As you can see, I have two subject matters to report on for this year's conference - - LISA and enhancing soil biological activity. In one sense they are different subject matter, yet in my perception, as I shall try to show you, they go hand in hand.

First of all let's talk about LISA. LISA has gotten so popular that perhaps the title should have been, "A Date with LISA". LISA is the acronym for Low Input/Sustainable Agriculture. LISA came about by a sub-title in the 1985 Food Security Act, better know as the 1985 farm bill. Title of this act authorized a research and educational effort to promote the development and adoption of low input farming methods. It focuses on low input practices to enhance farm output, maintain soil productivity, conserve soil, water, nutrients, energy, and protect he environment. In other words, sustainable.

LISA was not funded until 1988 when 3.9 million dollars was provided. It was funded at 4.5 million dollars in 1989 and is marked for the same amount in 1990. The USDA administers the funds. The country is divided into regions with ND being in the North Central region.

Now you know how LISA was conceived when she was born, and who's paying her keep. With LISA being so popular, you no doubt are wondering wheat she looks like, and also if she has any sisters. Bill Eftink of Successful Farming felt there are four "farming sisters" that farmers could court or marry. He said there is LISA - Low Input Sustainable Agriculture - to him she is rather a plain Jane, down to earth and not much glamour. The second sister, HISA, attracted the boys that left the farm and opted for Ag careers outside of production agriculture. She represents High Income/Salaried Agriculture. The third sister is HILLA - High Input/Low Labor Agriculture. HILLA represents big, new machinery, acres and acres of land, unlimited chemicals, and commercial fertilizer. She represents fast buck farming. She could squander your money in a hurry and leave you heartbroken. The fourth sister is MISA- Medium Input/Sustainable Agriculture. Bill feels this is where most of us are. MISA is respectable, allowing a certain amount of inputs and is somewhat conservation minded. LISA is perhaps the most misunderstood, most misaligned of all the sister. All kinds of rumors have been spread about her. Many have implied that LISA is a plan to set agriculture back 100 years with a quarter section land per farmer and subsistent living. To others, it is perceived as steadily declining production levels and increased weed pressures and disease. Some perceive it as being the total salvation of all our production and environmental ills. Finally, there are people who believe LISA represents the organic farmer. I don't know just what your perception of LISA is. To me it is a breath of fresh air. I feel it is the direction production agriculture has to go to remain viable, both economically and environmentally. There are many, many unanswered questions that have to be addressed. Also, we have to learn to ask the right questions.

How do you spell LISA? With four P's according to Jon Baldock, an Ag consultant from Verona, Wisconsin. Production, Profitability, Protection, and Preservation: productive enough to produce a reliable and adequate source of food and fiber; profitable enough to generate short and long term income; protection of water and air quality and conservation of energy; preservation of the well being of plant and animal life and the health and welfare of the farmers who utilize it.

The debate goes on, just what LISA is - - and is not? Dr. Don Anderson from NDSU has given this definition of sustainable agriculture. "It is a production system that is biologically and ecologically capable of being maintained over long periods of time. To be acceptable, the system must e economically sustainable and ecologically sound." LISA is going to mean different things to different people, and also will be site specific. To some it's going to e the certified organic farmer, and I highly commend them for their success and management skills. LISA, as I see it, as least will hopefully enroll many more than the organic farmers as they are known today. If we could all reach that level and desire that type of operation it would be great. However, I think most of you in t is room are LISA operators. You have lowered the inputs of fuel, tillage, and machinery. You have sustained your soil resource base by protecting it from erosion. We don’t throw away everything we have practiced if it is environmentally and economically sound. In my estimation the LISA farmers are going to adopt some for the most sophisticate management, schemes possible. High tech will be incorporated; including such things as biotech as it becomes available. In other words, for LISA to be successful, we are going to have to farm much smarter, and move away from betting the whole farm on one year's production inputs an the next year betting even more and say to heck with the environment.

Dr. John Gardner from the Carrington Research Extension Center, heads up the LISA program for NDSU. He was successful in attaining some of the research funds. Dr. Gardner and his staff are funded for three different projects, two from USDA and one from the Northwest Area Foundation. The projects are designed to cross disciplines. They have cooperating farmers for field size research in different parts of the state.

The projects are as follows:

1. Evaluation of integrated low-input crop/livestock production systems. This project is being carried out in Carrington using beef cattle, and at Hettinger Research Center using sheep. The idea is to utilize as feed, the residue and return the manure to the land as compost. They will be measuring several things, the most notable - livestock and back to the soil - and whole farm economic analysis is being conducted.
2. The second project is substitution of legumes for fallow in the U.S. Great Plains wheat production area. The idea is to utilize a living mulch such as Black medic, which has a low moisture requirement, to replace black fallow. The purpose would be to decrease clean tillage fallow, erosion, and chemical inputs, and to improve soil structure, crop productivity, and profit. It will have ten on-the-farm cooperators in addition to small plot feasibility research on Black medic and other alternate legumes and productions systems. The research trials will be conducted at Carrington, Kansas, and Nebraska.
3. The third project is LISA Impact: It will study an objective, ecological, economic, and sociological comparison of sustainable, transitional, and conventional farming operation. It will involve nine farm cooperators; Three from the Red River Valley, three from the drift prairie, and three from the Missouri plateau region. Its full title is "The Effect of Farm Management Practices on the sustainability of the land and people of North Dakota".

All these projects are using a system approach involving various disciplines. The microbiology involved includes agronomy, animal science, economics, sociology, and micro biology and soil science. The Northern Plains Sustainable Agriculture Society is cooperating with these projects.

Well, LISA, who used to be the plain Jane of the farming sisters, has certainly gotten me and a lot of other people excited. She has always been very practical, sensible, and now is even fashionable and glamorous.

This brings me up to the second topic, and that is management schemes to enhance soil biological activity, As many of you know, I am related to Ole and Lena. To you, that perhaps will explain a lot of my doings. Our breed or lineage is not perceived as being the most intellectual. That, however, has never stopped me from wondering or thinking about things. I can't come up with many answers but I do have some questions.

I wonder and marvel at nature, the whole ecosystem. I wonder how could this prairie be so fertile and the grass grow so lush and tall without the aid or advice of the Fertilizer Institute on Fertility or the Ag. Chemical Association aid and advice to control the weeds. Well, my Uncle Ole told me not to worry about it, it was just part of the big bang, whatever that is. But then I wondered about other things. How could Thomas Jefferson grow 150 bushels of corn at Monticello, Virginia in 1700? No hybrids, no modern mechanical technology, no commercial fertilizers and pesticides. I also wondered about my friend, Grandfather, who farmed southwest of Fargo. He recorded in his diary that in 1882 he grew 60-bushel wheat on 1000 acres and sold it for $3.00. Again without the aid of modern technology! I wonder how could the Inca Indians in South America have had such sophisticated agriculture, even before Columbus set sail. I wonder how far we have come.

A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to visit the Rodale Research Farm at Emmaus, Pa. as part of a delegation representing NDSU. Before I went there, my vision of them was of organic gardening with a compost pile of leaves and grass and rotten tomatoes, which they used for fertilizer, and chasing bugs with a fly swatter. I had an eye opener! They were growing crops successfully on a commercial scale, using rotations and legumes with very little commercial fertilizer and hardly any insect problems. Well, I thought they are trained scientists with a lot of help and they can accomplish these things.

But my curiosity was aroused. I then went to a Pro-Farmer Seminar of low cost/renewable farming - a new phrase and it sounded even better. They had a variety of speakers, including a veterinarian. I thought they were coming right off the wall - - but it wet my appetite. I attended another pro-Farmer Seminar this time in September of '88. We were going to visit some farmers who were practicing low cost/renewable farming. The big drought of '88 still held the land short of moisture. Would there be anything growing? We visited an Amish farm. He had a wonderful crop. Well, I thought Amish farming would be different and have a lot of livestock and a lot of available, cheap labor to pull weeds. Not so! They raised mostly corn and soybeans with some wheat, no livestock, and a very efficient appearing operation. Next, we went to a farmer by the name of Larson. Now the test - I like his name, but what would his crop look like. It looked just as good as the Amish farmer's. He shoed us a field that looked awfully good, "must be irrigated," I thought. But it wasn't I called after harvest. The wheat yielded 74 bushels per acre with herbicide cost of less than $9.00 per acre.

What was the common denominator for Jefferson to the Trottier Farm at Fargo, to the Amish and the Larson farm in Illinois, to the Benson farm at Stephen? It wasn't John Deere Tractors and John Deere plows. It wasn't NH3 AND 11-48-0. It wasn't Hoelen, Treflan, Fargo, Roundup, or Glean. In fact it wasn't even no-till. The dominant denominator was a healthy and active biological soil. The common themes among these modern day farmers I visited with are these: low inputs of fertilizer - less weed pressure - less herbicide use.

So what are we going to do about it in Section 2? We are going to flirt with LISA. I want to change her name to regenerative agriculture. We also want to give her some new tools for the food factory. We are going to try to do some things to enhance the soil biological activity. Soil organisms are a resource, just as is soil that we need to manage prudently. Soil organisms are living creatures and require the same thing humans need to sustain life. They need air, water, and food - which are also resources we need to manage prudently. We can manage all three to enhance biological life. Tillage and cropping systems and management practices affect air space. Unless we irrigate, which we don't, we have little or no control over the amount of moisture we receive, but we can mange the moisture we do get - - - not only to collect it but also to store it. Air space and carbon organic matter affects the water holding capacity of the soil. Food can be managed by residue management and by certain inputs.

We have decided to quit using NH3. I am not going to argue that nitrogen is nitrogen, but rather give our main reason for the switch. The first one is safety. I had a near accident. Luck was with me and I was spared. I decided in less than a minute that this was it. I closed the valve and pulled the tank back to town. We are now using 28% liquid - a little more costly, but much more versatile for a total program. We are working with a lab in Fairmont, MN. We do not apply the 28% solution along. We usually add either 3 gal of molasses or 3 lb. of table sugar per acre. Often we will add liquid fish. You know the Indians were doing this when the white man settled on this land. We have come a long way, haven't we? We also add water to bring the total spray volume up to 20 gal. per acre. Why do we add these products? It helps to stabilize the 28% and it also provides us with a source of carbon, enzymes and energy. It is a source of food for our livestock which we have underground such as the earthworms and microorganisms. We want to enhance the size of our livestock herd and put them to work. We will often add 12-0-0-26 to this mix.

I feel those of us in the no-till movement have done a remarkable job of controlling wind and water erosion. We have come a long way and have learned many things by the seat of our pants. We also have been willing to share these with each other. I feel it is now time for us to address the second component of erosion, and that is the ore insidious erosion that takes place underneath the soil surface: the erosion of our mineral content, our carbon organic matter and biological life. Some of our practices in the future may not be that of a no-till purist. A light tillage operation may be used if it looks beneficial and cost effective. However, it will be of a conservation mode. We feed well about what we are trying to do. I think it is a step in the right direction. I am convinced that this is very dynamic and will change as we learn more. I try to never say "never", and "always" is a long time.

In the first chapter of Genesis, verses 26-30, we have the account of God's creation of man in His own image. God blessed man and gave him dominion of nature by man. The biblical concept of dominion is connected to two other key ideas: (1) covenant and (2) stewardship.

The concept of covenant deals with God's covenant with man. It states that God will remain faithful to us and will provide everything we need to live. For our part of the covenant, we are expected to be faithful to God and to live in a loving relationship with Him and our fellow creatures. In this God expects us to take care of the land. There are no free lunches or voids in nature. Everything is connected to everything else and nature knows best.

LISA is going to wear many different dresses. One for your farm, perhaps, a different one on mine. Let's continue to have style shows and compare dresses.