Soil Health Labs

What’s the soil food web got to do with it? This is a special podcast to prepare our audience for the upcoming Climate Smart Agriculture enhancements to the EQIP and CSP programs, amongst others. In our previous podcast recorded in November 2022, we spoke to South Dakota NRCS’s Jessica Michalski and Kent Vlieger about some of the programmatic and practical aspects of the Climate Smart initiative,...

Get Ready to take Advantage of the Climate-Smart Practice Incentives. In this special podcast episode, we get together with the South Dakota NRCS’s Jessica Michalski and Kent Vlieger to discuss what the upcoming climate smart agriculture and forestry package looks like, what we know, and as of December 2022, what we also don’t yet know. NRCS uses conservation practices to do business with their fa...

“.. everything works together. The more diverse a pasture or grassland is, the healthier it is, the more resilient it is to any disturbance that comes at it. So, if we can have that diversity it’s going to reduce the inputs needed and the landscape can be more resilient as well”. - Emily Helms USDA-NRCS’s State Rangeland Management Specialist in South Dakota. If you find yourself in a meeting or i...

It is a rare pleasure to speak with a person of consequence and have their undivided attention for an hour. Ray Archuleta, who needs little introduction, has been a person of consequence in the lives of Buz Kloot (Soil Health Labs at the University of South Carolina) and Tanse Herrmann, NRCS Grazing Lands Soil Health Specialist working out of Rapid City, South Dakota. In this podcast, Buz and Tans...

In this, our second chat with Bart Carmichael, rancher out of Faith SD, we quizzed Bart on his approach to year-round grazing where Bart walks us through why he aims to graze year-round, what he does to make this possible and what benefits he sees from this practice. Given the dry conditions experienced at the time of the podcast, the conversation also turned to drought; Bart is always planning fo...

We’re excited to introduce our good friend, Shannon Kulseth-Iverson. Shannon is a native of North Dakota and ranches with her husband, Eric Iverson and her three teenage children out of White River, SD. We caught up with Shannon (yes, she is always on the move) and talked about ranching, native range restoration, and her work as a consulting biologist. Shannon is passionate about rangeland and the...

Dr. Shaun Grassel is a wildlife biologist who works out on the Lower Brule Indian Reservation’s headquarters for the tribe’s Department of Wildlife, Fish and Recreation.  In addition, Shaun has recently taken a more active role in managing his family land in Lower Brule. In this episode, we discuss Dr. Grassel’s work with prairie dogs and the re-introduction of the black footed ferret, the natural...

In the last seven years, the name of Joe Dickie has become more and more synonymous with high quality video that highlights outstanding farmers and ranchers in South Dakota. Many in the South Dakota agricultural community know and trust Joe, but he is a busy man and doesn’t always get to share his whole story. Since Joe works with us at the Soil Health Labs on the SD Growing Resilience Project, we...

In this second of two podcasts with Tanse Herrmann, State Grazinglands Soil Health Specialist in South Dakota, we discuss a number of topics including: How can rangeland managers think about soil health principles as applied to rangeland and not just cropland? What makes adaptive grazing managers so successful, what is their secret? What goes on in the soil-plant-animal ecosystem and how can we us...

We caught up with Tanse Hermann, NRCS’s newly appointed State Grazinglands Soil Health Specialist in South Dakota; to our knowledge, this is the first appointment of its kind in the country, and we were thrilled to talk with Tanse. Before we dive into the subjects at hand, Tanse, a man whose love for the FFA, horses, rodeo and livestock, first walks us through his own background; you’ll find that...

In this second of two chats with rancher, Pat Guptill (Quinn, SD), we discuss how he can graze his livestock year-round and (to us, at least) the surprising link between year-round grazing and calving on grass (so when you see fawns out on the prairie, that’s the time to calve in your area). Pat’s basic philosophy on year-round grazing and calving on grass is “we can’t make our calves worth more,...

We catch up with Pat Guptill, rancher from Quinn, SD, Pat grazes his base herd year-round and when he has enough grass in the summer, will take on additional stockers. Pat discusses his basic operating philosophy and business model, he shares with us the number 1 thing he attends to: spoiler alert, these are livestock but not cows! Pat rotates almost daily using high stocking densities and he prov...

In this podcast, we talk with Miranda Meehan, NDSU Extension Livestock Environmental Stewardship Specialist. We chat with Miranda about a wide range of subjects that include environmental stewardship and livestock-environmental interactions including: range and riparian ecology, grazing management, integrated crop livestock systems, water quality, and reclamation. Miranda grew up in the agricultur...

South Dakota NRCS and the Conservation Districts have identified that Non-Operating Landowners (or NOLOs) are one of the key s to moving the soil health needle in that state. Jeannie Franceus is a landowner, yes, but we’d like to coin a new term, she is a Super-Involved Landowner (or SILO) – Jeannie did grow up in South Dakota and went to SDSU but left for the big city and raised a family but was...

Dr. Cody Zilverberg is not your ordinary rangeland scientist who grew up on the ranch knowing this was exactly what he wanted to do. Cody’s path was somewhat more circuitous – he grew up in Central South Dakota on a registered beef cattle ranch that his parents, brother, and sister-in-law still operate. Cody studied computer science at St. John's University in Collegeville, MN and had no intention...

Dr. Cody Zilverberg is not your ordinary rangeland scientist who grew up on the ranch knowing this was exactly what he wanted to do. Cody’s path was somewhat more circuitous – he grew up in Central South Dakota on a registered beef cattle ranch that his parents, brother, and sister-in-law still operate. Cody studied computer science at St. John's University in Collegeville, MN and had no intention...

To most farmers in South Dakota, Dr. Dwayne Beck needs very little introduction, Dwayne is the manager of the Dakota lakes Research Station near Pierre, SD and has been an influential force in promoting no-till farming and an awareness of soil biology with farmers. While Dwayne has written a good bit on no-till farming, he is in his element at Dakota Lakes with farmers, doing things like turning o...

Jessalyn Bachler is an Extension Range Field Specialist with SDSU, based in Lemmon, SD. Jessalyn graduated from NDSU with her Masters in Range Science with her thesis entitled “Winter Feeding Beef Cattle: a Review on Bale Grazing in the Northern Great Plains”; Jessalyn did her research out at NDSU’s Streeter REC in North Dakota. Apart from Jessalyn’s schooling, she grew up on a ranch in North Dako...

Bart Carmichael and his wife Shannon run a seed stock operation with their family in Northwest SD, just north of Faith SD. In this interview we kick off with drought – in a 12” rainfall area, Bart says they’re either preparing for a drought or in a drought. In the last 28 years, the Carmichaels have trebled their grass production in this cold, dry climate, so it’s worth listening to just how Bart...

Lealand Schoon is a 28 year veteran of the NRCS and works as an Area Rangeland Specialist out of Murdo, SD. Leland also has some land, and runs 150 head of sheep along with 30 cows, putting the grazing management and soil biology expertise he has acquired to work. Lealand’s ultimate question is “what is this action going to do for the soil biology?” We dive into some soil biology, but with the aim...

It's often thought that being a rancher is a noble profession—but not one that easily pays the bills. In this episode, Jenita Qualm (current Farmers Network Pasture, Rangeland, and Forage Specialist) calls on us to question this old way of looking at the ranching profession and invites us to step into a reality where ranchers can take their fortune into their own hands.

“The Eastern Red Cedar invasion is happening right in my backyard. It affects many of my friends, landowners, ranchers, and people I work with in the county." Sean Kelly, South Dakota State University (SDSU) Extension Range Management Field Specialist, Winner, South Dakota, discusses the process of a prescribed burn to showcase the safe use of fire to rid pastures of grass-choking and water-steali...

In this podcast Dr. Buz Kloot and Rangeland Management Specialist Rod Voss talk about the eastern red cedar (or green glacier) invasion and what it means to rangeland, the problems the invasion occurs and why its with us in South Dakota. After we discuss the problem (invasion of eastern red cedar) Rod walks us through the option of using fire (as opposed to simple mechanical treatment) and how thi...

“Soil health knows no bounds,' says Jeff Zimprich, the recently retired NRCS State Conservationist in South Dakota. "It can be accomplished on the front lawn and is alive and well in our grasslands and our croplands. But we can always do more to become more resilient to handle the weather patterns coming our way.” Hear the whole story of rangeland and cropland soil health from the former NRCS Stat...