AgweekTV Full Show: Evolution Ag Summit, food insecurity, show goats

By AgweekTV

February 25, 2023 at 5:30 AM

This week on AgweekTV, we're talking carbon at the Evolution Ag Summit in Jamestown, North Dakota. We focus on the topic of food security and how it differs in rural versus urban settings. And our Agweek Livestock
Tour continues with a South Dakota show goat operation.

See more from AgweekTV

Welcome to agweek TV.
I'm Emily Beal.
This week, we're on location
at the evolution
AG Summit in Jamestown,
North Dakota.
It's put on by the North
Dakota Farmers
Union and centered around
carbon.
It focuses on how carbon
reduction initiatives
may shape agriculture
and food supply chains.
The event brought together
food and agribusiness people,
along with farmers and ranchers,
to further understand
the topic of carbon.

One of the headline speakers
at the event was Colin Beal.
Reporter Jenny Schlecht had
a chance to chat with them.
Thanks, Emily.
I'm here with Colin Beal.
He's an engineer
and cattle rancher from Wyoming.
He's also the CEO and founder
of Low Carbon Beef.
Yeah, so I started low carbon
beef as a way to add value to
producers
that are producing cattle
with reduced greenhouse gas
emissions, as well as provide
more information for consumers
that are concerned
about the environmental impact
of the beef
that they're purchasing.
So we are a certification
company and we certified cattle
that are raised with reduced
greenhouse gas emissions.
We were recently acquired
by Select Sires
and we'll be operating
under a new company
that's called Low Carbon
Technologies
and potentially expanding
into the dairy space as well.

So what are the some of the
things that you look at?

Yeah.
So we gather data
throughout the whole lifecycle.
So we use the
lifecycle assessment to quantify
the greenhouse gas emissions.
And so we start with source
and age verification
and we're really certifying
the animals,
we're not certifying
the raising locations.
And so, you know,
we need to trace the animals
all the way
back to the ranch of birth.
And then we gather information
about what we consider
the four FS.
So feed, fuel, fertilizer and
function or cattle performance.
So that's going to include
things like nitrogen
fertilizer use, feed efficiency
of the slaughtered calves
and feed efficiency
of the mama cows as well.

How many producers
you work with right now?

We've had quite a few
that have reached out
and we started enrolling
those cattle into the program.
We are looking for
more all the time
and including
finding some
that can participate
in the climate smart
commodities project.
So we're always,
always looking to add
more cattle to the inventory.

Colin Beal,
Thank you for joining us at the
Evolution AG Summit.

Thanks, Jenny.
Joining me now at the Evolution
AG Summit is Paul OVERBY.
So, Paul,
tell me about your operation.

Sure.
We farm up by Wolford, North
Dakota, and we've been farming
what's now called regenerativly
for about 15 years.
It started with no tilling
and nutrient management,
and then we added
cover crops into that along
with a diverse array
of different crops on 150 acres.
We'll be planting
eight different crops this year.
And all of that helps
to build soil health
and increase
the carbon in the soil.
My goal is to get our soil
organic matter
and our farm back into the six,
seven,
8% range that it would have been
when it was Native Prairie.
The thing that maybe
people don't understand is soil
organic matter is 50% soil
organic carbon.
So as you build soil
organic matter in the soils,
restoring it back to the
to the prairie state
as best as possible,
you're actually building
carbon in the soil, too.

Do you think more farmers are
starting to farm regenerative?

Yeah, it's easier now.
There's
a lot of interest in the space
there wasn't 15, 20 years ago.
And so I think for farmers,
between the equipment
and the education,
they have the tools now.
Now it's
maybe a change in mindset.
I think once you decide
you're going to do this,
then everything else will flow.
But it really is the the concept
of I'm going to change
from doing things this way
to doing things this way.
And that's that's a challenge.

Well, thank you so much
for your insight today. North
Dakota farmer Paul OVERBY

This month, Agweek has been
taking an in-depth
look at the farm bill.
And our cover story this week
focuses on food insecurity.
Hunger
isn't just an urban issue.
It's very much a rural issue.
According to a 2022 report
by Feeding America.
Counties with the highest
rate of food insecurity.
Are disproportionately rural and
a decrease in funding of SNAP.
And the next farm
bill will overwhelm already
overloaded food organizations.
Emergency SNAP benefits
put in place by
the federal government during
the pandemic will end in March,
and that will only make things
tougher.
It's why organizations
like the Great Plains
Food Bank, the only food bank in
North Dakota,
constantly advocates
for a new farm bill
that includes a strong
SNAP program.

Jared: If funding were cut
out of the program
or the program just went away,
those individuals
that rely on the program.
are going to need to seek food
assistance, other places.
And like the Great Plains
Food Bank, and
with our current demand,
you know, to see that escalates
even higher would be an increase
in demand that we would struggle
to be able to adapt to.
So we're always going
to advocate for, you know, a
strong farm bill
and a strong SNAP program
because of what it does to feed
those in need.

Last year in Minnesota, visits
to food shelves
went up by more than 50%.

Providing food aid
is one of the goals of the North
Harvest bean Growers
Association.
Beans are
a nutritionally dense product
that's high in fiber protein,
rich and very easy to transport,
which makes it great to ship
across the world
for those in need.
North Harvest bean growers
president Eric Samuelson
spoke about this
at a recent being day event.

Eric: There's always a need
for food aid around the world.
So I think we've we've grown
more focused on using
and developing a food aid
program here at North Harvest.
We're able to distribute our
our beans around the world.
So that's another use
of our products.

Convoy of Hope,
a faith based food organization
partnered with North Harvest
and Central Valley
Co-op in Buxton, North Dakota,
last fall to feed 60,000
bean based meals to the hungry
in Guatemala and Honduras.

Alyssa: Those beans came
from their growers
and we were able to send them
to Latin America.
Making the personal connections
and telling this story
is really what convoy's
about connecting people
to those most vulnerable
around the world.

Convoy of Hope
says it would love to partner
with more edible
bean dealers for food aid.
They provide
food aid to Central America,
Africa, Asia and Europe.

When Agweek
TV continues from the Evolution

Ag Summit, a former
South Dakota Ag official says
growing Animal Ag in North
Dakota
can work.

For home delivery of AG.
Log on to AGweek.com
or call 800 8112580.

This week our AgWeek Livestock
Tour takes us to East Central
South Dakota.
I visited Peterson Livestock
in Fedora where they're offering
more than just one type of show
Goat My mom.

Big fan of color.

For every regular goat
we buy that Dad and I want.
We have to buy a colored goat
to make mom happy.

Hannah Petersen
and her father, Robert, offer
both market weather and full
blood goat genetics
on their operation,
giving their customers
an array of options
to take into the show.
Ring their goat, operation
began around a decade ago
and includes about 100 Does
And they have big partnerships
with producers in Texas.
This helps them keep premium
genetics in their herd
despite their out of the way
location.

It's more of a rural place
and not so easily accessible
compared to like the other show
states like Indiana and Iowa
and down south.
So we kind of raise
as many good goats as we can,
naturally.

The Petersons are happy
with their last kidding season
and saying it was one of their
easiest to date.
All in all, they had about 100
kids hit the ground
and enjoy seeing their offspring
improve each season.

That's one thing
I like about the goats.
You can see
a definite improvement
in quality
as far as structure muscle.
Every year, I mean,
and from when we started to
now it's it's
amazing how they've changed.

Boer goats
originated in South Africa.
So the South Dakota winter takes
a toll on the Petersons herd.

They don't take the cold.
We've bred these goats
to be thin or hide it
so they just can't handle
the cold, like.
Like a full bloods.
I've noticed our full bloods
can handle the cold better
than those thin hided
skinny necked weather type.
And for being a newer species,
we've
really progressed them fast
and made them
really good quality, which
I find really interesting
and fun to see how.
See what we'll do next.

"Go in there elvis!"

Peterson
Livestock sells their stock
online, in person
and through private treaty.

If animal agriculture is going
to grow in North Dakota,
it'll likely be led
by the southeast corner
of the state due to proximity
meat processing opportunities.
That's according to a man
who helped promote Animal
AG in South Dakota a decade ago.
Nathan
Sanderson was a senior adviser
for the South
Dakota Governor's Office on AG
and the Environment
ten years ago
when the state saw
livestock numbers begin
to rebound
after decades of decline.
And he says the groundwork
was laid at the local level.

Nathan: I think we built
a good coalition
and we had a lot of different
people having a lot of coffee
table conversations.
I mean, when you're sitting
in somebody's kitchen and you're
talking about a livestock
development project,
that's a lot more personal
than some government bureaucrat,
you know,
coming to a meeting and saying,
this is good for you.
And so it was a lot of one
on one
interactions
that were necessary.
And I think we saw that
they were successful
in changing the narrative.

Sanderson told AgWeek
that North Dakota's laws
that prevent corporate
ownership of farmland doesn't
mean animal AG can't grow.

Nathan: I also don't think that it's
quite as large of a hindrance
as what
a lot of people would say,
simply
because you're going
to structure your operation
in a way
that's going to be best suited
for the laws that are available
to you locally.

This week, the North Dakota
House voted in favor of a bill
that would make it easier
for Animal AG to reverse decades
of declines with help
from outside investors.
The bill
now advances to the Senate.

There's a new pest soybean
farmers will need to start
keeping an eye out for.
At a recent soybean research
event, Minnesota Extension
educator Anthony Hanson
talked about the tens of one
leaf miner.
It causes white
beans and soybean leaves
that eventually become puffy
like a tent.
It's mostly known to be
in southern Minnesota,
but that could be deceiving
because it's so new.
They haven't even been
looking for it yet.
Another new but more familiar
pest is the soybean gall midge.
It's been mostly in southwest
Minnesota, but it's spreading.

Anthony: It is feeding on
the stem of the plant.
It is basically a orange maggot
you'll find if you peel back
the outer layer of the plant
a little bit.
But the problem is, is
that will girdle the whole plant
and you will get 100% yield
loss on your field edges
if you have heavy infestations
of this.

Scouting for
it can be a challenge
because the evidence
of the Midge will show up
at the base of the plant
and the adults are very tiny,
about the size of a gnat.

How can a
product called off of yield
improve your yield?
Find out as our show continues
from the Evolution
AG Summit.

Can we expect
these winter storms to last?
Here's our AgriWeather outlook.

Weather pattern now
with February turning to March.
Arctic air is really in retreat.
It's not going to be quite
as cold.
However, the Northern Plains
and much of the Great Lakes
still looking to stay
generally colder than average.
And we have a snow track weather
pattern looks to bring up
probably several chances
of additional snow

into the Northern Plains
and Great Lakes area

over the next couple of weeks.

And further south
and east on the central
and eastern parts of the Corn
Belt.
It looks rainy.
So it's a wet
start to the month of March
in most of the agricultural
areas of the central
and eastern United States
at the present time.
Jet Stream has a little bit
of a split over the Rockies,
which continues
the supply of cold air
throughout the Rocky Mountains
and down into the Southwest.
Turns out this is not
the greatest of seasons
to be visiting Arizona.
You'll get some beautiful days,
of course, but
it's not consistently
want South Florida's warmth.
South Texas is one.
Northern Plains,
the Great Lakes and Rockies
will remain relatively cold
and mostly below freezing.
You may get a few days where
it gets up to near freezing,
but this is not a warm weather
pattern.
This is a cold weather pattern.
Even though the subzero stuff,
at least the daytime
subzero stuff, has retreated.
There will be a bit of a cool
down into the Deep
South toward the end of the week
and into the weekend.
And as the month of March
really kicks in,
it will continue to be colder
than average and mostly colder
than 32 degrees
across the northern Rockies,
the northern plains
and the Great Lakes.
There will be intrusions of warm
air up into the lower
part of the Midwest.
And with this particular shape
of a weather pattern,
it does favor
precipitation systems,
which would likely
bring the chance for some rain.
And that's the forecast
this week.
There will be a chance,
looks like early in the week
and maybe a second
one of some light
freezing precipitation or snow.
Most likely this will end up
being snow for the most part.
But I put the pink in there
because I think
there might be some frozen stuff
a little further
south, a little bit of a rain,
snow mix through the Midwest.
And then a lot of this
is likely to be rain in places
like southern Illinois, southern
Indiana and southern Ohio.
The only certainly dry area
is going to be the Rio Grande
because the West Coast
will bring some snows down
into the Rockies
and a little chain of systems
moving from north to south
along the west coast will
continue to bring precipitation,
some of it
fairly heavy to the southwest
and the western states.
The last week of this forecast,
which is now full on March
weather,
I still think the pattern looks
pretty snowy
across the northern plains.
This might not be one
big storm,
but a sequence of lows
that would bring chances
for a measurable snow.
So an active weather pattern
moving into March
and that snow
will turn into a mixture or rain
as we get down into the lower
portions of the Midwest.
Either way,
it looks like a fairly wet
pattern, cold in the north
and a little warmer than average
in the southern parts
of the Corn Belt.

Joining me
now is Sevrin Anderson.
So sev, tell me a little bit
about your operation.

We farm up in North Dakota.
It's a family farm.
We have about 2500 acres
and we grow sugar
beets, wheat and soybeans.

And you guys use aqua
yield on your acres.
How did you learn about this
nano liquid technology?

After we tried, the Kelsey
and people from Eco suggested
we try some of
the other products.
And so the first year
we did a four or 40 acre plots
on a quarter of sugar beets
and we had such good results
that we ended up using it on
pretty much
every acre
we had within the next year.

And what rates do you apply
aqua yield on to your acres?

All the nano
products are four ounces.
They mix with anything.
You can mix it at any time.
I think we've tried
14 different combinations
and we've never had any issue
with volatility or mixing,
so that's been a key reason
why we've kept using it.

And how has this
nano liquid technology
changed your soil's health?

We've seen improvements
in all our crops.
The bottom line on it is that
it's not adding any salt to the
the soil,
which almost every fertilizer
facilitates in some aspects.

And what has your
return of investment
been like when you're
using aqua yield on your acres?
What was the Nano
when you're able
to increase the sugar content?

Sugar beets, you know,
that's what we get paid on.
So even adding a point
or a half a point in
sugar
makes a massive difference.
Soybeans being able
to lower soluble salts in there,
we've been able
to get a big increase in yields,
especially on flood ground
where we're by the river there.
And then the nano pro that helps
with the roundup
and efficiency of the roundup.
We've had good results on all
the crops of use it on so far.

And can you share which products
you use and what crops you.
Use those products. On?

So we use the Nano X,
which is in with our calcium
and our regular starter
in sugar beets.
And then throughout the year
in the spring roundup,
we use the nano pro to help
with the efficacy of that.
And later in the year
when we're doing the cost
spraying,
we are the Internet. Okay.
To help try and boost
the sugars a little bit
on the beans
we've been using the nano pack.
The Nano stress and the nano pro
with the roundup
there as well.
And then this is the first year
we're going to be trying
their nano or nano end product,
which is a nitrogen one.

So if you're talking to a fellow
farmer or friend,

is this nano liquid technology
something that you would
recommend to them?

Absolutely.
We've had a couple
of different neighbors
that are starting
to use the products now, too.
And I think it's it's
kind of the next wave and stuff
that farming's
always been on a cutting edge
on some of these things,
whether it's the GPUs
or any of these technologies.
Now, when we're getting into the
chemical
and the soil side of it,
this nano technology is
these guys have and able
to get it into the plant faster,
moving faster.
It's helping the plant grow
faster.
It's changing the soils faster.
This is kind of the next wave
I think
is going to be coming here.
And these guys are on
the leading edge of it for sure.

Well, thank you for joining
us, Sevrin Anderson.

To learn more about how Aqua
Yield works, contact Jim
Erickson at Eco at the number
or email on your screen.

Still ahead from the Evolution
AG Summit in Jamestown,
North Dakota,
the administrator of the FAA
gets a firsthand
look at Minnesota's tree
range farm.

The administrator for U.S.
Farm Service Agency recently
tours tree Range Farm's
prototype poultry production
site.
The 65 acre farm in southeast
Minnesota showcases
an economically viable farm
enterprise assembly,
which tree range farms
will seek to replicate
many hundreds of times
to build the regional
blueprints across the country.

Zach: It confirmed what I had known
about the work
that Ray and the team are doing.
It's a solution.
It's part of.
A grander solution
that we really.
Take a look at.
If we're going to.
Meaningfully.
Empower producers.
To impact.
For the better climate change.

Ducheneaux also toured Tree
Range Farms newest site,
a demonstration and training
farm is the first to be built
with full integration of the key
farm enterprise component.

Thanks for joining us this week
from the Evolution
AG Summit in Jamestown.
Remember to check us out daily
on Facebook,
Twitter, Instagram and TikTok.
Keep up on all your AG News.
Have a wonderful week, everyone.

AgweekTV Full Show: Evolution Ag Summit, food insecurity, show goats

This week on AgweekTV, we're at the Evolution Ag Summit in Jamestown, North Dakota. We focus on the topic of food security. And our Livestock Tour continues with a South Dakota show goat operation.