Episode 8:

Jeff Schoenau

Transcript

Toban Dyck  00:02

This is the extensionist conversations with great thinkers in agriculture. I’m Toban Dyck

Jay Whetter  00:07

and I’m Jay wetter.

Toban Dyck  00:11

Hey, Toban. Hey Jay. How’s it going? Good?

Jay Whetter  00:14

Do you want to talk about art? Yeah, okay, I do. I enjoy going to art galleries, looking at paintings, and I was at one in Winnipeg recently, at the plug in Gallery, and it was a guy named Marcel Zama who grew up in Winnipeg but now lives in New York City. His grandmother was incorporated into a whole bunch of the paintings, but it was his grandmother as a young woman, and she was wearing like a superhero suit and a black mask, and she was in all these scenarios. And he has it still had his animals. It like, kind of had a Where the Wild Things Are Chronicles of Narnia. That kind of like a mythical place where the animals are with Inca and with humans and, and I don’t know lots of color, I really, I really enjoyed and the exhibit. And so I was at the opening where Marcel talked about growing up in Winnipeg and, and he had this line where he said, The Ghost of Winnipeg is always with me, which I kind of like.

Toban Dyck  01:17

So he’s not, he’s not based here anymore. No,

Jay Whetter  01:20

he lives on Long Island, so I think he says New York City. But he’s kind of beyond Queens interesting, you know, oh, out there. Did you buy? Did you buy anything? I was afraid to ask how much they are. Yeah, they’re sold through a gallery in in New York and so that was on every one of the paintings that this is brought to you by this, this gallery. Yeah, it would be numbers of 1000s, obviously. I mean, even local art is getting up there. So I would say 10s of 1000s.

Toban Dyck  01:54

I get hung up on that sometimes, like, not, not like, on prices of for sure, prices are a factor. But like, about art in my house, right? Like, I get on, like, get on these kind of bents where I want to, I want to just fill my house with, with with art, right? Like, with interesting stuff. And, like, buy old frames and get, you know, frames from secondhand stores and find pictures and, and, you know, old art pieces to put, to put in them, because every once in a while you see a place that has that’s really inspiring, right? It’s just full, like, walls that are just full of interesting stuff. And I like that,

Jay Whetter  02:30

like that restaurant we went to here at Winkler the other day, yeah, right. And I mean that every square inch of wall space is filled with some sort of, yeah,

Toban Dyck  02:37

yeah, yeah. And my buddies, like my buddy Steve. Steve and Kate, their house is full of art too, and interesting stuff, right? And it’s, it’s fun to see. I often think, like, it takes, it takes a bit of commitment to do that, and, like, some dedication to finding these things, yeah, and but it’s also fun to when you, when you’re connected to somebody, when you go to their opening, or to, I don’t know, yeah, yeah, no, that’s a neat experience. We’re doing extension because we we value it. Farmers

Jay Whetter  03:12

are still looking for information, even while governments have pulled away from the job of extension so that So like you said, yeah, the needs there, and there’s fewer people actually doing extension, and so we thought we’d jump into that, and we hope that sponsors recognize that the service that we’re offering and give us some support.

Toban Dyck  03:30

As much as we are doing that because because we see a need and we have a passion for it, we’re also doing it because we see a need among some of the groups that could be sponsors, and we see that they are also looking for new ways to extend. If anybody

Jay Whetter  03:43

else wants to step forward, we’d welcome their support as well. So with with us today, we have Jeff shaino, Jeff, what’s your job? Quick.

Jeff Schoenau  03:58

So I am a I’m a professor in the soil science department here in the College of Ag at the University of Saskatchewan. And I also hold the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture chair in soil nutrient management. And I also farm with my wife, Lynn, right?

Jay Whetter  04:12

Oh, sorry. Quick, might have sounded rude, but yeah, that was rude. Jay, like the why? Why quick? Well, sometimes people have long BIOS like Jeff, and then that, we’re half an hour into the podcast, and he’s just wrapping up. So that was, that was a big risk. I thought there. So anyway, Thanks, Jeff. That was a good nice and quick. I’m Jay wetter and

Toban Dyck  04:30

I’m I’m Toban Dyck, yeah, I’m Toban Jay, pleased to meet you. Good to chat with you today. Thanks

Jay Whetter  04:35

for joining us. Yeah, so Jeff, we will get to all the the good soil science stuff, because, and I know you’re one of the more passionate speakers I’ve ever heard live, and you’re you’ve always been good to me in terms of interviews and keeping me on the straight and narrow when it comes to nutrient management. But let’s go. Let’s go back to a good old central Butte. You grew up. You grew up on a farm. What do you what are

Jeff Schoenau  04:57

you growing there? Canola and wheat and peas are. I mean crops, Jay and

Jay Whetter  05:02

so Toban, he’s done some work with Manitowoc Pulse and Soybean Growers, right? As you know, I’ve done a lot of work on canola, yep. So how is the pea crop in central Butte? Is it? Is it doing okay with the phantomyces? Or is it

Jeff Schoenau  05:16

It struggles? It struggles? Seems like when you get a rain that’s going to recharge the soil profile, like we had in early May, and made a big difference. Unfortunately, it saturated the soil, and the final mysis moved in and, and, yeah, significantly hit the yield, especially, of course, in a field where it had been before. So yeah, it’s, it’s there. It’s, it’s a concern.

Toban Dyck  05:40

Yeah, has peas been a part of your rotation for a long time? Yeah,

Jeff Schoenau  05:44

for many minutes since the 1990s Oh, wow, wow, wow.

Jay Whetter  05:47

And is that canola, pea, wheat rotation that you have? You added in any other crops over the 90s? Or has that been, yeah,

Jeff Schoenau  05:56

I put flax in there occasionally, but it’s, mainly been those, been those three crops. Once in a while I will grow wheat on wheat, just to spread it out a little bit. And that’s that’s actually worked, not too bad in the last couple of years, because the fusarium really has disappeared with with the drought years that we’ve had in southern Saskatchewan. So how was

Toban Dyck  06:18

this? How is this growing season for you? Started

Jeff Schoenau  06:20

out really good. I mean, I looked in June, and I took pictures that this is the best crop, best garden too, that I thought I was ever going to have. And then it got hot and it got dry in July, and lots of biomass, lots of straw, but really kind of disappointing grain yield, yeah, particularly

Toban Dyck  06:41

for the canola, yeah, yeah, similar, yeah, oh, here, yeah,

Jay Whetter  06:46

central Butte is where from Regina. I know you’re in the southern half of the province. It’s actually

Jeff Schoenau  06:52

pretty close to Lake Diefenbaker. Okay, so north northwest and Moose Jaw, Yeah,

Jay Whetter  06:56

but you’re not, you’re not irrigating, no, but

Jeff Schoenau  06:58

we’re kind of right on the fringe where my land is, yeah, but I’m not irrigating myself family farm. Jeff, yes, indeed. Yeah,

Toban Dyck  07:07

awesome.

Jay Whetter  07:09

Where’s Lynn from? She’s

Jeff Schoenau  07:10

from Saskatoon. Actually, I met her in Saskatoon, so she actually didn’t grow up on a farm, but over the last 40 years, she’s certainly, certainly learned the ropes and taken up the farming enterprise with vigor. I rely on her totally 100%

Toban Dyck  07:29

Well, I was gonna ask how you manage your time between the university? I don’t,

Jeff Schoenau  07:33

we don’t have any hired help, and my kids aren’t out there. So wow,

Toban Dyck  07:39

yeah. Do you live

Jay Whetter  07:40

in central Butte for the summer, or do you commute out there?

Jeff Schoenau  07:42

We go back and forth. We’re kind of on the road all going back and forth all the time. Yeah, yeah, all right. Oh, wow. Lots of miles. You

Toban Dyck  07:51

said you have a garden as well.

Jeff Schoenau  07:52

Oh, yeah. That’s why I said. I like garden vegetables there. Yeah,

Toban Dyck  07:56

meat and potatoes and garden vegetables. But,

Jeff Schoenau  07:59

but it was disappointing. It was disappointing. I mean, again, I had five rows of corn there, and I think I got two cobs of corn off of it. Yeah, it just, it just melted too. It looks so great. And then when the heat hit and it dried out. I mean, corn likes heat, but it doesn’t like it dry like that. And it just never, if the cobs never, never filled

Jay Whetter  08:19

so in your cars, going back to the challenger. Did you have, like, dice hanging from the mirror and an eight track playing your AC, DC, or what was,

Jeff Schoenau  08:31

yeah, I had an eight track in a Mustang. I had, yep, yep. Is that the one you rolled? Nope, nope. This is No. I still got that Mustang. I bought that new Mach one Mustang 70 or what you don’t know, it’s actually the the Malays era, 78 they call it the Malaysia because, well, they were the cars in the late 70s were nowhere near as fast as they were in the early 70s. Okay, so that’s

Jay Whetter  08:56

where the Malays came on. There was

Jeff Schoenau  08:58

kind of, yeah. That’s what they call them Jake, yeah.

Jay Whetter  09:03

Oh, you didn’t answer my question about the foamy dice.

Jeff Schoenau  09:06

Oh, yeah, I had some dice there. Yeah, yeah. That’s

Toban Dyck  09:12

awesome. That is awesome. So what? What kind of collection do you do? You have a vehicles?

Jeff Schoenau  09:16

Let’s see I got the mach one Mustang, the challenger got a custom cruiser, old station wagon from the 80s. Wood paneling. Yes, it does, yeah. Wood paneling, essential,

Jay Whetter  09:29

yep, yep. That reminds me of the vacation. Did you ever watch that movie,

Toban Dyck  09:34

The National Lampoon? Oh, so good. Is that the car? It goes all pretty. It does

Jay Whetter  09:39

look a lot like it, yep. And did you ever put your grandma on the top? No,

Jeff Schoenau  09:42

no, no, I did have, I did have a deer carcass on the roof.

Toban Dyck  09:52

Oh, there’s Jeff. It ties into the hunting Yeah, for sure. Oh, that’s fantastic. How

Jay Whetter  09:59

did you get into. Soil Science. Was it something you always knew you wanted to do, or was it what was the process there? I

Jeff Schoenau  10:06

guess I would say that after high school, kind of thinking about what I wanted to do, and I kind of actually really wanted just to stay in the farm. But my brother, he engineering professor up here at the U of s too, and he knew I liked agriculture, so he said, Well, you know what you should do is you should go in the College of Agriculture. Said, Okay, I’ll give it a whirl. And I went up and kind of registered last minute, and got in the in the college there in 1980 and went on to become an agronomy major, which is kind of a jack of all trades. It was it was everything. Then it was crops and soils and and agricultural economics. I liked them all. I liked them all, but I had a professor of soil fertility, Jeff Bettany, who inspired me, and actually encouraged me to do graduate studies in soil science. And so that’s where I kind of went into the soil stream, and kind of became a little bit of a DR, dirt. Doctor,

Toban Dyck  11:07

Oh, I love it. Doctor, is that what your students call you? Well, I’ve

Jeff Schoenau  11:12

had people call me that actually. I think I remember, I think the late les Henry also, he also had that, that that tag as well.

Jay Whetter  11:20

You’re, Dr dirt too, yeah. Dr dirt, Jr,

Toban Dyck  11:24

Oh, I love it. I love it. I mean, it’s, it’s on the podcast now, so it’s immortalized. You are now. Dr dirt better than,

Jay Whetter  11:31

Dr dirty

Toban Dyck  11:36

indeed as very true. Thanks. Thanks for that. Jane,

Jay Whetter  11:41

all right, so Jeff, you and I have talked a lot about phosphorus. Is that kind of your, your bread and butter, of the nutrients, or is that just something that I always bug you about?

Jeff Schoenau  11:50

Yeah, it’s no. I think, I think actually my PhD work was actually on on it was multiple nutrients. So it was carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur. And actually, I kind of specialized in sulfur in my PhD work and and did some work on on some new techniques for measuring sulfur in the soil using stable isotopes. But, yeah, I guess I also got interested a fair bit in in phosphorus nitrogen as well. But, but phosphorus always kind of, kind of intrigued me. Jay, just because of the complexity of the chemistry in the soil and my supervisor, also inspired me, as did the as Dean John Stewart, who was the Dean of agriculture, then, to take a particular interest in the chemistry of the soil and Phosphorus has really interesting chemistry, sort of salt.

Jay Whetter  12:42

Can you give us the, not quite the lay version, but like the J and Toban version, yeah, or maybe just the J version, sorry, Toban. I don’t want to throw you under that bus of the chemistry. What’s interesting about the chemistry? Well,

Jeff Schoenau  12:57

phosphorus stays put, right? It’s it gets stuck and it gets held tightly in the soil. And it gets held tightly in a lot of different ways, and it gets released back and so farmers really, and you think about the four R’s of phosphorus fertilizer management and placement is is really important, getting it close to the to the roots. And I always like to think about, you know, ways that you could strategies that you can employ to get more of the phosphorus taken up by the crop. Because we know that, you know, in the year of application, maybe at best, you might see 40 or 50% of the phosphorus recovered by the crop that year. And typically it’s a lot lower than that. So, you know, eventually you get more of that back over the years. But when you’re looking at investments in fertilizer, you like to get as much in there where you want it to that year that you put it on. Yeah, for sure. That always thought, you know, are there some different strategies we can use to to improve that and and also not lose it,

Jay Whetter  13:57

right? Right? Well, I just want to go back to the chemistry of the binding. So why does it like I’m assuming it’s some sort of charge of the the phosphorus molecule and the charge of the whether it’s clay or what it’s binding to, what’s going on there exactly. Yeah,

Jeff Schoenau  14:13

it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s really reactive. So it will tend to form precipitates by reacting with calcium, which is dominant in our prairie soils, as a cation, and it’ll also become adsorbed, especially on any kind of an iron and aluminum hydroxide. So it binds. It has a it has an affinity to to undergo, you know, covalent bonding, and then and also to actually undergo what’s called ligand Exchange, which really holds it tight.

Jay Whetter  14:43

The so with the higher pH is that when the aluminum and magnesium bonds tend to be stronger.

Jeff Schoenau  14:52

At the lower pH, that’s when you tend to find the aluminum and the iron, and then it’s the higher pH that you tend to get the calcium. And precipitates, okay? And so, you know, we always talk about phosphorus availability, and you know P and its relationship to pH. So it’s just around that, that neutral pH at Toban and J, you know, around pH 6.5 that you have the maximum availability of phosphorus, because that’s the pH where you get the less of this binding and sorption and precipitation taking place.

Jay Whetter  15:21

So we’ve got a lot of Alberta soils that are low pH, and then you got Manitoba soils that are high pH, so the process availability could be lower in both of those,

Toban Dyck  15:31

but for completely different Yeah, Saskatchewan in the middle there. Yeah, Saskatchewan is

Jay Whetter  15:35

God’s country. Yeah, it’s kind of

Jeff Schoenau  15:37

in the middle Exactly. But, you know, there’s a lot of, you know, we’re hearing some, some issues in some places, even in Saskatchewan, you know, where the pH is pretty low. And so also thinking about, you know, how that influences the chemistry of some other elements, nutrients, like manganese. You know, we have been also seeing some some pH is low enough where, where manganese toxicity seems to occasionally show up. And one of the big things with with with low pH and poor plant growth in general, in soils across the world, pH gets low enough you get a lot of soluble aluminum too. And so, you know, you think about, we really don’t deal much with acidity here in the in the prairies, and particularly in Saskatchewan and moving east towards Manitoba, but, but, yeah, some folks deal with that a lot. And, you know, they’ve, they’ve actually developed some some cultivars over the years that have been able to tolerate that aluminum in those acid soils. So, you know, I’m always excited about what the plant breeders can do to to help overcome some of the limitations that exist in the soil, you know, including nutrient limitations.

Toban Dyck  16:47

So, so with with a low pH, is that, is that the solution? Is breeding the solution, or is it, is it a something you can else you can do? Yeah,

Jeff Schoenau  16:54

I guess, you know. I mean, you can put lime on, but, you know, lime is, lime is not something that’s normally been liming is not commonly done here in Western Canada, not like it is in the in the Midwestern us and and that. But you know, there may be some soils out there that could benefit from, from some liming.

Jay Whetter  17:13

Jeff, have you ever used lime on your farm?

Jeff Schoenau  17:16

No, I haven’t, no but, but we do have. We do have. We just started a set of trials here with some different calcium containing amendments, and one of those is lime calcium carbonate. But we’ve also got gypsum. We got some other calcium sources there. So that’s a study we’re just getting going on. We started in the growth chamber, but we want to take a look and see if we can, you know, maybe look at some microsite effects of of adding calcium in smaller amounts than what you would typically in a lime spreading operation, but putting that that calcium down in a in a band, and seeing what impact that it has on the early conditions that exist there around that germinating seed and seedling, just to see this, it’s been a long time since anybody’s done any calcium research in Western Canada. I mean, when it comes to true calcium deficiency, that’s a pretty rare bird. But, you know, calcium can impact the soil in other ways, the composition of exchangeable cations, the structure, maybe there’s a benefit there. So we’re gonna, we’re exploring, going to explore that over the next couple of years.

Jay Whetter  18:18

You can see calcium deficiencies temporarily when water fields are really wet, but it’s not like the inherent calcium levels in the soil are still pretty high.

Jeff Schoenau  18:29

That’s right. That’s right.

Toban Dyck  18:31

So, so Jeff, you talk about in the pre interview notes that we have, you talk about a passion for instilling a love of nutrient management in your students. And I would love to know, how do you do that? What’s your technique,

Jeff Schoenau  18:45

I guess, I guess, yeah, so you think about that, and you know, to make get people excited about something and make them want to listen, I guess, is to, I guess, very carefully, and I think adding a little bit of entertainment to it, explaining, you know, the processes that are involved, but also drawing on lots of experience in the field that you may have gained from your research projects. So sharing research, research results, personal experiences that you’ve had, and always stressing what the applicability of your findings are, so that, you know, even when you get into some of the very basic chemistry of, you know, what’s going on and it can, kind of, you know, if you can be kind of a little bit of a snore city, perhaps, if you think about, you know, getting into some a lot of detail about mechanisms absorption, for example, but if you kind of relate that back to, okay, this is what the growers going to See in the end. This is what they have to deal with, and this is how a solution might be applied to to to address that. Then you kind of get people’s attention and they think, okay, yeah, here’s what’s going on, and here’s some here’s some things that we can do, and that’s pretty interesting. And here’s some examples of of where it actually. Work, and also some examples of where things don’t work. That’s the other thing, too. And those, those are sometimes just as valuable, if not more than that, where you do see the big effect.

Jay Whetter  20:08

I mean, you’re great speaker. Speaks with a lot of enthusiasm. You like speaking with your hands. You make facial expressions. But how do you make this entertaining? You use the word entertaining, yeah, I want to know what? Yeah. Like, do you tell jokes? Do you do little skits? Yeah, you know, I guess

Jeff Schoenau  20:25

I’m not. I’m not a big I’m not a big Joker, and I’m not really quick on my feet with I can’t remember most jokes. Is the reality I get to the punch line, and it kind of, yeah, but, but yeah, I think, I think entertaining is, is really keeping up the pace and and looking at the audience and seeing when they kind of were starting to nod well, not not obviously looking off out to in a different direction, and to put something in maybe that kind of is a little bit of a different kind of shocks, a little bit. So you’re kind of always just kind of trying to go along, go along, go along. And then look okay, and they say, Well, what about this? What about this? Ask lots of questions, right? Yeah,

Jay Whetter  21:09

get Yeah, get that feedback like I’m asking this, Jeff, because a big part of the point of this podcast is to not just talk about ideas, but to look at new ways of extending ideas, effective ways to get an idea across. And I think, yeah, keeping the pace up, keeping the energy up. Well, then recognizing when your audience is kind of going off on tangents or falling asleep. Oh,

Toban Dyck  21:32

I like the well timed shock too. Like you mentioned, people are dozing, or you’re like, you’re you kind of work at a climax. And I was in boom, you know. Have you ever

Jay Whetter  21:41

been? Have you ever been to one of those 4d theaters where they have, like, they splash water in your face or they poke you in the back? Yeah,

Jeff Schoenau  21:48

yeah, yeah, well, at least they shake the sheet the seats. Yeah,

Toban Dyck  21:52

I’ve experienced

Jeff Schoenau  21:53

that. I don’t know about water. I haven’t had water in my face, but I felt the seat shake underneath.

Jay Whetter  21:59

I like that. That’s fun. They should do that in university lecture halls. That’d be really No, that’s right. So you could just give them

Toban Dyck  22:04

a poke. Professors going like access to these buttons under their desk.

Jay Whetter  22:10

I love it, although shaking their sheets that sounds kind of interesting, yeah,

Toban Dyck  22:13

but we won’t go there. No, no, no, exactly.

Jay Whetter  22:17

Anyway, Jeff, so we could go down all kinds of rabbit holes with and an hour, it’s not enough time to talk about everything that’s in your head. Obviously. No, no, I’m not changing this. Okay, good. I just want to ask Jeff, what, like, what do you think are the really key things in this day and age, in nutrient management that need to get extended more like because these are not new, necessarily new concepts, but are there things that you see out there that could be done more or better?

Jeff Schoenau  22:52

Yeah, I guess you know. I mean, I’m a I’m a strong believer in diagnostics, soil testing, tissue testing, I mean, getting out there and finding out, you know, what’s going on, if there’s a problem there, diagnosing it. So, you know, the kind of forensic agronomy, I think is, is something that that is really, really important. And there are so many people, I mean, and I teach my soul fertility class this year has over 100 people in it. Many of them are agronomy majors. Many of those folks will go back out and they will work with growers, one on one, whether it’s private consultants, whether working, you know, with with industry, with retailers, and so I guess I look at it as you know, my role now, I don’t get nearly as many calls from individual farmers as I used to, but I guess the way that I feel it’s is effective in getting my own research information and others out as well as I teach my class is a recognize that those folks are also going to go out there, the people who take my class and ultimately be working working With the growers. So, you know, kind of key concepts Jay and Toban that I really want to get across are, the are the four Rs, the four are right rate, right time, right place, right source. And that kind of underlies a lot of what I cover in my class that I say, yeah, that we need to. I mean, we’re, I mean, we do here. Majority of farmers here are using those for our practices, and we’re better than a lot of other areas of the world, but we can always do better, and that’s what I say about soil conservation practices. I mean, you know? I mean, we’re the leaders in the world in adoption of no till, more than 90% you know. But I say there’s still other things that we can do to make that soil even better, but we’ve done a darn good job in bringing that soil back from the brink, from where it was 40 years ago, when there were all those dust clouds in the sky.

Jay Whetter  24:52

Who so? Why are we better? Yeah, like, was it people? Was it particularly pivotal? Uh, individuals. Was it the research right at the right time? Or is it? Was it farmers?

Toban Dyck  25:06

Yeah, yeah,

Jeff Schoenau  25:08

yeah. I think it was a combination of things that made that happen. And I mean, it’s everything from the engineers on the machinery side that developed the machines that made it work, to the extension organizations like Saskatchewan Soil Conservation Association, here in Saskatchewan, to the government agencies, the private, provincial and federal that promoted it, and the universities that became involved and did a lot of the research, along with the Agriculture Canada scientists, it all kind of came together and, you know, and getting that information out, some of the biggest extension events that I participated in were some of those no till field days. I remember one down at Indian head and on Jim Alford Alfred’s farm, Jim the inventor of the of the conservative pack, where there were, where there were 800 people, and they had and ran over three days. And I remember standing out in the field talking, and it was hot. It was July, and bus loads came. There was bus load after bus load after busload. Gave the same talk nine times. And by the end, I was, I was kind of like, you felt like you were it was an out of body experience where you kind of felt like your mouth was moving and you were talking, but your mind was somewhere else because you were just going through that route. But, I mean, it was a lot of fun and and so, you know, getting the message out, I think, was a very, very important, important part of making that whole no till Conservation Agriculture revolution here in the prairies actually take place. Wow. Yeah. You

Jay Whetter  26:35

think those live sort of hands on face to face events are still critical to extension

Jeff Schoenau  26:41

I do. I do. And, you know, I I remember when I started out and I talked a lot to less and less was less. Henry was a real mentor to me. But, I mean, you know, he kind of started out back then in the 90s. You know, a lot of times it was out to the Legion hall in small town, Saskatchewan, and you maybe had 10 or 20 people there, not, you know. I mean, that’s a pretty small crowd by today’s standard, but those people were interested. It was one on one, it was face to face. I think those were some of the most rewarding. And people, you know, were not intimidated to come up talk to you afterwards, you know. I mean those great big events, like four or 500 people, yeah, those are fine, maybe a little bit less less personal, but you were still out there talking, and after you finished your talk, you’d go out, you’d wander around through, you’d go out into the hallways, and people would come up, and you had that one on one ability And that personal touch, I guess that’s kind of lost a little bit in webinars. Webinars are kind of great in the sense that lots of people can ask questions in the chat box, but those people, in a sense, they’re imageless, faceless, and so you really don’t ever have a chance to follow up with them and find out where they’re coming from and what their personal experience is. Instead, it’s just a question. There’s another question. Of the question, another question, another question, and, and, and so you don’t really, you don’t you don’t really interact that much. And I’m kind of an interactive person. I want to find out where somebody’s coming from if they don’t like something, if something didn’t work, hey, I want to dig deep and find out why something didn’t work and try to help them out. And in a chat, you can’t really get into that level of of detail or discussion, unfortunately, yeah,

Toban Dyck  28:35

yeah. Could. Could

Jay Whetter  28:38

we have that, you know, like all that scene you described about the soil conservation practices, like, if we needed to make another step like that, could we, like, is that, do we have that same structure to bring something like that,

Toban Dyck  28:56

like zero tillage, like that, yeah, how that was brought into into practice, yeah, yeah,

Jeff Schoenau  29:02

yeah. I mean, I think we do. And I mean, even if I think of, you know, precision crop management, you know, and my variable rate fertilization, kind of seeing the same thing happen, happen again, and seeing this adoption, related to a lot of research, a lot of of of presentations, a lot of extension and and, you know, recognizing that things don’t change overnight. In agriculture, and I certainly learned that in some of the technology that I developed, and thought, well, listen, technology is going to go out and everybody’s going to be using this, 234, years. No, it takes time. It takes time and, and, and, and it’s almost like you can see a progression of how it how it happens. You know? I mean, seeing is believing, and so that kind of demonstration out in the field has, has always been really, really important. And I mean. Now we’re probably better set up than we were in the past. We have, you know, so many research and demonstration farms out there now that offer the ability to showcase things, and, you know, webinars that can reach out to people, if you’re but I still don’t think it can replace, you know, the shows, you know, like the crop production show, for example, those places where people can get out and actually touch and feel and talk to a human being,

Toban Dyck  30:29

yeah. I mean, the zero tillage thing comes up quite a bit. And I’ve chatted with other people about it too, because it was such a big deal for Canada and such a kind of a united almost campaign, I wonder. Now, with extension, you know, we have regenerative, AG, we have all these kind of different things. Sustainability is, If that confuses things too much for us to kind of get behind a singular kind of campaign, that that will, you know, what, through repetition, will actually see change? Are we? Are we getting lost in some of these and some in some of these terms. It’s an open question. I don’t have an answer, yeah,

Jeff Schoenau  31:04

yeah, no, I agree. There’s a lot of different things that are going on, and there’s different forces that are pushing them. You know, I guess I think back to the no till it was really kind of a win, win. I mean, you’re looking you want to increase the efficiency, the operational efficiency of a system. And hey, along with this comes a conservation benefit, you know, and now we realize the carbon sequestration that comes with it, that really we weren’t looking at that much at the beginning. We just wanted to stop that, keep that soil in place and not let it go into the into the air, or be washing down the down into the into the through gullies, into the into the sloughs, but, but, but, yeah, there’s a lot of different. There’s a lot of different tugging and pulling on on things. Now some, some of these things, you know, unfortunately end up getting politicized, and that’s never good either, because then you get these, these factions and and it’s probably a little bit a little bit a little bit tougher now for things that that really aren’t sort of, hey, this is, this is a win, win, win, win, win. And we’ve got to do this. We’ve got to do this. And I think when people saw that dirt in the air, and I did on my farm, see all that dirt in the air in the 80s. And 88 was just horrible. You realize, holy man, you know, we gotta, you know, something’s got to be done.

Jay Whetter  32:28

Is variable rate, one of the things that you think we got to do, and again, it could, it’s going to take time. Yeah,

Jeff Schoenau  32:34

yeah. And, you know, and, you know, I think about it in in many different, different contexts. You know, precision, fertilization, Jay, so you know, it can be, it can be variable rate, yep, with, with, with very sophisticated technology. And, you know, change in rates on the go as you’re moving every, you know, every, every 40 or 50 feet. But it can also be something as saying, Hey, we’re going to go out and we’re going to build the productivity back up of these Knolls, and they’ve lost a lot, because since, since the the time that land was brought under cultivation, we’ve been helping build them up through a no till system. But maybe, you know, there’s, there’s some specific things we can do on those parts of the field to build up, up the fertility. And so some of our research work has, has has looked at that, you know, adding phosphorus, micronutrients, organic amendments, to those, those specific areas of the field. It’s not really variable rate, in a sense, but it’s sort of like On, Off approach. We’re going to go to this area, but we’re going to do some same with salinity. Salinity is another one. And, you know, I’ve been involved in some salinity research work in the last few years. You know, you know, what can you do about it? And what’s really kind of exciting now, I think, is, is there’s a lot of again, coming back to the the plant breeding efforts to develop salt tolerant grasses, even salt tolerant legumes like alfalfa. And, you know, one of the, one of the projects I like to talk about that we had in place was seeding down a saline areas to salt tolerant green wheat grass. And at the beginning that grass was really, really slow to establish. And we had a site, a non saline and a saline site within the same field, and salt and trying to get something to go with her salt, it could be challenging, like kosher weed in there, foxdale. But you know, once it established, over time, the yield on that saline area that forage salt toll and forage grass got better and better and better. After five years, it was the same yield on the saline area as it was in the non saline and actually, the last couple of years, it’s actually been exceeding it, because that grass has been able to access the water in that shallow water table and all those unused nutrients. So, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s coming back to to, you know, thinking about, you know, what you can, what you can, what you can do, and what drives things. Really, if you can take an area that grows nothing but weeds and make it productive again and grow a forage that’s palatable to animals, and also bring down the water table and lower the level of salts there in that profile, maybe be able to go in afterwards with an annual crop, which is something we’re looking at next year. That’s a, you know, that’s, again, kind of a win win situation. Yeah, that’s

Toban Dyck  35:23

interesting. That’s very interesting. So with all your research, do you take a lot of that back to your own farm and put it into practice?

Jeff Schoenau  35:31

Well, here’s what I’ll say about my own farm, is that, is that, over the years, I think pretty well, every one of my graduate students has had a site on my farm as one of their research sites. And a lot of soils been hauled out of there, brought back to the greenhouse and the growth chambers here and and used for research. So yeah, I mean, I have a chance to see what goes on there. And I guess the one thing as well as we use a lot of other sites as well. Of course, you know sites that are close to Saskatoon, like the livestock 4h Center of Excellence discovery farm, but also the Agra arm, sites that extend out out further. So yeah, you want to have a lot of different locations to evaluate things, but one of the things that I do like about the farm is that I’m kind of in control there. So if I want to do something like do a tox topsoil replacement study, where I go and dig this the top soil out of the sluice and haul it back up onto the Knolls. I can do that. I love

Jay Whetter  36:31

that. Do you get any grief where, like, I can see the having that farm to actually do the hands on work is, sounds really great to me, but do you get any other profs, or any other people saying, oh, there’s Jeff again, just getting all this free labor, free research.

Jeff Schoenau  36:52

I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s on, I mean, in a sense, it’s on Farm Research. And I mean, a lot of folks now are doing on farm research through strip trials that they run. And they’ve got to, you know, a yield monitor, and they got their their grain cart with the load cells on it, so they can, they can actually, you know, look at at different rates of some type of Amendment, or the effect of some type of a of a treatment, some type of a crop protection product, and, and so, yeah, to be able to see how something works on your on your own farm, as a farmer, you kind of understand, well, yeah, is that, is that an effect that I’d really be interested in? So if I see something on my farm, and I see something on some other farms, and I look at it on my own farm and say, Well, you know, is that something I’d really be interested in, or is that something I kind of say, Yeah, so what? So actually, it kind of helps me to figure out, you know, what’s really important and worthwhile taking the next step, versus something that you just say, okay, yeah, nah. Didn’t really do anything. And I’ve done it for three or four years, tried this, tried that time, to move on to something else. So in

Toban Dyck  38:02

terms of, like, AG, egg extension, and from your experience working, working in that, in that realm, is there something that the industry isn’t doing, that you feel it should,

Jeff Schoenau  38:14

you know, it’s, it’s, it’s there. A lot of information gets out. It gets out to the farm gate in so many different ways. And I even think of the different magazines that are out and that you can subscribe to electronically, but also appear in the mailbox out in the out in the rural areas. That’s a really great way to get information out. I also have a satellite at the farm, so I watch the rural channel and rfdt, RFD TV. And I kind of like those. They have lots of good information. And I think, you know, I always kind of a little bit jealous that in the United States, some of the US universities, the land grown universities. Oklahoma State University has kind of their own TV show on there. You know what I always think, you know, boy, if I, if I, if I had more time here, maybe that’s something that we could get going here at the University of Saskatchewan, I could

Toban Dyck  39:20

see it. Dr Dirk TV show, yeah,

Jay Whetter  39:21

Jeff, is when you came on this podcast, when you agreed to join us, was there? Was there one thing that you wanted to say that you haven’t had a chance to say yet? Is there because we’re, I mean, we’re always confined to a certain time limit, but what? What do you want to close with?

Jeff Schoenau  39:39

You know, I guess I, I some really good advice was, was passed on to me, and, you know, and I would say it’s, it’s, it’s, know your audience. Know your audience when you’re going out to talk to somebody and to convey an idea. And. And the audiences can be very different. I mean, the audience that you have at a scientific meeting is different than the audience that you have as growers in in the Legion hall in central Butte, and they’re different, again, than the audience that you have with policy makers in government or the audience that you would have as an industry group, so and that, and that’s not just just talking, but that’s also what you’re writing. And I think knowing your audience is something everybody needs to think about and consider when they’re putting together their materials, so to speak. And I mean, I always kind of look at it when I go out, and either it’s, it’s kind of like a show you have to prepare, and you look at your slides, and you think about, for your PowerPoint, if it’s a webinar, yep, how you’re going to convey that when you when you don’t have the opportunity to do the kind of body language, like, like, like I do in a live presentation, I think also in magazine interviews, you know, where you’re, where you want to think about, you know, what’s the point that you want to have that that writer bring out in that that article, what’s the Take home message? And I always like having the opportunity to have a look at that article afterwards and go over it and spend a lot of time on it. You know, to really because you can say things and you kind of blather away and repeat yourself and and if that’s if it all goes in verbatim, it’s not going to be very effective in commute. So, so being able to go through and edit, edit, make better spend the time, yeah, you got to spend time.

Toban Dyck  41:46

Yeah, yeah, that that makes sense. So do you know the question? I

Jay Whetter  41:52

just want to go back to one other thing Jeff said, but I can do that after yours.

Toban Dyck  41:57

Okay, I was, I was going to ask, because it’s like, What? What? What? What does? What does? Dr dirt, what does Jeff? What does Jeff do? Do for fun with no responsibilities, no research going on. What’s, what’s? What do you do? I

Jeff Schoenau  42:09

like to. I like to. I like to tinker with things. I’m I’m kind of, I like to snowball. I like the outdoors. I love the outdoors. So I love to snowmobile. Like to get out ride, motorcycle ride ATV with, with Lynn. We go around. We just cruise around. The hunting outside is great. I mean, yeah, the office, it’s it’s fine. I like to come back to the office. But I really love the getting outdoors. So, yeah, riding around and stuff mechanical old old cars, old trucks, old tractors, tinkering with farm machinery. Yeah, that’s, that’s lots of fun. How big is your shop? It’s an old shop. It’s, it’s, I don’t even know how big it is. It’s an old rigid frame. I finally got some tin on the roof this year. No nice and but so and I still, I don’t have a hoist, so I still lay down on the ground and do stuff underneath it. And at my age here, getting past 60, yeah, that rolling around on stuff isn’t as much fun as maybe when I retire, which isn’t too far away, I’ll get myself a hoist.

Toban Dyck  43:19

I think, I think you should you have asked

Jay Whetter  43:22

a retirement gift, but they probably don’t have the budget for a hoist. Probably just get, like, a bottle of wine, yeah, model car. We mean

Toban Dyck  43:30

you said, you said motorcycles. I know I Yeah, we could go. We could talk about a lot of things, like the machinery size, because my farm’s a roughly similar size to yours and, and I think you had mentioned, yeah, like finding machinery that that’s for acreages of our size is quite difficult, both financially and also just physically. I mean, we just don’t need, no need. But I gotta ask, what kind of motorcycle Do you have? A motorcycle, and what kind of what kind is it? Let’s

Jeff Schoenau  43:59

see, I’ve got a Suzuki van, Van trail bike that I use for checking crops. And then I got a Yamaha v star and a Suzuki Boulevard. Oh, nice. And then I got a one, what I bought back in 1980 still got it and ride it is a little Honda CT 110, trail, kind of the step through one, yeah,

Toban Dyck  44:21

yeah, yeah. I have an old, there’s old PC 50 Honda moped on our farm. It’s like, it’s 73 I think 74 Yeah, you can’t kill them. You can’t know for sure those old Honda motors, they just, they don’t die. They don’t die. Oh yeah, we could go on forever, but motorcycles, but Jay’s got another I

Jay Whetter  44:39

just just going back just this forensic, forensic agrology agronomist. Is that a job like, could somebody go to university to become a forensic agronomist?

Jeff Schoenau  44:50

Well, you know, I think that, I think in the training that you get in the agronomy program, and you. It by the time you came through, you would, I think, be pretty well versed in identifying, you know, what’s what’s wrong based on looking at the results of analysis or even visual inspection. I mean, my fertility class, we, you know, we look at nutrient deficiency symptoms, we talk about tissue testing, soil testing. Do interpretation of soil test reports, tissue test reports. And similarly, you know, in other classes, I know same type of thing in the herbicide weeds class and diseases disease classes that are taught in the in the college as well. You know, looking be being able to identify, in fact, I recall, I’m not sure what the class is still given, but actually, a field class where they go out, take a look at a number of different scenarios out in the field. And you know what’s wrong here? And what you know, what are the approaches that you can use? And let’s use them. And let’s figure out why, why this crop isn’t growing very well here, and why it’s growing better there. So, so

Jay Whetter  46:05

I suppose any agronomist is, is a forensic agronomist in some ways.

Jeff Schoenau  46:08

I mean, they’re dealing with that all the time, right? I mean, and in a lot of cases, what you’re dealing with is you’re dealing with problems, yeah. Why didn’t something work? Why? You know, why does it look like this? I

Jay Whetter  46:19

like the term. It makes you sound like a detective

Toban Dyck  46:21

or something. Well, I mean, although the TV show theme is like Dr dirt to forensic agronomist, you know that would be, that would be amazing.

Jay Whetter  46:29

There you go. That’ll be your u of s TV show, yeah, sometimes

Jeff Schoenau  46:32

you don’t know what’s going on, and sometimes it’s a little mysterious. So maybe you call it like the The X Files, type, yeah.

Toban Dyck  46:40

I love it. I love it, yeah. Well, thanks so much for your time.

Jay Whetter  46:45

Yeah, yeah, that’s great, Jeff, thank you so much. It’s great to talk to you. Yeah, no,

Jeff Schoenau  46:48

that was lots of fun.

Jay Whetter  46:59

Dr, dirt and his challenger, yeah,

Toban Dyck  47:02

I get, I get, I’m gonna say that as a big one the doctor, the doctor dirt was, was awesome, and but you came back to it, you came back to the forensic agronomy point that he made. I had that written down too. I mean, that was, that was a keeper. I love the sound. I just

Jay Whetter  47:18

I’m picturing David Caruso from CSS, yes, I don’t know, putting down his glasses and saying, I don’t know, what was

Toban Dyck  47:27

it? It’s to the song, you don’t get food. Don’t get fooled again. The

Jay Whetter  47:33

Who, yes, so, yeah, so don’t get fooled again. We got, so, we got a who. Intro Song to this forensic, Dr Dirk, forensic, a girl. Yeah.

Toban Dyck  47:40

I feel like. I feel like, for this episode, our theme music should change to CSI Miami. I like that, if we can. I don’t know, I don’t know about royalties and stuff, but maybe seconds or less, it might be an issue. Yeah, yeah, right, right. Or maybe you and I just singing, don’t get fooled again. Here we go. That’s recorded. Whoops. Anyway, that was a good that was, that was, that was a great show. That

Jay Whetter  48:07

was really good Jeff. Just, I just always enjoy hearing from Jeff. He’s got so much energy. And again, I think it comes down to good, you know, there are the principles of the practices of good extension, but then you have the character just brings it to a whole other level. Oh, totally. He’s a really effective communicator, because he speaks with energy. He tons of arm movements and facial expressions, the timing on the pauses. Yeah, he’s just, he’s just a really good communicator.

Toban Dyck  48:40

Yeah, no, I would agree. I love that he does stuff on his farm too. He just uses it as that kind of research playground. Yeah, I was hoping he would. I was hoping, when I asked that, I was hoping for that kind of answer, but I wasn’t surprised that he does, no, that’s, that’s fantastic. And

Jay Whetter  48:54

you connected. You bonded on the motorcycles.

Toban Dyck  48:57

Well, see in our pre notes, it said, it said snow, it said snowmobiles, and then cars and a few other things. ATVs, it didn’t say motorcycles. So I was, you know, I wasn’t gonna had it was probably good, because had I known motorcycles was on there, I would have just launched right into it, hijacked the entire episode, episode talking about but I don’t know what a he mentioned, a van, van. I don’t know what that is. I have it in my notes. I’m gonna look it up. Look up, uh, van, van. So

Jay Whetter  49:25

I think Dr dirt, the forensic a girl just should be in a motorcycle, yeah, maybe with like, a side car full of pails and dirt. Oh, I like that. I like that, and clippers and bug nets. Yeah,

Toban Dyck  49:41

this is, this is all coming together. I love it. CBC, TV show. Well, we’re gonna we, he wants a TV show, yeah, we should? We should, you know, set the stage,

Jay Whetter  49:51

yeah, we’re first got the budget for that. Oh, for sure, we do. Yeah. So that’s the next venture. This has been the extension of. Yes, I’m Jay wetter and

Toban Dyck  50:01

I’m Toban Dyck Till next time, thanks for listening. Added. Thanks for listening. I just really wanted to get the final word.

Jay Whetter  50:16

This has been a burr forest group production. We also want to thank the people you don’t see. We’re

Toban Dyck  50:20

here. We’re chatting away with our guests, but there’s tons of people who work behind the scenes to make this podcast happen. Brian Sanchez, our director, Ashley Robinson, is the coordinator, and Abby wall is our producer and editor. You.