Voiceover (00:06):

Resource positive agriculture describes what we all want, a food and farming system which makes full and responsible use of the natural world. In this podcast, I’ll explore how agriculture can be a force for good, on everything from the environment to people and our society.

John Mesko (00:33):

This is John Mesko. I’m your host of the Resource Positive Agriculture podcast. Today’s guest is somebody that I’ve been working with for a number of years, Dr. Wayne Honeycutt, who is the president and CEO of the Soil Health Institute. Wayne, welcome to the podcast.

Dr. Wayne Honeycutt (00:51):

Thanks, John, really happy to be here.

John Mesko (00:54):

I am excited to have a chance to visit with you. For those that are listening, Wayne and I have had a chance to work together in the past. When I was the director of the Soil Health Partnership, Wayne and I had a number of conversations and a number of interactions around the discussion of soil health, what constitutes soil health, how do we look at soil health, what kinds of measurements are important when we want to talk about soil health, how do we quantify soil health and help farmers and those support people that are working with farmers to learn about and implement practices that support soil health, and much, much more. So, Wayne, it’s a pleasure to visit with you again, and, again, thank you for being here. One of the things that I learned about after I started with the Soil Health Partner, excuse me, the Potato Sustainability Alliance, is that you have some history in the potato world. Tell us a little bit about your particular background in potatoes.

Dr. Wayne Honeycutt (02:01):

Yeah, I would say, yeah, my history actually is pretty long in the potato industry. My first real job after finishing my PhD at Colorado State, my first job was working for USDA’s Agricultural Research Service at a place called the New England Plant, Soil and Water Laboratory. It’s located on the University of Maine campus, even though it was a USDA research laboratory, and I was hired as a soil scientist. And since it was in Maine, we started working quite closely with the potato industry in Maine. I used to conduct research there, mostly on, basically on nitrogen availability and trying to improve nitrogen use efficiency in potato production systems.

(02:50):

But then, after about 14 years of conducting research in those things, I then eventually became the research leader of the facility. And one of the very first things that I did was organize a workshop for the potato industry, where we had different segments of the industry from growers, extension specialists, seed producers, table stock producers, chip producers, to help understand and prioritize their research needs, since we were a research laboratory.

(03:21):

And so, from that, I basically used that as kind of a guideline, essentially, a roadmap for our hiring decisions. And the potato industry really got our back and helped us get some additional funding from Congress. And we built a lab even up there and our staff up, and we even opened up a new research facility up in Presque Isle, Aroostook County, Northern Maine, for the potato industry. And so, basically, we conducted the research that the potato industry had told us was a priority to them.

(03:59):

And so then, we kind of took it that next step. And you may remember, John, CDs, when we put everything out on CDs. And so, we did that. We developed this little, what we called a potato systems planter, which was kind of a decision support tool so that growers, their extension specialists and consultants and others, they could see what our research showed, like what was the effect of growing particular rotation crops on nitrogen needed for the following potato crop, what was the impact on plant diseases, and those types of things. So I know that’s kind of a long-winded answer, but, yeah, the short answer is, absolutely, I have quite a history, close to about a 25-year history with the potato industry, but back before I went to do other things in my career.

John Mesko (04:51):

Well, I think that’s really helpful. The vast majority of folks listening to this podcast are potato people. This podcast is sponsored by the Potato Sustainability Alliance, and we have topics on here frequently, obviously, that are related to potatoes specifically, agriculture and crop production in general. But with regard to potatoes, and you alluded, Wayne, you went on to do other things in your career, and obviously, that’s my connection with you through your work at the Soil Health Institute. You have led a group there that has done some amazing things in identifying the components of soil health and how we look at soil health. I’m going to talk to you in a minute here about the impact of soil health in the potato sustainability conversation, but it’d be helpful to remind the folks here what kinds of things you’re doing at SHI leading up to, and I know there are some really exciting things going on there today.

Dr. Wayne Honeycutt (05:57):

Yeah, yeah. Thanks for the question, John. Yeah, I’m happy to visit on some of those things. I think the bottom line is that we recognize that there has been a significant amount of research already conducted that really gives us the confidence that when we improve soil health and using PFAC practices like no-tillage and cover crops and rotations and we look at how much plant material or organic matter or carbon, you could say any of those things, that we’re adding back to the soil, we can improve the health of that soil and that it does bring a lot of benefits, both to farmers and the environment at the same time.

(06:40):

But what we also recognize is that we really need to increase adoption of those practices in order to really bring scale, get more widespread benefits for farmers and the environment. And so, we take the approach of basically asking, “Okay, well, what is it going to take for us to increase adoption?” And so that takes us down the road of saying, “Okay, well, that means we really need to understand the business case for farmers and ranchers.” And so, that’s one of the things we’ve done quite a bit of work on, continuing to work on, is understanding the economics for when a farmer adopts these practices. What does it mean for them? How does it pencil out for them?

(07:22):

But then we also know that they need to understand, or not understand, but they need to be given ways of measuring the effects that they’re having on their soils. And so, we kind of feel like it’s unfair of us to ask them to manage something if we can’t tell them how to measure their progress. And so, we’ve done quite a bit of work in identifying the most effective measurements that can be used for assessing soil health. But then also, we know that, a lot of times, when you start to change new practices, there’s kind of a local adaptation and variation on it that you need to consider. And for helping that, we have an education program where we have, I think right now, we’re up to around seven or eight soil health educators around the country and US and Canada, that works directly with farmers and their advisors to help them locally adapt and adopt, implement those practices. And we don’t do it alone. We work with farmers and have them be mentors to others, and we work with local technical specialists to do that too.

(08:36):

And so then of course, what ties into all those things, the measurements, the economics, the education program is a good research and development program. And we, for example, work on things like when we found how much more water holding capacity we can build into soils and, therefore, drought resilience, then that took us down the road of saying, “How do we get this information out?” And so, one of the things we’re doing with that in that development area, when I say research and development, in that development area is developing a decision support tool so that farmers can see how their management practices can help them build up that drought resilience.

(09:17):

So we do all those things to try to help inform farmers and their consultants, their advisors, just basically answer their questions that they have when they’re considering that adoption of those new practices. We’re trying to answer those questions and get the word out to them so that they can make the most informed decisions.

John Mesko (09:43):

Well, I think that’s a really important distinction, really important value that you’re adding to the conversation. It has to work for farmers. Sustainability has to work for the business. It has to work for the operation. It has to work for the people that are involved. And clearly, the work that you guys are doing at Soil Health Institute is endeavoring to make that information available and make that decision-making a little easier.

(10:13):

One of the things that I’ve come to recognize and to appreciate in my time now, much less than yours, but as I am moving into the potato industry, I spent the bulk of my career in the Midwest, in the corn and soybean world, as you know. But now in the potato world, we have a unique story of sustainability in potatoes. On the one hand, we have to till the soil twice in one crop season to get the crop, both to plant and to harvest. And to somebody that is interested in soil health, they would look at that and say, “Hmm, that’s kind of a challenge.”

(10:55):

On the other hand, we’re producing a crop that is very dense in nutrients, a very important part of the global food diet in terms of North American consumption. Something like 85% of all plates of every meal that is eaten in North America contains potatoes of some kind. So potatoes are a very important part of the global diet and what we’re doing. So we have this dichotomy, I guess you’d say. I’d like to hear a little bit from you about “What does it mean to be sustainable in terms of soil health, specifically, in potatoes?”

Dr. Wayne Honeycutt (11:43):

That’s a really good question. I don’t know that I have a good answer for that last part of your question about what does it mean to be sustainable, because we know sustainable means different things to different people. Obviously, it’s not only about conducting the practices that are most sufficient in reducing nutrient losses and things like that to the waterways, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but it’s also about keeping farmers farming. And it’s also about providing a steady, stable income to where now farmers can put their kids through college and stuff like that. And so, I know that there are all different aspects of sustainability.

(12:30):

I would say in the potato industry in particular, in the potato production process in particular, yeah, there are challenges, because we know that to work on improving soil health, when we have the opportunity for using practices like no-tillage, then we have an advantage of being able to improve soil health, because that tillage operation does result in more carbon loss. That’s been shown. We know that. But I think knowing gives us the power to be able now to manage, because now we can manage from an informed perspective.

(13:18):

And so, in the potato industry, you’re exactly right. There’s usually a tillage operation before planting. There’s of course one or two hillings, often during the season, and, of course, then the digging and the windrowing, particularly the digging, is a very soil-disturbing process. And so, where I think our greatest opportunity comes there is in the non-potato year, and that means looking at perhaps lengthening your rotation system. Instead of having two or three years before potatoes, two or three-year crop rotations, maybe have a three or four, if your land allows you and if your production system allows that. There are other opportunities during those non-potato years of using no-tillage practices. So at least you’re minimizing disturbance in those non-potato years. So if you have potatoes followed by a small grain, then plant that small grain, like oats, barley, something like that, with a no-till drill, instead of tilling prior to that.

(14:39):

Cover crops, you can put cover crops in between not only those small grain crops or corn or whatever where you have that you can use with no-tillage. But if you can grow potato varieties that will mature early enough to allow you then to establish a cover crop and get it going good in the fall before the winter sets in, then that’s another a great opportunity. I know that there are market considerations, financial considerations for what variety of potatoes farmers need to grow. And maybe not all of them have that opportunity.

(15:20):

But there are some, I think, exploratory techniques that people are conducting research on now. And that is, for example, establishing some cover crops, basically planting them at the same time that they are harvesting the potatoes. Another technique that I’ve seen people exploring with is planting a cover crop even before the potato harvest, so that it has time to get established. And what’s good about this, of course, is that what that does is it not only allows those cover crops’ roots to basically scavenge through the soil, the deeper layers in the soil, but basically, what that happens is now it takes up those extra nutrients that now the potato crop did not take up and recycles them back towards the surface so they can be available for the next year’s potato crop. And of course, now, what that can do is allow a potato grower to reduce their amount of fertilizer application that following year. And so, that obviously adds to that overall sustainability, because now their inputs have been reduced. And basically, it can be more efficient with nutrient use also that way, recovery that way.

(16:47):

But then also, things like those cover crops and rotation crops, it’s the carbon in that plant material. Many people, they’ll call it organic matter or biomass, but it’s the carbon component of it that is so critical. And so, if people are… Even though they’re growing potatoes, if they build into their rotation system, their cropping system, some crops where they are returning higher amounts of carbon to their soil, then I believe they can still improve the health of their soil for their overall production system.

(17:27):

And so, I’m really excited about that opportunity. And that’s something, for example, that I know some of your growers are looking at now, and I know that there are some folks in the corporations, like McCain Foods, I’m particularly familiar with some of their work, where they are also looking at that. And they have something they call Farms for the Future, where they are establishing some of these regenerative production systems, or you may call them sustainable systems. You may call them soil-health-improving systems. To me, they just have a whole lot of crossovers, because it’s through addressing a lot, not completely, but a lot of addressing the improvements in soil health that you can achieve all these same benefits to what may be called a regenerative soil health system.

(18:21):

But McCain Foods, they are setting up these Farms of the Future that are essentially kind of a combination of demonstration farms for local farmers, but also somewhat research, because they are quantifying, measuring some of the changes in soils that are occurring through some of these practices. But they’re also, of course, measuring changes in yield and those types of things. And so, I’m seeing just a whole lot of excitement and feeling a whole lot of excitement in the potato industry for adopting these practices that we believe can improve soil health, which, of course, is so critically important for potatoes, because potatoes are generally about, Tubers themselves are about 80% water, and they are very high-water-demanding crop. And so, anything we can do to improve soil health builds that available water-holding capacity in the soil and therefore drought resilience.

(19:21):

And so if you’re on dry land production, that’s, of course, extremely critical. But even if it’s in irrigated production, when you increase the capacity of the soil to hold water, we believe that may translate into not having to turn on the irrigation system as frequently. And that means less energy, and that means less cost. And so, there’s just a whole lot of benefits that improving soil health can bring.

John Mesko (19:49):

Well, you talked a lot about rotation in that last statement that you made. And I think it’s important to note, when we talk about rotation in the corn belt, we’re talking about corn and soybeans. And yes, that is a rotation. I’m not trying to suggest that it’s not. It’s not a monoculture, but it’s a diculture. A corn soybean rotation is what I would call a limited rotation. And it is probably, in many cases of the Midwest, the best and highest use of the land that is available there, particularly where we’re not talking about irrigation. We’re talking about geographies that are blessed with normal rainfall, what we might call regular rainfall, irrigation not so important. The crop rotation there is a corn soybean rotation or maybe a corn soybean wheat rotation, but increasingly, it’s not that.

(20:53):

But you were talking about rotation in the potato production world, where we’re talking about a three or four, maybe even five-year rotation, where potatoes are just one piece of that. And I think you highlighted a really important component there, is that, in those off years, a lot of things can be done that support the improvement of soil health in preparation for and in recovery from the year where we produce a really, really important crop like potatoes.

(21:29):

And I’m curious to ask you, and I don’t mean to catch you off guard here, because we did not discuss this prior to our recorded conversation here, but as I get deeper and deeper into the conversation around sustainability now with PSA specifically, I find myself wanting to craft a story or relate a story around sustainability based on that rotation. I wonder if we should be moving away from looking at sustainability on a crop-by-crop basis and look more and look for ways to understand and report sustainability on a holistic view over the whole life of a rotation. Because I think we’re looking at the impacts of not only, in this case, potatoes the main crop, but we’re also looking at the impacts or improvements of the supplemental cover crops, as you say, or, in some cases, a year of fallow ground, or whatever it may be. I feel like if there was a way we could represent the full rotation when we talk about the impacts of sustainability, we might be able to tell a more accurate and more beneficial story. I’m curious as to your feedback on that, Wayne.

Dr. Wayne Honeycutt (22:50):

Yeah, I actually couldn’t agree with you more, John. I think that it’s really important that we take a comprehensive entire cropping systems-focus when we are thinking of these principles like with regenerative agriculture, sustainable agriculture. And, sure, I think it’s right, it’s correct for the potato industry to be thinking about sustainability and regenerative production of potatoes, but it is best placed when thinking about that within the context of that entire system.

(23:36):

Just for example, if someone, of course, is growing an alfalfa in their rotation with potatoes, well, since alfalfa is a legume, then we know it can bring in some of the nitrogen from the air, from the atmosphere. Some 78% of our air is nitrogen. Most people think most of it’s oxygen, but about 20% of the air is oxygen. About 78% is nitrogen. And those legumes, like alfalfa and soybean, they can bring in some of that nitrogen to the soil.

(24:10):

And so, that helps in a number of ways. One, of course, is allowing the farmer to reduce their fertilizer application. So there are components like that. But another, I think, really good example is crops that can help potato growers control certain soilborne pathogens, things like Rhizoctonia solani. And there are rotations that are really being proven to really help that, and some cover crops that can really help that. What really comes to mind in particular are those brassicas or things like canolas.

(24:54):

And I’m sure you’ve heard of this. I know a lot of potato growers have been hearing about this, because this is not something really new, but it’s just kind of, I think, a good example of growing these brassica crops, and they have a component in them called glucosinolate, and that glucosinolate decomposes into something called isothiocyanate. You can hear the formative element of the word cyanide in there, isothiocyanate. And so what that is, basically, it’s a natural fumigant that can help control a number of soilborne pathogens, maybe not 100%, but it can have an incremental control on some of them.

(25:43):

And so, again, now, when you start thinking, okay, how you’re not just looking at the potato crop in that perspective. You’re thinking about that rotation system and now standing back and say, “Let’s look at that overall sustainability of that entire cropping system.” And now we’re looking not just at potatoes, but now we’re considering things like our ability to reduce our fertilizer inputs by having that alfalfa, our ability now to perhaps be able to reduce some of our fumigants or some other type of application of a pest control input, because now, we have been growing with canola, for example. But now we also have that sustainability component of being able to sell or graze or hay the alfalfa and to sell the canola to the crushing plant.

(26:47):

And so there’s all these different kind of components of it that not only provide those additional soil health benefits, but also really just help your overall sustainability of your operation. And what I just described, that example, also includes a diversity, a diversity of income. I don’t mess around the stock market. I don’t have enough money to do that. But those that do mess around the stock market, they speak a lot about diversifying their investments. And I think that having that more diverse type of rotation system like that is also another way to help contribute to that greater sustainability of the overall operation.

John Mesko (27:39):

That resonates with me personally and the work that I’ve been doing over the last several years around sustainability. On this podcast, we talk about resource positive agriculture. So there’s a lot of terms that are out there, as you mentioned, sustainable. There’s regenerative. There’s now… Climate smart is a big term that’s being used more recently. There are a lot of terms we can use to describe where we’re going in agriculture.

(28:08):

But I think the key is, and that’s why I’ve tried to think about it in terms of resource positive, a truly sustainable system, emphasis on the word system, right, Wayne? I mean, a lot of people will consider themselves a corn grower, or, “I’m a potato grower,” or, “I’m a beef producer.” But in reality, you’re working with a natural system, and you might be a potato grower. You might be a corn grower. But there are other impacts. There are other things influencing what you do, even if it’s not on your own farm. If you’re raising corn and that corn is going into the production of chickens or hogs or beef, you’re tied to that beef industry, you’re tied to that pork industry. We have a system of agriculture that produces the bounty of food here that we need as a global society.

(29:08):

I work for the Potato Sustainability Alliance, no question about it. I’m focused on potatoes, but I have to think about ways to expand the scope of what we do to include that broader rotation, that broader systems-thinking that says, “We don’t just grow potatoes. We have off years. We have rotation years.” It’s all the things that you’ve been saying. And the impacts of those things, in rotation, in terms of sustainability, in terms of the broader sustainability questions that get asked by investors and consumers, we’ve got to figure out a way to accurately represent the holistic system. In some cases, as you’ve been saying, in some cases it’s that rotation crop or what’s going on in the off year that actually makes the crop we’re talking about be a positive impact.

Dr. Wayne Honeycutt (30:07):

Yeah, I couldn’t agree more, John. Yeah, I think it’s just, it’s really critical to really take, yeah, that overall look, that comprehensive look at the entire system, because it’s the entire system that we’re growing across the landscape. And, so, absolutely, I couldn’t agree more.

John Mesko (30:32):

That’s great. And I know that at Soil Health Institute, you all are doing a lot of things to impact the overall discussion around soil health. And as you and I have talked many times, soil health is really the foundation or the beginning of sustainability. If you want to talk about regenerative, it starts with improving soils. If you want to talk about sustainable, it starts with… If you want to talk about improving the resources that are at our disposal to produce food, it starts with the soil. So, I would certainly want to hear about some of the new things that are going on at Soil Health Institute, the things that are important to you and your work as you move this conversation forward. What’s going on, and what are some things that might be of interest to the folks listening?

Dr. Wayne Honeycutt (31:22):

Yeah. Just, before I jump into that, I guess I just want to say that, again, I couldn’t agree more with what you just described about soil health really kind of being the foundation for regenerative ag and sustainable ag. And I just wanted to say that… It was interesting. A couple years ago, there was an article written where some people were really trying to define regenerative agriculture. And so, they went to over 200 published articles to see how other people were assessing it, what is regenerative ag, and then they went to like 25 practitioner websites to see how they were defining regenerative agriculture. And in both cases, they came back and said, “Well, the number one outcome of regenerative agriculture is improved soil health.”

(32:10):

And so, the beauty and the opportunity of that is that soil health is something that is important to growers and something that they relate to. They know if their soil is compacted, or they know, if they get a heavy rain, whether the water is infiltrating into the soil or if it’s running off the soil, which is an indicator of how well that soil is functioning, which is another way of saying this is an indicator of the soil health. And so, I do really think that that’s what our great opportunity is, is that soil health is a concept that is important for growers and they recognize. And so, that’s what our great opportunity is.

(32:59):

Some of the new things that we have going on, One of them is basically a lot of what you just talked about, John, is looking at the whole systems perspective, whole cropping system. You got to figure that there… No-tillage is not just no-tillage. Sometimes, people will say, “I’m using no-till,” but they are still tilling every other year. Some people say, “I’m using cover crops,” but if you use cover crops and you plant right before the frost and it only gets a half inch tall and then you terminate it when it’s an inch tall in the spring, you haven’t got a lot of benefits out of that cover crop. But if you calibrate your drill and you plant earlier so you can get a good, strong, tall cover crop established in the fall and you let it grow as long as you can in the spring before you terminate it, now you’ve added so much more carbon, organic matter to your soil that you can really get a completely different benefit out of that cover crop.

(34:06):

So that’s one of the things that we’re working on, is really help quantify in a way that things can be measured, those different degrees of adoption of those practices. So it’s not just cover crops, yes or no, but it’s length of time, for example, that the ground was protected and was covered with that cover crop and what percentage of the ground was covered with that cover crop. And so, that’s one of the things that we got going on.

(34:37):

Another is developing, as I mentioned earlier, was a decision support tool called the Drought Resilience Calculator. We’re very fortunate to just receive some funding from Cargill that’s going to allow us to really build out that Drought Resilience Calculator so that, just, at any given location, for a given soil and given location, we can show farmers how much more drought resilience they can build into their soils.

(35:09):

A lot of our work has been on economics. We’ve been expanding that. We’ll soon be releasing results of another 30 farms. We’ve already released a little over 100, and we’re going to have another 30 from across the country, where we did these partial budgets, interviewed farmers on their practices and helped them. Worked with them to calculate their budgets to see, basically, what that business case is for soil health. And I got to tell you, it just looks very, very positive. It looks like we have plenty of data now showing it’s a very good business decision to invest in these soil-health-improving practices.

(35:53):

We have a number of things going. Particularly, again, in the measurements area, we evaluated over 30 different soil measurements across the United States, Canada, Mexico, where we could go to sites that had a soil-improving system, soil-health-improving system, compared to some type of conventional system. And we found that many, many of these different soil health measurements were very effective across those different climates and soils and production systems and management practices. But we wanted to really look at identifying the ones that are most effective for really achieving scale, for really scaling up measurements of soil health. And so, we looked at those same ones that were good from a research or a scientific perspective and say, “How good are they for practical implementation?” And so, we looked at them through the filters of cost and are they widely available or can just one lab in the country do them or things like that or are they redundant with another type of measurement.

(36:59):

So that allowed us to come up with just three measurements that we recommend farmers, growers use to evaluate soil health, and that just helps it be a lot more economical so that they can assess where they currently are and can follow their changes and improvements that they’re making over the years, just because it’s not a huge investment to assess soil health, because of these three. And what’s kind of cool about it is that one of those measurements allows us now to predict another one that’s kind of hard to do. It’s called that available water holding capacity. But we have the equations now, and they’re all on our website stuff, that allow us to do that. So we’re recommending three particular indicators, or measurements, I should say, but that allows us to predict a fourth, and that gives us a really, really solid understanding of soil health, of the health a given person’s soil.

(38:05):

We’ve also been doing some work and finding really great results in establishing just how healthy a given soil can become. We use these different sites we call reference sites. Because different soils have different capacities, and so, we’re not saying everyone should be able to get up to that capacity, but it helps us establish how healthy a given soil can become. So that gives us a way to an index or a relative way of looking at a given value when we’re assessing soil health to see how close it is to its maximum capacity.

(38:43):

So that’s a number of the several things that we have going on. We have many more working across a number of industries, and we’re really excited about some of the Climate Smart grants that are starting to filter in now. We’re going to be partners on seven of those projects in different parts of the US, and one of them is out in the Pacific Northwest, and potatoes will be a focus of one of those. And then, of course, that’s in addition to our work with McCain Foods currently, where we are providing an education program with them right now. And we recognize farmers are experts already with what they’re doing, but we’re trying to help out with that local implementation of some of these soil-health-promoting principles.

(39:41):

So we’re really excited to be doing that, because anytime we have the opportunity to work directly with growers, it’s just more meaningful for all of us, whether it’s one of our several soil health educators or one of our several scientists, because none of us are doing this work for academic reasons. We’re all doing it so that we can benefit agriculture and benefit the environment. And that’s, again, one of the nice things about soil health. It allows us to achieve both goals at the same time.

John Mesko (40:13):

Well, I think you’re absolutely right, Wayne, and your emphasis on making it economically viable for producers is the key. Nothing moves if it’s not going to return on the investment. So, certainly appreciate all the work that you’ve done to help steer the conversation in that direction and to provide support for farmers as they’re making decisions. I think that’s a really important component of this whole broad discussion around agriculture and soil health. So, thank you so much for the work that you do. Thank you for joining me on today’s podcast. I really appreciate it. It’s great to catch up and hear about the things that are going on there. And certainly appreciate the work that you do always.

Dr. Wayne Honeycutt (40:57):

Well, thank you very much, John. I know it’s been almost two years now, but again, I was really excited to hear that you were selected for that position with the Potato Sustainability Alliance. And I know that under your leadership that they are just going to really continue to do well. And so, I was really excited to hear that. And I guess I would just end by just saying that I think the potato industry is really positioned to do really well. And it’s not just because of being able to basically grow all that food and provide all those calories that we need, but it’s because, I’m seeing so much creativity and interest in recognizing that, yeah, this can be a challenge to improve soil health in a potato system because of the large amounts of tillage during that potato year.

(42:03):

But because there are people like that, you and you’re talking about, that are looking at that overall cropping systems picture and really focusing in on what can be done on those non-potato years that will really benefit that potato system, and not just in terms of some sustainability measure, but actually help with the yield and the marketability of that potato crop that have more uniform size distributions and all those marketable yield components of potatoes too and really help with that yield stability regardless of the weather. And I think the future is very, very strong for the potato industry that way. And I know that you, in that role, at Potato Sustainability Alliance, and the Alliance itself will continue to play a real critical part in that future.

John Mesko (43:00):

Well, that’s a great place to end our conversation, Wayne. I really appreciate it. I agree with you. I think we’re in a good spot, and we’re going to continue to advance these principles going forward. So, thank you again for joining me, and I appreciate your time. Good luck with the endeavors there at Soil Health Institute.

Dr. Wayne Honeycutt (43:18):

Thanks, John. Look forward to the next time we visit.

John Mesko (43:20):

All right. My guest today has been Dr. Wayne Honeycutt, the president and CEO of the Soil Health Institute. This is John Mesko on the Resource Positive Agriculture podcast. Thanks for listening.

Voiceover (43:38):

Thanks for tuning in to today’s episode. To hear more podcasts like this, please rate, review, and subscribe to Resource Positive Agriculture. We want to hear from you. Remember to visit potatosustainability.org for show notes from this episode, leave your feedback, and to learn more about how PSA is collaborating for potato sustainability. Thank you, and remember, stay positive.