(mellow music) - Roughly one quarter of the land in the United States is suitable for crop land.

We have ruined about 1/10 of our original heritage and damaged more than 1/2 of what remains.

We are losing each year by bad management and the resulting erosion the equivalent of nearly half a million acres.

(static hissing) - Destroying crops, turning hard-earned farm profits into devastating losses, covering towns, ruining homes and businesses.

- Modern farming practices like indiscriminate tilling, heavy fertilizer used, and pesticides used on more than 90% of America's main crops are damaging soil, contaminating water, and ultimately draining our global resources.

- To mankind topsoil means food and life.

It exists only upon a small favored fraction of the Earth's surface, and it averages a depth of only six inches.

Your life depends upon these six vital inches.

(soft music) - In this vast universe, an ecosystem exists which holds a key to human existence.

This key can open the door to wealth or ruin, to feast or famine, and it lies just beneath our feet.

- You know, you have to realize that the soil is a living thing.

- It's more than dirt.

It's a living, breathing ecosystem, and when you start looking at it like that, it's easy to make these changes.

- Manifest destiny, a phrase coined in 1845, was the idea that the United States was destined to expand across North America and spread democracy and capitalism.

So people continued their expansion and moved to the Great Plains region with the belief that rain would come when the seeds were planted.

(animals chattering) Rising wheat prices and increased demand in the early 20th century encouraged farmers to plow up millions of acres of native grassland to plant wheat, corn, and other row crops.

(animals chattering) When wheat prices dropped during the Great Depression, their solution was to increase their yield, digging up even more land.

(cash register clinks) Then came the drought in 1931.

Without deep-rooted grasses to hold the soil in place, it began to blow away, leading to massive dust storms in the Southern Plains.

On April 27th, 1935, Congress established the Soil Conservation Service, later named the Natural Resources Conservation Service, an agency in the USDA to help fund and educate farmers on conservation practices.

These practices range from how farmers irrigate their crops and move their herds to what they do or don't put in the earth.

The ground is teeming with life and life-giving nutrients.

Farmers are learning ways to make it a hospitable place for life and welcoming the tiny organisms that make this ecosystem so vibrant.

We talked to seven of these farmers and farm families around the state of Arkansas.

(animals chattering) - This is Outlaw.

This is Tyler's goat.

It's untouchable.

They come at midnight.

I'm Patty Lermer, and this is Valley View Goat Ranch.

- Hey cows, (blows kiss) let's go.

(cows mooing) Hey, I'm Richard White.

This is White Ranch.

(man laughing) (animals chattering) - I'm Raymond Kelly, and this is Cheyenne Cattle Ranch.

- You gotta hurry up.

- My name is PJ Heney.

We're here today at Ways Creek Farms.

- Hi, I'm Katie Peebles, owner of Peebles Farm Pumpkin Patch and Corn Maze.

That's fantastic right there.

And.

- Hi, I'm Margie Raimondo.

I'm the chef and the farmer here at Urbana Farmstead.

- After those are dry, we'll blend in the pelletized chicken litter and it'll be ready to go for the winter.

- I'm Adam Chappell with Chappell Brothers Farms.

(energetic music) - We are about to take you on a journey into the soil, a world of its own, but more importantly, we are gonna show you how to protect this world.

Each of the people in this documentary have found ways to protect the Earth's skin.

We will begin with the relatively simple methods used by ranchers.

These herding heroes are protecting the water and the health of their animals while still enriching the soil.

- So I was listening to the radio and a commercial from the NRCS came on and saying that they need applicants for land improvement.

And I was like, oh, we need waters, because it's so aggravating.

When Donny was out, we have to do the water, and in the wintertime it freezes.

It's ridiculous.

So I went there.

I called that day.

"Oh yes, come in, get an application."

So I filled out the application and they got it in fast and did everything.

I mean, no problems to work.

- While the benefits animal manure brings to the soil may be common knowledge, the destruction these animals can do to the top soil, your overgrazing and inefficient watering systems is news to most, even the small farms raising the herds here in Arkansas.

- So I work full time.

I own Greenwood Learning Center there in Greenwood, Arkansas.

And so I work like 10, 11 hours a day.

And so I'm there full time, but when the guys are gone, me and Maddie have to take care of it in November while they go hunting.

So I have to make arrangements at daycare to come here to water, feed.

And now it's just less time.

All you have to do is feed.

And that's pretty easy of the buckets.

Our kids have the favorite goats that we are not allowed to sell or get rid of until they, they'll be here forever.

We have Outlaw, we have Midnight, and then Chocolate, of course.

Chocolate's been here forever with us.

She's the meanest goat around.

(cheery music) She goes around and gets all the good stuff and makes the other ones leave.

(goats chattering) - Right now we have about 100 goats.

The main way we got started was we got a phone call from my grandparents asking if we would like goats.

Of course, being 10 or 11 at the time, I wanted to do it.

We started out with four goats and it slowly multiplied after that.

We would look on Craigslist and there'd be a couple of goats for sale.

And we'd go around mainly to two different ranches around here and we'd get goats.

We would go for maybe one or two, and then we'd come back with five or six.

- Four goats quickly became 100 and the Lermers' hobby became a farm.

That's when they developed the need for a more efficient watering system, something that could not only help the Lermers save time and money, but that would protect their herd against disease and their soil against destructive erosion.

- And we used the mini excavator to dig the lines.

There's a 15-inch pipe under this to help with the...

The ground temperature helps keep the water from freezing in the wintertime.

There's a float valve inside of here that keeps water level up whenever the goat drink from it.

It keeps the water level up with the lines there.

- In addition to freeing up time, these waterers play a role in maintaining the integrity of the soil and the health of the animals.

- For one, it's fresh water, so it stays clean.

They're also, they're no-freeze, they're insulated.

So the water's kind of cooler in the summer, and then it doesn't freeze in the winter, so you don't have to worry about busting ice or anything for your cows and they always have fresh water.

- These watering systems provided with help from the NRCS inhibit water waste and resulting erosion.

They are surrounded by either concrete or gravel to prevent hooves from damaging the ground around them.

Considering also the ability to stop the resulting erosion from consistent winter and spring freezes, these troughs are a surprisingly simple avenue to healthier soil.

- When the cow comes up to it, they're just pushing this ball out of the way and they get the fresh water.

It has a float in here so when they drink it down, it automatically kicks on and refills itself.

And to start 'em on it, you basically leave that ball out so they'll start drinking on it and get used to it.

And then you set the float real low, where the ball's down, just kind of in there touching them.

And then in the end result, it stays like this, so it stays cleaner and the leaves don't get in there, debris, keeps some of the mosquitoes, those kind of things out.

- Inefficient watering systems can lead to soil degradation, water waste, and potential contamination of groundwater.

(cattle mooing) - The alternative, I mean, they wanna do ponds the last thing, 'cause they're less clean 'cause the cows can walk and they walk out in there and could use the restroom where they're getting a drink.

So the clean water is just a lot better.

There's this type of water.

There's several different types, but they wanna do a fresh water.

It's overall healthier for the animal and everything.

- Freshwater systems mean healthier livestock and healthier soil, which make for a happier farmer.

- Especially at the end of the day, I like to come down here and just relax and get away from everything.

I really enjoy just coming down here and watching them in the evenings.

Or the calves, and then when it's cool mornings, just they're out playing, frolicking around.

There's something about it that's relaxing.

Hey, cows, (blows kiss) let's go.

(cattle chattering) - I grew up around a livestock barn, and when I was a boy, I was always curious about cattle and what they were doing and what the process was.

And I think I bought, I did, I bought my first three cattle, three head of cows when I was 17 years old, and I enjoy it.

I enjoy watching the calves grow and trying to build a better quality herd.

I started as a hobby and now it's gotten to be a job, but that's just something I enjoy doing.

I like to be out to myself.

I like to work with nature.

I've been doing it since I was a kid.

I have 16, approximately 16 pastures in this 80-acre track, but we actually farm about 300 and some acres altogether.

But this particular track here that we have in with the NRCS, we have about 16, 18 tracks that we rotate our cattle on.

- In addition to providing freshwater systems, herd farmers can further protect the soil by closely managing how their animals graze it.

When livestock roam, they cause damage to the ground, but there's a way to keep them from destroying the grass beneath their hooves.

Rotational grazing is dividing the land and moving livestock from section to section to give the grass relief from relentless mouths and feet.

- This is our Gallagher electric fence.

It starts, this is the power source to the electric fence that we run across the ranch, and it just plugs in right here and just runs on the ground.

(chain rattling) Like I say, there's the power source.

It's trenched underground.

It comes up underground right here into this black cable.

And it's hooked on right to this pole here and it carries all across the ranch.

The electric bill is about $30, $35 a month, and that's not just... That's for the night lighting all together.

So it's very inexpensive to run and maintain the electric fence.

I was a little bit reluctant at first, 'cause I'm not an electric guy, but anyway, it is really simple after you get familiar with it.

It helps you to have more pastures in a smaller area.

And that way you can confine your cattle to the smaller areas, and that way you're putting all your nutrients right in that area, and then you just rotate 'em over to another field on typically five to seven days, they'll stay in one area and you just move 'em over.

Permanent fencing would be more expensive and it'd get in the way.

We're fixing to move the cattle from one pasture to the next and to do so on this particular deal, we're gonna cut the electricity off in this section of the ranch.

(upbeat music) (motor humming) We'll simply just change directions.

Come on.

(animals chattering) They're wondering about you.

What's going on?

They usually been towed through here.

(laughs) - While some farmers enjoy the cost-effective benefits of electric fences, others prefer the simplicity of permanent fencing.

Either option provides the opportunity for rotational grazing.

- They're all used to me so I can go out and holler and usually without any feed or anything to lure 'em, usually they'll come running to wherever I'm at and it's pretty easy to move 'em from pasture or pasture.

Of course, coming to feed is no problem.

And we start feeding, you know, you holler and they come running.

(laughs) - Cows, come here.

(cattle chattering) (chain rattling) You just got more grass.

I would never be able to run as many cattle on here as I'm running now, the old way I was doing it, just letting them go wherever they wanted to go, eat the tender grass and moving around.

I control which way they go, which way my cattle go, and that gives me more production, period.

- Preventing soil erosion from heavy grazing not only requires the movement of cattle, but also a strong, thick root system that grips the soil, holding it into place.

Trees protect the soil from wind and water.

The tree roots stabilize the soil and hold the layers together.

While they can't be used in crop fields, they should be kept where possible and are quite useful when grazing certain types of livestock.

- How we chose a beef master 'cause we do have a lot of trees and they're real hardy.

They came from South Texas.

So they'll eat all the leaves.

A lot of times, if you look in our wood lines, they'll eat up head high, the leaves too, and also the grass.

- Worked it in the pastures 'cause the goats are not really a pasture animal.

They like to eat the boughs up higher off the ground.

I'm gonna start planting grasses next year with like chicory, red clover, white clover, and lespedeza.

- In addition to keeping trees, it can be in the rancher's best interest to plant particular grasses.

Not all grasses are created equal.

Ranchers must weigh the benefits to their herds and their land as well as the ability to grow in their pastures.

Some grasses grow more easily in hilly areas than others, and some are excellent nutrition for the animals, but any a farmer chooses must have a strong enough root system to handle the trampling and chewing of the herd.

- We chose to plant Bermuda 'cause it's the most tonnage per acre.

It makes a mat and it does really good for heavy use area, the foot traffic on it.

It's just a really good grass for this area for hot climate and not a lot of shade out there.

So that's what we chose to go with.

- Sometimes crop farmers plant crops specifically for cattle to graze between cash crops.

This is often a relationship between a rancher and a row crop farmer.

The farmer's cash crop might be something such as soybeans.

When those are harvested, the farmer plants a crop that will be healthy for both cows and the soil.

Then the ranchers have a fresh place to allow their cattle to graze while the farmer reaps the benefits to the soil.

This is called prescribed grazing.

- I wish that that was my idea, but I just copied it off somebody else.

But other parts of the country, they graze cattle on winter cereals, and then the grain that they make's just a bonus basically.

So we just took that idea and combined it with some rotational grazing concepts that people are using, mob grazing and things that we'd seen.

So we're trying to enhance our soil health with it and add value to our acres by putting weight on a cow and then selling that cow.

So it was an economic and a soil health thing.

We wanted the soil health benefit of the cattle, but it had to make some kind of money.

Otherwise, we couldn't justify doing it.

So we just found a model that fit for us.

- Research shows that saliva from ruminants like cattle, sheep, and goats may also stimulate plant growth that could result in increased density.

And how does cow manure help?

It increases soil organic matter, provides nutrients to crops, keeps pH in normal levels, and increases the ability of the soil to hold nutrients and release them through chemical reactions for plant uptake.

- Everything that cow does as far as waste and the act of grazing, the saliva that they drop when they're, all of that is excellent for soil microbiota.

I mean, it's a really good thing.

We've seen a lot of positive changes as far as just life in the soil and the way it looks, things like that.

It's a very positive thing.

All of this fungus, all this white and then all these fibers, these mycelia, where that fungal network is going through there.

So you're not gonna get that in a disturbed soil 'cause they don't have time to make that.

Most of this is saprophytic fungus, but the one that we are primarily concerned with is mycorrhizal fungus.

You can think of that as an extension of the plant's root system.

They trade minerals that they've mineralized, potassium, phosphorus, micronutrients, all these things, they trade that to the plant for root exudates, which are sugars.

So they're trading mineral components for sugars.

It's a bartering system that is a huge increase in your plant's root system if you allow it to develop.

And that's one of the reasons we can get by with less fertilizers and things.

But this soil is aggregated.

It's like little pellets, little BBs.

It's all stuck together.

It's got roots all through it, fungal networks in it.

- Soil is a mixture of water, minerals, gases, and life.

This mixture varies across the globe.

Arkansas's skin has unique properties of its own.

Stuttgart, the Arkansas state soil named for the city of Stuttgart in Southeast Arkansas, is used primarily for rice, soybeans, small grains, and corn.

The silt loam surface and slow permeability of the clay keeps water higher longer, making it excellent soil for rice production.

Carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, sulfur, and many other nutrients are stored, transformed, and cycled in the soil.

Soil helps control where rain and irrigation water goes.

Water flows over the land or into and through the soil.

This dirt is teeming with billions of bacteria, fungi, and other microbes to create a delicate ecosystem.

One teaspoon of soil contains more living organisms than there are people in the world.

Soil animals represent nearly 25% of the total diversity of all known living organisms.

Many factors can damage that life, like pesticides, herbicides, oversaturation, and tilling.

The ecosystem requires a delicate balance in order to maintain an adequate environment for crops.

Too many or too few of any organism can have a damaging chain reaction or can simply cost the farmer money for things like fertilizer.

To demonstrate this harmonious system, we must travel deep into the dirt to find the tiniest of creatures.

Protozoa are single-celled organisms living inside water films in shallow and deep soil.

They eat bacteria, fungi, and algae, decomposing and cycling nutrients.

Also within the water films are rotifers and tardigrades, which are both predators and scavengers.

One of their favorite foods is nematodes, omnivorous, transparent worms that live in water and the soil and move bacteria through soil layers.

Earthworms live throughout the soil, burrowing, aerating the soil, and helping make nutrients more accessible for the plants.

- So here's a fun, weird worm fact for you.

So if you can manage to develop a million of these per acre, which if you take a scoop from a shovel like this, that's roughly a foot of soil.

All right?

So if you can get 15 of those in a scoop, which right now we're looking at one, I mean they could be deeper.

We could just have one.

I don't know.

But if you can manage to get 15, they can cycle 35 tons of soil.

And what I mean is they can eat it and then poop it out.

And the nutrient analysis of that casting is it's real rich in plant essential nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium.

So if you can foster these guys and get 'em going, what do you need to buy fertilizer for?

The soil is awash in nutrients.

We just gotta figure out how to make 'em, get 'em in a plant usable form, and that's all done through cycling with microbiology and stuff like earthworms.

- Then there are mites and springtails crawling throughout the soil, crucial in the decomposition process.

Scurrying along the top or in the upper layer of the soil are the millipedes, particularly important for plant decomposition.

Then come the larger predators like centipedes, spiders, fireflies, soldier beetles, and ground beetles.

These troops are the pest control.

Coming from above, there are the well-known decomposers, flies, such as these flower flies.

Let's not forget our other cleanup crews.

Burying beetles and ants, removing animal carcasses from the soil.

Then there are the glorious dung beetles, of which there are 64 known species in Arkansas.

They do the hard work of decomposing fecal material and reducing the spread of food pathogens.

While there are many more organisms, we will end with these, ground nesting bees.

They live in the soil and are crucial for pollination.

Tilling the soil, leaving it bare, and wasteful watering practices can destroy this ecosystem.

(peaceful music) No-till systems insert the seeds in a way that is less damaging to the soil than the tilling process.

- So this here is our no-till planter, and we use it for planting a lot of our crops then into the cover crops that we plant.

And what I'll point out to you is this no-till coulter.

Whatever may be out there in that no-till field, it cuts through that prior to the seed openers getting to deliver the seed.

Okay?

So no-till cuts, seed openers come in, place the seed at the proper depth and the proper spacing, and then the closing wheels to come behind and close the row up.

So what you'll find is when we had to go to no-till planting, we had to start looking for equipment that had that no-till coulter to give us the down force, which you have here with, through the airbag, through a pneumatic, down force supply, to hold the tension on the road unit, to cut through the residue and still give us the seed to soil contact we need for good germination and seed emergence.

- After a century of tillage, why are we returning to no-till methods?

Early man harvested food and forage from the forests around him.

He reaped the bounty of healthy soil without interacting with it.

When these natural sources dried up, we were forced to pack up and move on.

Eventually we learned to grow our own crops.

We were able to put down roots beside the plants we were growing.

Agriculture is considered the foundation of civilization.

With a more stable lifestyle came an explosion in population.

Man spread across the planet, planting seeds and reaping harvests.

Fast forward a few hundred years, and anywhere land can be cultivated it is being cultivated.

We developed the disc and the plow, allowing farmers to break down more soil more quickly.

Mechanization in the 1900s made our tillage implements more efficient.

Internal combustion engines freed us from relying on exhausted draft animals.

The 1960s saw a chemical revolution.

We applied petrochemicals to make soil more productive, faster.

All of this tillage, all of these chemicals, were applied to produce more from the soil, with little thought of how they affected it.

With each turn of the plow and with change in the seasons, we have demanded more of our soil, and like an athlete running a marathon every day for months on end, without sleep, after a century of mechanical and chemical tillage, the soil is exhausted.

The microbial life and mycorrhizae is all but destroyed.

Erosion is rampant and once-fertile lands are drying up.

However, returning to no-till farming methods reveals the earth can and will heal itself if we learn to see the soil as more than just a medium to be manipulated, but as an ecosystem to be nurtured.

- My family has been farming in this area for, well, four generations.

Our great grandfather farmed here, both my dad's parents' side.

So we've been in this area for a long time.

(gentle music) We were looking for a way to control weeds without spending more money, 'cause everywhere we turned, the answer was more herbicide or more tillage or there was always a mower attached to something.

That was actually making things worse, so we had to do something different, 'cause what we were doing wasn't paying the bills.

So.

Right now we're just planting beans, corn, and rice.

After that we'll have some herbicide applications and things and then we'll set up for irrigation.

We'll start irrigating and then usually have some corn ready first part of September, maybe late August.

May have some beans ready in that timeframe.

And then we'll start harvesting then.

And right behind the combine, we'll be planting our cover crops for the next year.

- Adam Chappell has developed a system for his farm that improves the soil and saves money simultaneously.

- The cover crops is the biggest deal.

That's put us almost a complete stop to our erosion problems, wind and water erosion.

So we're not losing topsoil at near the rate that we were before we started doing this stuff.

- When the cover crop starts to grow, it's incorporated into the bed and the roots of the cover crop help hold that bed and lock it in place.

So we are able to come back in the spring to burn down and no-till right on those beds and have our seed planted in a no-till application.

So in our operation, we found that cover crops not only benefit us from a soil health perspective.

You have to realize that the soil is a living thing and when we are able to help it to thrive and grow, and we look at soil tilth, we have a lot more earthworms in the soil and organic matter and have water movement through the soil and aeration, that really helps benefit soil health, 'cause if the soil is healthy, the crops will be happy.

- There is a science to picking a cover crop.

Legume cover crops convert nitrogen gas in the atmosphere into soil nitrogen that plants can use.

This cuts fertilizer costs.

Fibrous rooted cereal grains or grasses are particularly good at scavenging excess nutrients, much of which is held within the plants until they decompose.

- If we're gonna have a grass crop like corn or rice, we'll plant a cover crop blend that's heavier on broadleaves, maybe radish and some legume like winter peas or something and have a small grass component in that blend.

Whereas if we're gonna go to cotton or soybeans, which is a broadleaf crop, we'll be heavier on the grass component in our cover crop.

So we'll have oats and cereal rye or maybe a combination of three grasses and then maybe just one broadleaf like radish or something like that.

So we just do that to... We just don't want a lot of grass in front of a grass crop or a lot of broadleaves in front of a broadleaf crop.

- Cover crops improve soil by speeding absorption of excess water into the soil, helping to aerate the soil, providing organic material for food for the organisms, and cycling nutrients.

- This field up here is one that we flew in mustard and stuff like that into the crop.

And we planted a lot of it was planted in the crop as no-till.

All the watermelons that we've been doing are no-till and stuff like that.

But you can see all the mustard that's out there.

- Some farmers will plant root vegetables as cover crops to help break up the soil in a healthier way.

- And we also have radishes planted out here, and this is one of them, and they actually bust up the hardpan and they're part of the cover crop that we put out with the mustard and the other stuff like that, and they grow, this is a rather small one right here.

Normally they get a lot bigger and grow in the ground and bust up the ground.

- Intercropping is growing two or more crops in close proximity.

For the Peebles, it means planting cover crops scattered throughout a cash crop.

- The cover crops are just growing in the sweet potatoes.

The mustard and the other stuff has just been planted in the sweet potatoes, 'cause it won't affect it whenever we do the harvest.

We have the mustard in there to keep down all of the pests and stuff like that in the sweet potatoes, and the sweet potatoes are organic, so we have to put out, do some things to help with the sweet potatoes and pests and different things like that.

Also it helps build the ground up and keeps down the nematodes.

We have two types, two different types of mustard out here.

This is one, kind of a smooth-looking leaf like this.

And then you would have a crinkled leaf that looks more like this.

They both do the same thing.

- Mustard plants naturally release compounds that suppress pests and pathogens.

- And it kind of controls a lot of it organically, like nematodes to everything else, any type of pests that you have, it kind of helps to keep the pests out of it and go from there.

(upbeat music) We don't want anybody to run short and leave without a pumpkin, so they're going to get more pumpkins.

- We plant 50 acres of pumpkins.

We grow them for wholesale customers and for our agrotourism business.

We were row cut farmers before this and needed to diversify when prices went down.

So we bought this farm in 1996 and got it ready to plant watermelons and pumpkins wholesale in 1998.

- Farmers might be tempted to increase production of their existing crop when prices go down, but only planting one crop can be damaging for the soil and the farmer's finances in the long run.

- And we were doing anywhere from 40 to 60 acres of watermelons, and then anywhere from 50 to 60 acres of pumpkins, along with corn and all of the other stuff.

And then we started in with agrotourism.

We put in our first corn maze about 17 years ago.

- In 2005, we saw an opportunity to allow visitors onto our farm.

So in 2005 we planted a corn maze, planted our pumpkins as usual, planted some sunflowers, and allowed visitors to come in.

- We started the agrotourism business around 17 years ago and it started very, very mildly.

We only had like five pallets and a cooler full of Cokes and hot dogs, and we did have a bonfire.

That was all we had, and we brought in everything else from that.

(light music) The school came out.

We didn't even charge 'em the first year, any of 'em, at about five schools.

Just to see if we could do it, 'cause I was scared the death of it, to be honest.

I was just totally scared to death of it.

And it seemed to work out.

There wasn't any problems or anything like that.

So the next year we done it again, and it just kept evolving and evolving.

(children shouting playfully) Then the corn maze started and that's where we're at.

- Agrotourism can be more than a fun money maker.

It can also help keep crops of various kinds planted year round.

This keeps the soil consistently filled with life.

The Peebles have one particular attraction that invites more than just humans, rows and rows of flowers.

- It's for the people to look at and pick, but also for the pollinators, for different types of butterflies.

And then we have three different plots for monarch butterflies.

The pumpkins, they produce a tremendous amount of blooms during a certain time of the year.

So they're pollinating everything we've got out here, just about is pollinating something.

- The insects attracted to this pollinator habitat keep the crops growing.

About 1/3 of the world's food depends on pollinators, such as bees.

So it is always a good idea to provide a food source for these critical creatures.

- This is actually called sunshine, believe it or not.

It doesn't grow as, the flower itself, the blossom doesn't grow near as large as some of the other ones, but I like it.

One thing is it attracts all of the pollinators into this spot so it can help me with pollination.

It's so beautiful.

I mean, I call sunflowers happy flat.

They're so beautiful and they make you so happy.

(peaceful music) - Urbana Farmstead is growing a multitude of plants, including flowers, herbs, and vegetables.

It is operating on a much smaller scale than the Peebles, but with a kitchen, store, and self-pick options of a variety of herbs, it's an agrotourism business that specializes in variety and specialty crops.

- Urbana is in its third year right now.

It initially started out as just a small little patch of garden that I started three years ago, building and growing herbs and also some specialty crops for my restaurant, 'cause I'm a chef and I had a restaurant in town, and then I decided after I closed the restaurant, look, I need to keep going with this vision of being and turning this converted junkyard into a garden, an urban garden.

If you want herbs from Urbana Farmstead, I actually go out and pick them with you 'cause there's no sense of picking herbs ahead of time.

They'll just fry and they won't be good for you.

They need to be fresh.

I use them for two different purposes.

So I have culinary herbs and I also have medicinal herbs.

And of course sometimes they're the same thing.

Rosemary is an example of that.

Rosemary is fantastic in your cuisine, but also very, very good for your cognitive thinking and your memory and brain function, so it's very medicinal.

I have an entire section of my garden here that is devoted to herbs, and a herb garden more focused on the medicinal side.

So this plant is called comfrey, and it is from ancient time, been used to heal wounds and also just to do anything that is for burns or cuts.

It is fantastic.

So first of all, you can use the entire plant.

You can use the flower, you can use the leaf, and you can use the stem.

If you got bit by a mosquito or a bug or something and it was really starting to swell up, if you just took this right now and you just crunch it up and put it on there, it'll instantly stop the sting and the burn.

I started expanding and I went to get a grant for a high tunnel 'cause I wanted to extend my season.

And so I started growing more of the specialty crops in the high tunnel.

(light music) So the high tunnel has really changed the game here at Urbana Farmstead.

At first it gives me an opportunity to extend the season.

That is really important.

The first year or two, when I was just growing outside, I didn't have a chance to really grow through the whole season.

Now of course I can do rotation cropping.

So what I do basically is I'll plant one set of cucumbers and six weeks later, plant cucumbers again, and maybe six to eight weeks later, plant them again.

And so it keeps me going pretty much through the entire year.

It also has really taught me to use vertical planting.

So when you go in my high tunnel, you'll see I have everything going up.

I have squash going up.

I have melons growing up.

So that's fantastic because that really utilizes a very small space, but I can grow more crops.

And so that's been really nice.

I just have the nice strings that hold everything up and crop them.

So the high tunnel affords me to really have some kind of structure at the top to really use the strings and use vertical.

The first one or two years I was out there watering and trying to make sure I had enough water.

Now I actually have a really nice system.

It's on a timer.

It kind of rotates which rows get it.

And then I can also specialize.

There's some crops in a row that need more water and some that need less.

So I have it set up in a section of four rows, and those are the ones that need more water, and so I'm able to water them as they are needing and requiring the water system.

So this particular area, I know how much I need for this general bed.

And so I'm able to set it up on a timer and then allow it to come on two days a week, and I know what I want my water flow to be for this particular zone.

So I've really zoned it, and that's been very, very good for me.

It helps me save time, helps me save money, and it's much better for my plants.

(soft music) - So here in the Delta, we use furrow irrigation to irrigate our crops.

So we have to incorporate, we have to work our ground.

We have to put up a bed, and a lot of farmers use 30-inch, 38-inch, or 40-inch beds or 60-inch beds.

And that bed is basically a raised, elevated part of the soil where you have a furrow that the water can channel between the rows of the field.

And we plant up on the bed typically in wide row spaces.

So as farmers, we want to be as sustainable and as environmentally friendly as possible.

(water trickling) And one of the ways we do that through our irrigation is through our water management software.

We use a software called Pipe Planner that basically uses satellite imagery to measure the field.

It measures the length of the rows, whether you have long rows on one side of the field, shorter rows on the other side, and so it measures the length of the rows.

You tell on the GPS coordinates where the well point in the field is.

You enter the gallons per minute of that well, and the software will dictate to you what size pipe to use and what size holes to punch from the long row side of the field to the short side.

(equipment humming) - The flexible water pipes are placed on the ground.

Software helps the farmer determine where the pipes go and the size of the holes.

A farmer then walks next to the pipes, releasing the water with the proper size hole for each furrow.

(soft rhythmic thudding) - Because what we want, we want the water to get to the end of the rows at the same time.

So if you've got a row that's 1500 foot long versus one that's 900, the same size hole will have that 900-foot row.

The water will get to the end of it faster than it will the 1500.

So you put a bigger size hole in your poly pipe and that longer row, a smaller in the shorter row, so they both get to the end at the same time.

And that way the water is then out.

You cut the well off.

You wait for your next watering set.

That's the way we try to use software and technology to help us be more efficient in our watering, because you have to realize some of these wells are running off of diesel power generators, so that's more diesel we're burning.

Even the electric wells, that's more electricity that we're using.

So the sooner we can get the job done and cut those water sources off, it's helping us from a utility need, whether it's electricity, helping us with less diesel fuel that we're burning.

And then that's less water we're pulling out of the aquifer for not needing at that time.

- So our mindset at the start of this switched to how do we spend less money?

(light music) And these soil health practices looked like an excellent way for us to spend less money based on what we'd seen in other parts of the country, so that's why we started doing this.

It wasn't 'cause we weren't concerned about the soil.

We thought we were doing good.

We thought we were good stewards of the land.

And now looking back, I feel like we were terrible just because we were didn't know.

We were ignorant of how things worked.

I'm sure there's a lot of farmers still today that think they're doing a great job, and I understand exactly why they think that, because they don't know any different.

People see like a washout at the bottom of a field, a gully where the soil is eroded, well to them that's just normal.

That just happens.

Well, looking back now I see that it's entirely preventable and I know the value of that soil that has been run off of that field.

Now I see what kind of actual waste that is.

Prior to that, I just didn't know.

So our soil testing is not what a mainstream farmer would think of as soil testing.

We used to test for nutrient levels in soil, potassium, phosphorus, sulfur, blah, blah, blah.

That's what we'd look for.

That's only a small portion of what we need to be looking for.

So our soil testing now, we look for bulk density.

What is the bulk density of our soil?

So that's an indication of how aggregated our soil is.

That's well aggregated soil there.

That's lots of BBs and.

We do samples to see what kind of microfauna are living, a PLFA test that tells us if we're bacterially dominant or fungal dominant or balanced or how many protozoa we have, things like that.

Where rhizobial bacteria has moved into this root basically.

And what it's doing is trading for a place to live.

It's converting atmospheric nitrogen into plant-available nitrogen, a form the plant can use.

Those are the things that we're interested in, how much life is in the soil, what our water-soluble carbon levels are, things that you don't find on a regular soil test, because those things, you can't buy products to change those things.

Those are indications of life in the soil, and there's not a fix.

If you don't have enough fungus in the soil, you can't go buy a fungus and add it.

You gotta build that over time.

- Farmers like Adam Chappell understand that while the science of soil health is proven, it is still mostly unknown in rural farming communities across the country.

That's why he and farmers like him have organized to help educate their neighbors on the priorities and practices they've learned to ensure healthy and productive dirt.

- Me and some other farmers, we started the Arkansas Soil Health Alliance.

If you're a farmer wanting to try cover crops or whatever, but you don't know where to start or you've run into a problem, we try to just be a resource for folks if they want it.

Chances are, if you've hit a problem or can't figure out how to do something, somebody in that group has run into that same issue and can offer some help.

- I call myself an advocate.

(light music) Someone that constantly advocates for agriculture, an ambassador for agriculture.

And I oftentimes tell people that there's no culture without agriculture.

Regardless of where you go in the world, regardless of your race, religion, creed, political affiliation, you and I are connected through agriculture.

We both have to take nourishment two to three times a day.

And that's something that a lot of people really, they don't think about, because with no farms, no food.

We know that there are a lot of things that we can make it without.

We've made it before without cell phones.

Electricity go off in your home, no problem.

Vehicle breakdown, okay.

But you and I have to consume nourishment multiple times a day.

So as I say, your food, your clothes, and even your fuel, it comes from right here.

Production agriculture is the vehicle that feeds, clothes, and fuels the world.

- On the heels of the unemployed came the victims of the Dust Bowl.

As the Columbia beckoned to a people burned out by wind and drought.

- The Dust Bowl left many Americans terrified of what might happen to the economy if land was used so irresponsibly again.

The combined efforts of government organizations, nonprofits, and conscientious farmers have made great strides in protecting the land that feeds us.

(upbeat music) (equipment humming) Agriculture is a common human mission.

It is the foundation of civilization.

Our very lives depend on a paper-thin six inches of topsoil across our state.

There could be no culture without agriculture.

There could be no life without dirt.

(animals chattering) - Hey, get back.

Get your big butt outta the way.

Chocolate.

That's the boss.

Chocolate is the boss.

And she's the littlest one out here.

- One of the things that we do is we do have a few pet goats like this one.

This is kind of my pet.

All of us kind of get a choice in what goats we want to save.

So like him, he'll never do anything, so he's pretty much worthless, but he's my favorite goat and we'll never sell him so long as I want to keep him.

- Oh really?

Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.

- They've all got their own little differences and their attitudes.

It's just funny to watch 'em out there.

Or you interacting with 'em, they're all different.

They all have their own personality.

- Oh, I started out with about seven acres behind my grandmother's house.

I had three head of cows on it, when I was 17 years old.

I asked her if I bought some cows, would she let me put 'em on her place, and she said, "Sure."

And she helped me fix the fence and everything and I bought my first three head of cattle.

They always want to get in the water and cool off, and that's not good for the feet.

That's the biggest downside.

And then I don't like to catch fish out of a pond a cow been in.

My grandson does.

He catch too many.

I have to make him put 'em back.

(laughs) - We're harvesting soybeans.

You're utilizing all those steer technology on the combine that gives us straight guidance down the field.

The combine is operating off of the longitude and latitude guidance line here as you see on the screen.

See the challenges that we have on this farm with drainage, too much rain at some points in the year and not enough in another.

I once heard that we as farmers rely on six inches of topsoil and the good Lord's grace and rain and weather to make our living, and that's very true.

- Major funding for Dirt is provided by the Pulaski Conservation District and NRCS Arkansas.