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Farmers sequestering carbon for better soil health

GOODHUE — Where do you keep your carbon?

If you're Jon Luhman, you're trying to sock some away in the ground. Preferably for a rainy day.

Luhman and his son, Jared Luhman, raise beef cows, black beans and corn, plus forage for the cattle — all of it organic — on a little more than 700 acres at Dry Creek Red Angus farm, northwest of Goodhue.

In the process, Luhman is putting carbon back into the soil, a process he said helps his farm in a multitude of ways.

"The number one reason is for fertility," he said. "Its a big benefit for production. It absorbs more moisture. So there's more water infiltration, more organic matter and less tillage."

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In fact, a pound of organic matter — which consists of 58 percent carbon — can hold as much as six pounds of water in the soil, according to University of Minnesota Extension. In sandy soil, organic matter and the water it holds can make the difference between a successful crop and crop failure in a dry year.

All of this, he said, leads to his motto: "Leave the soil in a better state than when we started."

Promoting benefits

That's the message Shona Snater said she hopes other farmers hear when they attend field days organized by the Land Stewardship Project. Snater, a member of the LSP's soil health team, said that while the benefits of adding carbon to the soil — essentially a form of carbon sequestration — has a positive effect in the battle against climate change, it is important to let farmers understand the economic and agricultural benefits of the practice.

"We want to promote the positive benefits," she said. "Maybe not just for climate change, but for their own profitability."

LSP recently developed a guide to soil health, water and climate change to help educate people on the need to put more carbon back into the soil. It's all part of the organization's soil health initiative, Snater said. That hope is to get the science out there for farmers and policy makers to understand.

"If you look historically, before tillage, the measurement of organic matter in those original prairies here was between 10 and 15 percent," Snater said. "Now, it's around 1 to 1.5 percent."

Bringing carbon back into the soil is where cover cropping comes in. One farmer near Spring Grove, she said, plants winter rye each fall, lets it germinate through the winter, then plants corn directly into those fields.

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"There's never a time when there's not something growing in his fields," she said.

Cows do the work

The result is more carbon in the form of plant matter working its way into the soil to become stabilized organic matter. Between cover crops and the carbon in the soil, farmers experience less soil erosion, more water held in the soil of the field, and more nutrients in the soil, she said. Farmers with more organic matter in their soil use less fertilizers, which saves money.

Luhman said he makes his cows do the work for him.

His organically raised cows are fed on grass, hay and sorghum. Luhman grows about 60-70 acres of sorghum annually. The plants grow until right before the seeds develop, he said, and the cattle are let loose to graze on the nutritious top two-thirds of the stalks as they trample the lower third of the plant into the ground.

"We do a planned grazing system using our perennial pastures," he said. While other farmers might let their herd in to graze when the plant is about 10 inches, he waits until the plant is closer to 25 inches tall. That means deeper roots and more energy put back into the soil through that deep root system.

After the sorghum has been grazed, Luhman said he and his son will plant the next crop.

"We'll no-till rye into it," he said. "Rye keeps the weeds out in spring."

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It's just a smarter way of managing the soil than allowing all that energy to die off and leave the system, he said.

"That's why we have so much flooding," he said. "The water doesn't absorb in. If you leave residue on the soil, it just looks more pours. We get better yields and our crops are more resilient."

In fact, everything Luhman grows is designed to be resilient, even the cattle. He sells his bulls through Pharo Cattle Company in Nebraska. "Our philosophy is to raise cattle that can survive on the environment you have," he said. "It's much easier when you raise cattle meant for your land."

Snater said it is farmers like Luhman who are helping spread the word at field days and other educational events. And based on attendance, the farmers are soaking up the soil health message.

"Each event we do is a huge outreach where farmers can learn from one another," she said.

828df8a9c8ec1fbaa0d0801a84b27a2f.jpg
Cattle graze in a field of sorghum on the farm owned by Jon Luhman and his son, Jared Luhman, on Oct. 17. The Luhmans use the cattle and sorghum as part of a soil health management process to build up the organic matter in their soil.

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