And, I wish, I wish it felt like the general population understood a little bit more about the complexities, the risks, the challenges, the farming, because it’s it’s all too easy to to see a post on online or to to hear something in the news that the just can paint farmers in a way that comes off as pretty negative. And it’s a character flaw in myself, but I take that more personally than I should because I know what it’s like to actually have your skin in the game, to be doing it, to try to do it. And it hurts when the public or the news or something goes viral on social media that throws farmers under the bus and makes them less respected. And, you know, I think that one and two generations ago, I think farmers were ranked as I think farmers and teachers were ranked as school teachers. The two most respected professions in the world. And that’s changed some now. And that’s rough. That’s rough on me because there’s nobody I respect more than a farmer who’s trying to make work– even if I don’t farm the same way that he or she does. They’re taking their set of circumstances. They’re looking at their whole situation, they’re evaluating it. They’re making the best management decisions they can make for their situation, and they’re making it work. That’s something to be respected because it’s difficult.
Carol McFarland
Wdo you think are big threats to farming?
Clay Hutchens
The trend of farm size. You know, the trend for for generations has been farm size consolidating and farmers farming more acres than they used to if they want to maintain, if they want to maintain to be in, to continue to be in the industry, I’m no different. I see a lot of times that I’m part of the problem. If you if it is viewed that farm consolidation therefore meaning less farmers, because there’s only so much land if one farmer retired, excuse me, retired– if one farm retires and doesn’t have anybody that’s going to take up the the reins and carry on his or her farm, somebody is going to farm that land. And so that’s one less farmer. I’m part of the problem, if you want to look at it that way when I say that.I admit that I’m part of the problem because there’s been a couple of farmers that have retired and had nobody that was going to take it over for them in their family, and so I’ve been able to to increase my farm size by managing their land or their family’s land. And that’s been a benefit to my operation. But I’m also part of the problem because because they retired, they’re less farmers. I’m farming their ground, I got bigger. Does that make me bad? Because now I’m bigger than I used to be. It just makes me different. It makes me what I am. As far as farm size. I’m part of the problem, but I don’t know what the solution is. I don’t know that there really is a solution. The capital intensity of farming is extremely high. What it takes to have equipment and to pay for a labor force and to pay for seed, fuel, fertilizer, herbicide repairs, administrative to be able to to cover those costs. Insurance, taxes, regulation to be able to cover those things– rule of economics, you’ve got to have some sort of volume to be able to spread your costs over. Otherwise you just can’t continue to make it. And so unfortunately, that– well I guess I don’t know if it’s fortunate or unfortunate– some sort of growth is necessary. It doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be acres. It could be, could be in marketing and could be in how you market and whether you sell, sell your product for a higher price. That’s growth as well. But being in commodities, that’s an extremely, extremely tough road because the volumes that we produce are mind boggling. And so for me to, to sell, to sell wheat, for instance, you know, ten pounds at a time, that’s a whole other, a whole other quagmire. I mean, there’s just so much of it. I produce so many ten pound units of wheat that it’s crazy. I don’t think I’m bad because I produce a lot. I think it’s great that I produce a lot because I’m trying to produce an abundance of food. The world without an abundance of food becomes a less secure world. The world without a safe food supply. You know that’s not good either. If people, people need to have abundance and they need to have a safe food supply that they can depend on. If they don’t have that, then we’ve got problems. We can we, can bicker as a as a world over which farm production techniques are the best or second best or third best. But if people are hungry, all heck can break loose in the world. And so we’ve got to have a safe and abundant food supply otherwise, otherwise a lot of other stuff won’t matter. I firmly believe that. I don’t care if you’re an organic producer or a somebody who believes that you should only be eating vegetables, doesn’t believe that cattle should be, you know, people can believe that cattle there are harming the harming the world, or people that can believe that synthetic fertilizers are harming the world. We’re making conscious, educated decisions on how to make the best decisions for the big picture. And, and all of those different types of agriculture– organic, conventional, tillage, no tillage, livestock, biodynamics– all these different types of agriculture, we could we could start bickering amongst amongst each other and tear, tear the other guy down for your farming technique, your farming system is not as good as mine– however you define good. But that’s counterproductive to tear each other down because the ultimate goal is we need environmentally sustainable ways of producing food. And environmental sustainability varies by region. We need economically sustainable ways of producing food. And that varies by region. And we need safe and abundant food. We’ve got to support each other and recognize that it’s not going to look the same everywhere.
Carol McFarland
I’m so glad you shared a bit about the safe, abundant food supply. After sharing some emails with you and setting up this podcast, it was fun to see your email signature having that every time.
Clay Hutchens
Well, and and the reason I came up with that because and it’s been several years that I ago that I came up with that because it’s something that we can agree we should be able to agree upon as farmers, as ranchers, as people– as a population, somebody who’s never set foot on a farm hopefully will not argue with those words. Safe in abundance. Nothing is perfect. Absolutely nothing is. What I’m doing on my farm is not perfect. What somebody else is doing on their farm is not perfect. But that doesn’t mean it’s not really, really good. So I wanted something that people could see, maybe think about a little bit and agree to agree upon and don’t bicker over the little minor differences we could have. Let’s focus on something that we can all agree upon.
Carol McFarland
And I like that you acknowledge that there’s all these different ways of doing things, and in my mind, it’s all a piece of a puzzle. You know– I mean, obviously all the pieces of the puzzle are not the same, except for the really boring puzzles. I mean, puzzles have different pieces, and that’s what makes them work and fit together. I want to dig in a little bit more in some of your pro tips, like what are your barriers to trying new things on the farm?
Clay Hutchens
Well, we’ve we’ve touched on a barrier a little bit. Time has to be part of it. I’ve got– I’m really proud of the people that work with me on the farm. They’re great. They’re necessary, they’re committed. They do a great job. Whether they’re family or non-family. They have lives as well. And so their commitment level is what their commitment level can be. My commitment level is what my commitment level can be, which is pretty darn high. But time is a factor. That’s just that’s just the fact.I’m so fortunate with, with the wife and kids. I have, they should have the opportunity to see me sometimes. And they do. They do.
Carol McFarland
Do they have to go to the tractor to do it?
Clay Hutchens
At times. But my wife has pointed that out before, and she’s actually she goes, you know, you you work a ton, but she goes, at least I know that you’re within the region. So if I need to come see, at least I can come see in the field. It’s not like I’m an over-the-road trucker who’s, you know, gone for weeks at a time.She goes, at least you’re– I can find you, and so that’s that’s a good thing. So sometimes they do have to come, come find me in the tractor or the combine. You know, I’ve got a lot of community responsibilities that I’ve chosen to take on. Maybe I’ve taken on too many at times, but, but time is a big factor. Money is, of course, a big, big issue too, at times because it, because it does take a financial investment to try things. But I think time is the bigger one. There’s only so much time each year to implement some sort of an experiment. And, you know, another thing that goes right along with time is it’s we grow one crop, one crop cycle a year. Right. And so you do an experiment and it might be in the ground for eleven months. And then you take what you could learn for that eleven month period. You evaluate it against the best you can against the environmental conditions you had for that eleven months. And then you have to move on. Neighboring farmer who’s a generation older than me, or maybe a little more than just one generation, but he’s older than me. He said when he came back to the farm, he’s farming with his grandfather and he goes, grandpa, I’d like to I’d like to try this on the farm, and his grandpa kind of looked at him and said, that didn’t work. We tried that, that didn’t work. He paused and he goes, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try it again. And and that highlights the environment and the variability that we can have, because we can do one thing as a farmer one year and it doesn’t work, but that doesn’t mean we should never do it again, because a set of circumstances, set of variables that were dealt with again might make that might make that hit a home run. It might not, but that mindset, if we’ve tried something, but maybe we should try it again. Or maybe we shouldn’t be afraid to try it again. I think that’s a good lesson.
Carol McFarland
You did mention that you’ve got your family, and you may have said that you have a kid who also loves soil. Do you want to talk a little bit about, you know, any farm succession plans you might have in the works?
Clay Hutchens
Not in the imminent future, hopefully, but sure. Well, I’ve got two fantastic kids. I’ve got a son who’s sixteen and a daughter who’s eighteen, just turned eighteen, and they’re both rock stars. I don’t know whether they’ll have any desire to come back to the farm or what their role would be, for sure. But I know that they’re both really capable. They just are. They’re smart, they’re motivated, they’re hardworking, and of course, I would enjoy it if they enjoy knowing that they have a desire to, to be involved in the operation. And we’ve talked and and they know that I but I’ve tried to make it clear to them that if they choose to try to become involved in the operation as adults, that it doesn’t need to look the same way that I manage it. That would be a mistake for me to try to tell my kids, or whoever succeeds me that whatever they do has to look exactly how I’ve done it. Because I don’t– I’m not doing it exactly how my dad did it,and he didn’t do it exactly how his dad did it. If you put– if I put limits on my kids or on whoever– on on whoever succeeds me, if I put limits on it to them, I think that’s going to kill a lot of the joy for being able to do it. And like I said before, you’ve got to have, you’ve got to have enough enjoyment out of running the machine, so to speak. Running the farm operation machine, getting to be able to exercise your creativity and your problem solving skills. You’ve got to have some freedom to do that. Otherwise, I don’t think it’s going to have as much appeal. I don’t know, that’s kind of a way of saying that, yes, I’d love for my kids to be involved, but like my dad told me, if you don’t love it, it’s probably not the place for you, because it’s too hard to do if you don’t have some sort of drive and passion for it. Then it’s probably not your place because there’s too much tough stuff.
Carol McFarland
You definitely really have to want to be a farmer.
Clay Hutchens
You do. And because it’s too much investment, it’s too much time, it’s too much, too many challenges. You know, I’ll talk a little bit– my daughter ast year during harvest, she’s been involved in harvest several, several years now. But I told her I needed a truck driver, and we’re not driving small trucks anymore. I said, I think you can do it, but it’s going to take some time to learn. It’s going to be maybe hard to learn. So by the end of last time she was driving an eighteen-wheeler, she was sixteen, so she just turned eighteen. So she was sixteen last time, she was seventeen this harvest. So I think it’s pretty darn cool that my daughter, who is now a senior in high school, she’s got two summers under her belt of driving a semi truck. That’s probably a pretty small percentage of people that can say that.
Carol McFarland
no one has life skills like farm kids.
Clay Hutchens
Right. And my son spent a lot of time in the seat of a combine this year. Just being awesome and doing a great job. My niece and my nephew were awesome too. They’re both driving wagons during harvest. They’re super capable. Maybe, maybe they will have some interest in being part of it. I don’t want to close the door on anybody. Somebody that’s non-family, if the right person, you know, or right people. I want somebody that that carries on after me to get some of the same type of enjoyment I’ve gotten, that I’m getting out of it. I’ve been fortunate to have an opportunity. So far, I’ve been able to, by my definition, be able to have some success. Certainly not perfect, but I’d like to be able to pass that opportunity on to somebody else. But it’s not it’s, not going to just be given to anybody, because that also makes it not as valuable if it’s just given to you. And but, but the opportunity to provide somebody the opportunity to take it, and run with it, and make it their own, that’s what I’d like. I guess, it will be to be determined how it all pans out. But it’s a pretty cool occupation. It’s a little more than just an occupation, I think. But I’ve been really, really fortunate.
Carol McFarland
I think the Hutchens Family Farms really says a lot, because it sounds like your family really is all in.
Clay Hutchens
I would say that’s true. It’s– we’re all in
Carol McFarland
Awesome. Do you have any final thoughts for our listeners, from our Soil Health Producer of the year?
Clay Hutchens
I just– I think it takes a lot of people to to make a farm function and to function well. And I think to, for one entity or for one person to take credit for, that would be a little bit of a mistake. There’s a lot of people that deserve credit. The generations before me. The people that I’m currently working with. Extension. Researchers. Neighbors. There’s a lot of, there’s a lot of people involved in. And, that’s really important for the for the team to get credit and for everybody to feel like they were part of the team. They probably don’t always, but it’s bigger than just than just me as a farmer. It’s, it takes a lot of people to make the whole thing, whole thing run.
Carol McFarland
Well. Thank you so much, Clay, for giving some of your precious time toward this interview. And for having me out to the farm today.
Clay Hutchens
Well, thank you for visiting. And anytime somebody comes on the farm, I enjoy sharing a little bit of our story.
Carol McFarland
It’s really a privilege to be able to capture some of that for the podcast. Thank you.
Clay Hutchens
You’re welcome.