Fresh Growth
Fresh Growth
Westwind Farms and UC Davis: Using Almond Hulls and Shells to Build Organic Matter
In this episode, we talk with Kirk Pumphrey, owner of Westwind Farms in Woodland CA, and Sat Darshan Khalsa, Assistant Professional Researcher at the University of CA Davis about their work integrating almond shells and hulls as organic matter in orchards. As Kirk says, “it’s a learning experience for all of us.”
It’s a learning curve, but they are finding great success and working toward finding the sweet spot of applying not too much or too little in all different conditions. They’ve found that hulls’ and shells’ holding capacity of water is tremendous, but the application does make it hard for oxygen to travel to soil.
Sat Darshan Khalsa notes that the story often in the media is around how many resources it takes to produce one almond. But the full story is that to get that almond a shell, hull, and tree are produced. How do we better use all of these resources and return them to the orchard?
“Lots of this research is aligned with the Almond Board of California’s orchard goals, and we’re able to demonstrate we’re actually doing this, and this is the efficacy of doing so,” says Sat Darshan Khalsa.
Both Kirk and Sat Darshan Khalsa discuss being pro-active without having fear of testing new technologies and trials. Kirk’s philosophy is “let’s try it!”
“Working with soil and farming, you get to find out about real life and it teaches you patience. You have to observe,” says Kirk. And when Sat Darshan Khalsa is asked how to help farmers make changes, he notes “its about teaching courage. A lot of people have willingness to try something new; it’s about letting them know that there is support.”
Learn more about the Western SARE project.
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Thanks for listening to Fresh Growth! To learn more about Western SARE and sustainable agriculture, visit our website or find us:
Contact us at wsare@montana.edu
Steve:
Today's guests are Kirk Pumphrey, owner of Westwind Farms in Woodland, California, and Sat Darshan Khalsa, assistant professional researcher at the University of California Davis. Sat Darshan is leading a Western SARE project studying the use of almond shells and holes as organic matter, and Kirk is one of the farmer collaborators on the project. Gentlemen, thank you for talking with us today.
Sat and Kirk:
Thank you. Happy to be here.
Stacie:
Kirk, as a start, it would really help folks to be able to hear a description of your area in California. What is it like there?
Sat and Kirk:
So we're in in north of Sacramento in Yolo County and it's just 160 acres of almonds and really it was been a project for me to stay active a little bit later in life and from retiring early and being involved and wanted to get back into agriculture and and made the choice of almonds and because of also contacts that I had in the woodland Yolo County area it would keep an eye on me and not let me get off the rails, if you will. So it's been an effort. That was the impetus to get started. And then from that is certainly inviting and UC Davis Plant Science Department with Patrick Brown and all the involvement. And that's where certainly the meeting with SAT came about. So it's a learning experience for all of us.
Stacie:
What is your orchard like out there in Woodland? How large of an operation do you have? What's it like farming in Woodland, California?
Sat and Kirk:
So it's just 160 acres, you know, basically, you know, quarter section that is supplied by groundwater. We do have surface water available that is from Yolo Flood Control District, but we don't choose to use that. That's Clear Lake water. So groundwater has been plentiful. We're very, very fortunate. even in the height of the drought that we've just come off of, in the experience of that, that there's been sufficient groundwater and also in working with what Yellow Flood Control District is, you know, our aquifer is sustainable. It's the volume of permanent crops that are in the county right now, demand. So that's a big problem. you know, is a bit of good news, but we've all got to be conscious of keeping it that way. And so the rest, it's, you know, basically level, it's on level ground.
Steve:
Mm-hmm.
Sat and Kirk:
And certainly from the rains that we've just encountered, you know, we've been trying to be as proactive as possible in without fear of testing new technologies and trials, and which has been a big part of what we're doing. And even with the cover crop and all in place, which has been very helpful in the high rainfalls, we had absolutely no runoff issues at all. And we still, other than to irrigate, to put nutrients on, we have not started yet irrigation,
Steve:
Hmm.
Sat and Kirk:
because the ground's basically still saturated.
Steve:
Yeah, it's still wet, yeah.
Sat and Kirk:
Yeah, plenty of groundwater right now.
Steve:
So you talked about cover crops, but talk about what you've done since you've come to farming, working with UC Davis and other growers to do this right, if you will.
Sat and Kirk:
Well, there's an educational component to it, and it's testing. It's certainly taking that knowledge and not having fear of failure. It's been a big part of it is to try it. Let's try it. And I'm a huge advocate of that. And the age-old saying, you learn a lot more from failure than success,
Steve:
Mm-hmm.
Sat and Kirk:
which we've proven on many occasion. The big challenge that that we work on that's been ongoing for some period of time as Yolo County is ground zero for boron in the irrigation water. And we have diligently been working for the last six plus years on the removal of, or the management to an acceptable level of boron in the irrigation water where we extract it and then basically convert it to boric acid and potassium borate, which is a fertilizer that is sold back to the fertilizer industry. So that's been a big part of what we've been working on, is water. But with that, you know, in the drought you get hulls and shells with what SAT's been working on for some period of time. We've, you know, found great success. We've found the outer limits of when there's too much, and we're trying to find that sweet spot through all conditions. You know, we've drought and it is interesting that you find out what you think is, you know, because it's always been a drought. You also start to experience this year where you find out the saturation in the hulls and shells. Holding capacity for water is tremendous and the downside to that is you lose the ability for oxygen to move through the soil because you basically hold it in a point of It's a continual learning curve. And you've got to go through all of these situations in order to come up with what is the bullseye, if you will, what's perfect.
Steve:
Right. Right.
Stacie:
Maybe I can step back a little bit and explain what this project is. You mentioned the almond holes. Sat, how did that get started? Kirk, how did you get involved and what is it you're looking for in this work?
Sat and Kirk:
I think Kirk, you approached us, didn't you? I did. I did. I did. Well, there's a there's a gradient. I think if we step back and we think about resources in particular, you know, at times in media, it's often talked about how many resources, water, fertilizer, fuel, etc., that it takes to produce an almond, right? But what we don't actually say or Those that tell those stories aren't telling the full story of, well, you also produce a shell to get that almond. You also produce a hull to get that almond. You also produce a tree to get that almond. So those are all the parts of the orchard that are integral to actually delivering the almonds we have. So part of what we were looking at is how do we make better utilization of those resources? So typically, the hulls are used for animal feed. in the dairy industry. And the shells are often kind of a waste product. There's not a whole lot of uses for them. There are some, bedding, conversion to biochar, but in general there's quite a few shells and some holes, some fractions of qualities of holes that are not used as much as they could be used. So we were thinking about, well what happens if we actually return those to the orchard? And it's important to realize the regionality of that question, because if you're down south in Fresno, Bakersfield area, even down to Modesto in the San Joaquin Valley, there's lots of dairy farms. So often the holes in the shells actually
Steve:
Mm-hmm.
Sat and Kirk:
can find the home pretty easily. But those growers can also utilize composts and dairy manure composts. But as you move north of Sacramento, there's far fewer dairy farms. It's harder actually to get organic matter. So, and there's kind of a cost differential that the handlers have to overcome to transport those holes and shells to where they are typically going, which is dairy operations or other animal operations. So we thought, well, let's utilize those resources in the orchard where they came from. So in partnership with a supplier who was really interested in getting, finding a home for those materials. This Mariani Nut Company in Winters, California, we partnered and Kirk was very keen on trying the practice out and we were looking for a home to set up this research trial and that's really how it came to be.
Steve:
How are they incorporated into the orchard?
Sat and Kirk:
So most of the organic matter applied in orchards is surface applied and then sits on the surface of the soil as a mulch. So because tree crops in general benefit from not being no till already. So a lot of, I suspect, SARE and other funded projects for annual crops look at conservation tillage and the like, but in tree crops, we're already in a conservation tillage, no tillage situation. So those materials have to be applied on the surface of the soil as a mulch and that's often, if never, incorporated into the soil. And if they are, it's going to be during a replant, which is going to be up to 20 years before that can actually happen.
Steve:
No.
Stacie:
How many other farmers are involved in the project?
Sat and Kirk:
Yeah, so we, in this Western SARE project, we partnered with two other farmers. One is Bullseye's Farm, which is also located in Yolo County. And then we were also working with a group that's in Tracy, that is also, they're larger and they actually are a grower and a huller-sheller. So they kind of had opportunities to... get rid of their materials, but because they were so, they were also processing it themselves, they had already been thinking about taking their shells and some of the holes and putting it back in the orchard. So we also tried it on their farm as well.
Steve:
Mm-hmm. What time of year are these, is the mulch put down?
Sat and Kirk:
Yeah, so timing of the year is typically after harvest and before rain.
Steve:
Yeah.
Sat and Kirk:
So it's always kind of in this period of like late September, early October. After the early and the late varieties of almonds are harvested, the ground is ready to be amended and then kind of the amendments happen before then. And then we move through the winter time to now spring where you can kind of see some of the amendments that are still there, those that haven't decomposed yet.
Stacie:
And since the orchards are in different places, are you seeing different results? I mean, you said one was in Tracy, Kirk's is in Woodland. Are there different results geographically like that?
Sat and Kirk:
Yeah, so actually a lot of the soils that we used were kind of similar, but on the different farms, we tried different combinations of practices with the holes and shells. So for example, in Tracy with Crown Nut Company, what we did is we tried just shells, a combination of holes and shells, and then just holes, right? Holes and shells have sort of different nutrient profiles. They have different ratios of carbon and nitrogen. So we tried those out. in the Crown Nut Company, which actually started a year prior to working here at Westwind, we found out that actually all three of the treatments had the benefit of decomposing well and returning potassium to the soil. But because dairy operators are willing to pay quite a bit more for the prime whole, that's the 100% whole product, it didn't make sense to apply that to the orchard, right? Because Crown Nut Company is going to lose money from that. But it was the combination of hull and shell, which was high in shell, about 80% and then 20% hulls, which happens during the processing. It's not like there's a nut that has a lot of shell and less hull, it's just in the processing how it sort of gets mixed together and sorted. We found out that that product had really good potassium decomposition and release, but then it did not fetch a very good price for Crown Nut Company on the market. So then they said, oh, that product actually would be a good product for us to apply back to the orchard.
Steve:
Mm-hmm.
Sat and Kirk:
So we didn't do an economic analysis. We were just working with the treatments and looking for that economic rationale. And then with that treatment, we then worked with Kirk to then apply that. So we used the results for another to then apply it in this other region.
Steve:
And what have you seen on your orchard Kirk with the treatment?
Sat and Kirk:
So we've experimented with volumes on the tree row itself and have settled between three and four ton to the acre. Seems to be right now in the sweet spot, we've gone all the way up to eight, we've gone to 10. I can tell you when you get up to eight and above, you gotta be very, very careful of creating an anaerobic situation, basically starving for oxygen. And... So we think that the three to four is probably what we're going to settle into is, is, and what we've also noticed is about the breakdown of what you apply this year. There's about a 20% residual after the course of one year. And so we see, you know, every year we think we're going to gain that 20%. So, you know, five years down the road of this, uh, the question will be, do you, do we apply it again or do we have enough? and you skip a year.
Steve:
Mm-hmm.
Sat and Kirk:
So that's yet to be determined. We've learned that as you put it on, you know, in that September, October timeframe, you're still irrigating because of this material is incredibly dry. That when you're still irrigating during that period of time, that you need to increase your irrigation.
Steve:
The amount of water, yeah.
Sat and Kirk:
Yes. to saturate it to get then the water to pass through it. So it's a short-term event. You just have to be aware of it. And certainly with all the monitoring of what's available in the marketplace today with trees, you get a good sense really quick of what, you know, if the trees are stressed, you can add a little bit more and then you finally get the breakthrough and then it stabilizes and it's good to go from that point on.
Steve:
It's like filling up a sponge.
Sat and Kirk:
Yeah, exactly. It's great. Would it make sense? Yeah. Would you think Kirk, a good recommendation for other farmers would be try to apply the hole and shell as late as possible before rain so that you can still get your post-harvest irrigations down, especially if you're low on water resources, and then put your hole and shell down after the tree demands for water goes down? Yeah, I would agree with that 100%. And then the rains will sort of pick up the sponge, which you kind of want that rainwater to get soaked up anyway. Yeah, and you know, as light as the material is, a lot of, you know, we are also concerned, you know, Yellow County gets some pretty good winds and it's going to move. Are we going to, you know, blow most of the material into the ditches at the end? And we've not found that at all. Once it's down, it's down. And when it's applied, it's applied only to the tree row, not to the centers between the trees.
Steve:
Okay.
Sat and Kirk:
So that, and if you think about it, you know, in... until such time as we have off-ground harvest and you still have sweepers and blowers, what happens is after harvest those berms get blown off so that you can collect all the nuts into windrows. So you've moved that material, the residual material, to the centers and then that, actually the size of it is great because it falls right through the chains of the harvester when the nuts and it falls back down on the ground.
Steve:
Uh huh.
Sat and Kirk:
You know, you run equipment over it and spread it out and now you've got that material in the centers and then you start building it back up on the tree row.
Steve:
on the tree
Sat and Kirk:
In our case, yeah, we've been fortunate enough
Steve:
roof.
Sat and Kirk:
to have off-ground harvest and where we're not disturbing the tree row and then that's where we're continuing to see that buildup of 20% a year.
Steve:
Okay. I was
Sat and Kirk:
All right.
Steve:
going to ask if this all got picked up during harvest because it seemed like it would, but
Sat and Kirk:
It does not fall right through the chains.
Steve:
it doesn't. It falls through.
Sat and Kirk:
Yeah, great size.
Steve:
Yeah.
Sat and Kirk:
And I'll back up just a little bit. When in using compost and in the supplier compost, a lot of it was coming, the base material was coming from the Bay Area, from the green waste and all. What we found on a lot of the compost that we were buying, It's unfortunate, but batteries, especially hearing aid batteries, get through the shakers when they're sifting the material. And the nice part is, is we don't have that issue with hull and shell. Because you walk through the orchard, it's been interesting.
Steve:
I wouldn't have thought that, yeah.
Sat and Kirk:
You see AAA batteries and hearing aid batteries. And glass.
Stacie:
Hmph.
Sat and Kirk:
And glass, you know, that's been broken. Yeah.
Steve:
Yeah.
Sat and Kirk:
And you kind of, where did that come from? And, uh... Well, that was from the consumer who was green that threw their glass bottle into the green bin. Yes, exactly.
Stacie:
Right, right.
Steve:
Is there an economic difference?
Sat and Kirk:
They can separate metal easily through a magnet, but they can't separate glass, especially when it breaks.
Steve:
Yeah, right.
Sat and Kirk:
Yeah, so anyway, that's with the hulls and shells. And when we also started, it was interesting that PG&E had the biomass. contracts with the plants to make electricity. And then most of that went away. And that's where
Steve:
Mm-hmm.
Sat and Kirk:
Marianne's and others, they had this abundance of material. And they said, if we can't get rid of this, we're just going to take it to a landfill. And you've got the expense. So it was you kind
Steve:
Right.
Sat and Kirk:
of step back and go, you know, kind of what was Mother Nature going to do here? Or what would she have done, which it would have been underneath the tree. So it's pretty, it's, it's pretty intuitive in that sense. So Kirk also mentioned the harvest, and that's something that was unique to his field site. So we had different treatments. One of them was just unamended on ground harvesting, which is the conventional almond of shaking and sweeping and picking up the almonds, right? So you can imagine to do that efficiently at the end of a season where it's been hot and dry, that that's gonna require a very... uniform and flat surface often bear of any vegetation to do that efficiently. And that's certainly how almonds have been able to grow in California is through mechanization. Right? You can have large amounts of production and it's mainly machines that are doing most of the work. Right? It's not hand labor, for example, which would constrain growth, I would say, of any crop. But what we did here is we amended And we also had another treatment where we did that same type of harvest, right? And Kirk's point, about 80% of it breaks down, 20% stays, but then it sort of moved off the berm into the alley. It doesn't got picked up here. Actually, in the other site, they did pick up some of it, but it depended on the particle size, right? So there's these little nuances of like, you might just pick it up again. But what we try with an off-ground harvester, which is a machine that comes to the tree, shakes the trees and catches the nuts, and then lays them in the in row. This is done in other crops like pistachios and prunes, but not so much in almonds. What we were able to demonstrate there is that the whole and shell 20% residual stays in place. And then we amend on top of that, and 80% of that breaks down, and that stays in place. So then we start to have sort of unique conditions where we're building up mulch layers from not disturbing the soil. And I would venture to say that I'm sure other growers are doing some innovative stuff like that, but to have a side by side comparison of that, I would suspect that Westman Farm is probably the only place that I can think of that actually has demonstrated that. And we're routinely doing research projects to look at the efficacy of that type of approach. Because the off-ground harvester has a lot of other benefits, food safety, reducing dust,
Steve:
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Sat and Kirk:
not tearing up the irrigation system during harvest, et cetera, but using it as an enabler health and soil to build up over time through its organic matter. That's not something people think about when they're thinking about off-ground harvest.
Steve:
Ugh.
Sat and Kirk:
And that's what we wanted to demonstrate with this research is, hey, that's actually something that we could identify as a potential benefit and then be able to have a side-by-side comparison to show.
Stacie:
And with demonstrating, have you had field days or other people in the industry show an interest in what's going on? Do you think that there'll be some adoption of this? And if so, what would like the implications for the almond industry look like?
Sat and Kirk:
Yeah, I would say we've already had a field day for farmers. That was a couple of weeks ago. We've done some different types of interviews at the Almond Board Conference, where we interviewed people about the practice and kind of got their sense of what was going on. We've also brought out other industrial partners that were just interested in regenerative ag and different types of practices as well, and said, hey, have you thought about off-ground harvesting? Have you thought about amendments, that kind of thing? And we've had good experiences with that as well. So in general, I think there's some opportunities. I think the off-ground harvesting is gonna be faced with challenges because it's of timing, how long, it takes longer to harvest. During that harvest period, you gotta go fast. You gotta shake the nuts at the right time, get them off the tree. And there's also the amortization of equipment, right? People aren't gonna invest in equipment and then buy new equipment next year. They gotta wait to depreciate that
Steve:
Right.
Sat and Kirk:
and invest in new equipment. But we're seeing some changes and I think a lot of the research we're doing is aligned with some of the Almond Board of California orchard goals. And I think we're being able to demonstrate that, hey, we're actually doing this and this is the efficacy of doing so. But I want to return briefly back to the hulls and shells because we're really doing it. We were trying to demonstrate that it's for potassium. So the two biggest inputs of any almond grower are going to be nitrogen and potassium. Nitrogen gets a lot of press, so to speak. for as an environmental issues associated with it and price fluctuations. But potassium actually costs more and growers of almonds can use more potassium to maintain a healthy orchard than nitrogen. But the vast majority of that potassium is going into the hole in the shell. So what we're trying to demonstrate is you can actually use the hole and shell to release that potassium and then not rely so much on non-renewable sources of fertilizer. We still need those fertilizers
Steve:
Mm-hmm.
Sat and Kirk:
to maintain nutritious orchards. orchards with high productivity and with adequate nutrition, so we can have our nutritious products. But in using the hole and shell over recycling in the orchard, we're kind of decreasing that reliance a little bit. And we were very quickly able to show that there's potassium in these materials and it relaces pretty effectively.
Steve:
Is there a quantifiable reduction in other inputs as a result? Have you done that math
Sat and Kirk:
I mean, we haven't done the trial side by side to do that, but we have quantifiable,
Steve:
yet?
Sat and Kirk:
this is how much we applied, this is how much was built up in the soil, this is how much went into the tree. So I think through that evidence base, we don't necessarily have to do a trial to demonstrate that, Steve. I would just say, look, it's working. And then growers can say, oh, okay, I'll try that. And maybe I'll cut the budget for potassium, like the input budget from that by a little bit and chances are you're going to be safe. And growers are taught to measure their leaf levels. take other measurements to make sure everything's looking good. So I wouldn't say that we have like quantifiable like do this you're going to get this much, but I think growers or farmers are smart enough to look at one and two and say oh okay this is something I can give a try. I think that the release of the potassium, we were surprised, all of us were surprised, of how quickly it happens that it leaches out of the hull in a very short period of time. Yeah. And I mean, the basis for that is typically in organic materials, nitrogen and phosphorus are tied up in organic material. So it takes time to decompose and mineralize. Potassium is already in a mineral form within organic materials. It's an electrolyte, right? So as long as any microorganism is decomposing whole and shell, potassium just rushes right out and just goes right in.
Steve:
It just gets released, yeah.
Sat and Kirk:
It just gets released into the soil, which makes potassium, we talk about MPK, But actually, K is very different than N and P.
Steve:
Mm-hmm.
Sat and Kirk:
In California, almonds, P is not that much of an issue because of the geological age of the soils. There's still new soils. So there's pretty different phosphorus fertility. And the pH is not acidic enough to make phosphorus unavailable. So, but typically it's nitrogen and potassium. But organic sources of nitrogen, it's all microbially mediated. It takes time to break down, et cetera, et cetera. Potassium decomposition. It released. It's very quick.
Steve:
interesting.
Sat and Kirk:
The other piece too is the organic matter side of it, of the shell itself, is you know ends up in the centers and ultimately gets worked into the ground and where on some of the class two soils where we would see certainly as it dried out throughout the season and cracking it has reduced that, it's consistently gotten better. over the last number of years. And we really think that that has to do with the, just, well, statistically, it also from soil tests, it's telling us that the organic matter is increasing.
Steve:
Mm-hmm.
Sat and Kirk:
What issue does cracking create for you as a grower? Well, for us, it's, I mean, the cracks, initially, they were big enough that, you know, you're putting the crop in a windrow in the centers. and you've got these massive cracks and yeah, we're feeding mother earth.
Steve:
Right. Your crop.
Sat and Kirk:
Yeah, and you can't pick it up. It just gets stuck in the cracks. It's just gone.
Steve:
Right. Yeah.
Sat and Kirk:
So we have been able to see the significant difference there. And I also think, you know, as we all know through the increase in organic matter, the increase in the holding capacity of the soil for moisture. which is what probably right now we are experiencing because of the hulls and shells and the volume of rainfall. You know, in irrigation, we didn't even think about it this year because you tend to do what you've done in the past. And we, you know, we had to keep looking at the trees, going, wait a minute, this doesn't look right. And then all of a sudden you go and just peel back with your foot, not with a tool, just with your foot. And the ground is absolutely saturated. in that holding capacity. We've made a tremendous change there. And so we, other than just getting nutrients on, we haven't really irrigated. So Kirk, if you could have predicted the rain this winter, you probably have another job, but. Yeah.
Steve:
Hahaha!
Sat and Kirk:
But if you could do that, would you have applied less holes and shells? Would you have not applied any at all? How would you have done? I've done the same thing. You've done the same thing? Same thing, absolutely. I've done the same thing. Yep. I don't think we'll get the f-
Steve:
What rate did you apply last year?
Sat and Kirk:
We, uh, overall, uh, outside of the trial area was, uh, three tons.
Steve:
Uh-huh. Okay.
Sat and Kirk:
Yeah. And in the trial area, it was basically somewhere between four to eight. Yeah.
Steve:
Okay.
Sat and Kirk:
And was that three tons concentrated on the berm or you did three turns that was distributed across the orchard floor? That is three tons on the tree row itself, which basically, when we talk about the tree row, it's four feet on either side of the tree. Yeah.
Steve:
So when we started this conversation, Kirk, you said you had gotten into farming not too long ago. Talk a little
Sat and Kirk:
Correct.
Steve:
bit about that, because there's a lot to learn quickly, it seems.
Sat and Kirk:
Yeah, yeah, that's an understatement.
Steve:
Hahaha
Sat and Kirk:
Yeah, how to take a fortune and make it a small fortune.
Steve:
Yeah, sped down to it, yeah.
Sat and Kirk:
Yeah, exactly. It's of retiring young, there is something I'll tell you that's intrinsic that is in agriculture and problem solving. And that's what's been the most, it's exciting and about this is solving real issues, which we've, I've always been told by others, I've always had kind of a solution brain, and that's what's exciting to me. And working with the soil and farming, I mean, you get to find out about real life. And it also teaches you patience.
Steve:
Thank
Sat and Kirk:
You can't speed this process up.
Steve:
you. Bye.
Sat and Kirk:
You've got to observe. And I don't want to mention that I walked down a tree row and you're talking to the trees and hopefully they're talking back to you, but it does get to that point. So, and that's again, the introduction and reaching out to UC Davis, who better to go to? I mean, every magazine you pick up the top ag school in the country is UC Davis. And it's been that way for years. So just 12 miles away, what an opportunity. and let's learn together. And instead of, you know, trying to learn from your neighbor, let's get them involved and try. And I've also, the other part of it, and I encourage all growers of working with young people that are dedicating their lives to learning and understanding this and to our benefit. Our benefit as an individual farmer, but our benefit is to us in society. And why wouldn't you take advantage of that?
Stacie:
So that's a really good piece of advice for a younger beginning farmer is to reach out and not to work alone. As somebody who came in as a second career, but with a real steep learning curve, what other advice would you give to people who are just starting out? And I'm particularly interested in how much you focus on innovation and creativity on your farm as well.
Sat and Kirk:
I, you're challenged with finding the truth and the truth is not always in a coffee shop. And it is, it's a big piece of the puzzle and that takes time. And it's, it's, it's like anything that we do of, you know, of putting energy in to, you know, creating those, those go-tos of talent is, is. That's again, that's why I went right immediately to UCD is that's where the talent is. And, uh, um, I, and I, I see it in ag quite a bit, you know, I do this because that's what I've done.
Steve:
Mm-hmm.
Sat and Kirk:
And until such time is I, I see my neighbor doing something that is successful. Then I may adapt to that change. uh, being older, I don't have the luxury of time personally. So consequently, you've got to get the best information as fast as you possibly can to make this work. And, you know, in the ground today, you know, most of the best ground out there is been in families for years. And so we're, many of us that get into it later and buy in ground, it's, it's, it's, you know, class two soils, not class one. So it's got greater challenges. It's learning to work with that in trying to make that. You can change soil over the long term. And that's again, but you've got to make the right decisions quickly because it takes a lot of time to make that happen.
Steve:
Mm-hmm.
Stacie:
What about, uh, what do you s-
Steve:
What's your, what's, I'm sorry, Stacey, what's your thought about that? I mean, you work with different growers. how do you break or help, you know, growers change the, well, I've always done it this way mindset, or, well, this is what everybody around me is doing and I'll stand out if I do it differently.
Sat and Kirk:
You have to teach courage. It's that simple, right?
Steve:
Mm-hmm.
Sat and Kirk:
You can only do so much information. I can tell you a hundred reasons why, but if the 101st reason isn't gonna make you take that bold step and be courageous to try something different, then that's a different discussion. It's not about the science anymore. It's about a mentality. But I do think that a lot of people have that willingness to try something new. And it's letting them know that there's support and there's ways that you can be coached through showing that courage and try something small and then go bigger or smaller as you go or try something new. So it's it is more of a mindset than it is necessarily the science needs to prove more of one thing or another.
Steve:
This is where I kind of like Western SARE grants too, because they do let you try something and give some financial offset to the risk. So you can, a farmer rancher grant, you can try something in a section of your orchard or your farm, or a professional producer grant, and see that it's gonna work or not.
Sat and Kirk:
Stacey, did you have a follow-up question?
Stacie:
Actually Steve asked the question I was going to ask you, so I appreciate that. Definitely about from your perspective working with growers and how to make change. It definitely seems like you need the science behind it, but the courage. I like that remark that you made about it takes courage. That's number one.
Sat and Kirk:
Yes, Stacey, it is a good question. I'm glad that you were thinking of it as well. But I think it's by extension, I've talked to some farmers and we talk about this practice or that practice and well, there's the cost. I don't know if I'm going to get paid more for that. And I said, well, just put price aside for a moment, the cost of the price aside for a moment. Are there other reasons why you would try something different? And I've had growers say, I just... don't want people to think that farmers are bad people. I wanna do what's good for the environment. This is where I live. I think it's important that my farm is sustainable because I'd really love it if my nephew, my niece, or my daughter would start farming after I'm done farming and take up the farm. So there's a lot. And if we think of our own behavior, there's not only economics that make our decisions, right? We don't typically only take the job because of the salary. We take it because of what we're gonna learn, the purpose behind what we do, how we're able to spend our quality time. So, and you know, like humans, we're not purely rational economic decision makers and farmers are no different. So I think we need to bring that appreciation of who people are and what they want to feel purposeful in their lives and extend that to people within agriculture so that those farmers can then have that opportunity to really step up. and communicate their stories, because I think these are stories that people honestly really want to hear.
Stacie:
Actually, one of the purposes of our podcast is exactly that. We're hoping that some of our audience, our people who look at agriculture, maybe don't completely understand it and do have concerns. And we wanna tell the stories from the farmers and ranchers who really are, like you said, people want to farm a ranch sustainably and they care about the land. And that... That was one of the purposes of this podcast is to tell those stories for sure.
Sat and Kirk:
Yeah, and look, since before I was born, the model was have fewer people do the farming so that they can move into other industries and grow the economy. So I would say that it's kind of not fair to put it on farmers when they're only a tiny percentage of the population, right? That's the old mindset. I'd say the new mindset is, can you who has never grown up on a farm be a part of agriculture? I didn't grow up on a farm. I feel like I'm a part of agriculture. Is there a way that people that are in technology, in other areas that could really support agriculture, be a part of agriculture or see it as another industry that they could have influence over? And I think that is probably the best opportunity for anyone beyond just thinking about consumers only and what consumers want, because I'm a fickle consumer too. Like sometimes I want something, sometimes I'll pay, sometimes I won't. But are there ways to get youth... that are in the space of innovation and technology, thinking about agriculture as an opportunity for them to have purposefulness in their lives, for their work, right? Because agriculture connects to nutrition, connects to climate, connects to the environment, food, livelihoods, communities, and all these things that we think are very important and purposeful that we wanna have impacts on, it's actually all in agriculture. The problem is a lot of people don't see themselves in that because they never grew up on a farm or they didn't grow up around agriculture.
Steve:
Mm-hmm.
Sat and Kirk:
So they don't see that. But I would say there's actually a lot of opportunities for people to work in agriculture. They just need more people raising their hands and asking for help. And I think Kirk is a perfect example of someone said, hey, I wanna learn and I need help. And I think that is what the foundation of real courage is, is being able to look at yourself and say, hey, I wanna grow and I need some help to get to where I wanna go.
Steve:
Yeah, Kirk, did you see yourself
Stacie:
Good.
Steve:
in that answer as he was talking about somebody not in agriculture who got into it and why? For what reasons were you drawn?
Sat and Kirk:
I would agree with that. It was the ultimate challenge. And to keep one's mind very active. And the unknown is intriguing in a lot of ways, scary as hell a lot of times, but being able to step across that threshold and ask those questions, the difficult questions. And I see... in agriculture a huge opportunity for communication. Ag tends to advertise always to ag and as Stacey has stated, it's outside of ag is who we need to be communicating with. I see young people today are more attuned to nutrition than certainly myself growing up ever. And so, Consequently, I see that as a massive opportunity for change. They want the information. It's our responsibility to get it, and also to share with them what it takes to grow a crop, all the steps. And at the same time, I would add to that, that a lot of decisions that I'm learning are made at the political level with incredibly small amounts of knowledge. that affect us in Ag, because you don't have hardly anybody that I haven't had one political type reach out here to have a conversation or to come here and learn and understand what we're trying to do and how we're doing it. And I think all of those areas of communication are huge opportunities for us to spread that word. Because Ag tends not to communicate. We know how to work really hard. and to put in that effort every day, but to get that message beyond AIG, it needs to get out to the public in total.
Stacie:
Exactly. Well, I really appreciate both of you taking the time. This is one way we're going to get the message out to people when we get this podcast out there. Really appreciate all the details of the research, but also stepping back and talking about how researchers, extension farmers can all work together and the importance of communicating our message to outside of ag. So thank you for your time. Appreciate that.
Sat and Kirk:
Great. Thank you. Our pleasure.
