Q&A with Johnny Hunter, President of Castor River Farms
Sandra Noonan:
We’re really excited to bring Castor River Farms rice onto the Just Salad menu. So tell us: Why is your farm different?
Johnny Hunter:
We take a completely different approach to how we grow crops, manage our land, and what the drivers are behind the business. For Castor River, one of our biggest drivers is soil health. We feel as a family and as a company that using sustainability and soil health as your driver for decision-making will ultimately make you a better company.
Sandra Noonan:
How do you measure healthy soil?
Johnny Hunter:
At Castor River, we believe a healthy soil is a fertile soil. For us, soil fertility is measured in three different key areas. There is chemical fertility – think nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, copper, zinc, calcium. This is the fertility that modern agriculture has really been built upon, and it's been the main focus for so many operations all over the world. And we shouldn't discount that fertility because it needs to be in place. The other area we look for in fertility is the physical fertility of the soil. What is the soil doing structure wise? That allows permeability – it allows air and water to flow into the soil profile to ensure that it's able to function properly.
The third area that we pay a lot of attention to at Castor River, that very few others do, is the biological fertility of our soil. One thing that a lot of people don't realize is that in a teaspoon of healthy soil, there's more biological organisms than there are people on the planet. That's hard to wrap your mind around. It’s something that you've got to plan for and you've got to have a mindset for and say, okay, how are we feeding that biology?
And so you bring all three of those together and you create a strategy that creates that soil health.
Sandra Noonan:
Did you have a eureka moment on all of this? Was your farm at one point not paying so much attention to soil health and then one day you wanted to change? How did this come about?
Johnny Hunter
Yes. Early in my farming career, I did farm what you would call conventionally, the way that I'd been taught, the way that the universities had promoted. The universities promote fertility programs or they'll promote a particular herbicide program. So you learn all these things and so that's how I approached agriculture.
In 2012, in southeast Missouri, we had a historic drought, and it was a really bad year for my farming operation. We spent more money on crops than we had ever spent in our lives. And we had one of the poorest crops in our lives – which really sent me back to the drawing board, asking, What did I do wrong here? Why is my system so fragile? Because a resilient farming system should have put up with that better than mine did. And so through months and months and months of research and reading and reaching out, I stumbled upon this guy named Ray Archuleta.
And Ray is one of the great proponents of soil health in our country. He was pictured in a documentary recently called Kiss the Ground.
I reached out to Ray Archuleta at midnight on a Saturday with this really long email explaining my position and asking him to help me figure this out. And Ray called me Sunday morning at 10:00 a.m., and we talked for 2 hours. That was the beginning of my soil health journey. Ray only asked me for one thing: that if someone came to me wanting the same help that I’d wanted, that I would help them. And in turn, I've passed that on countless times.
Sandra Noonan:
That's a great story. You said your system felt too fragile after that experience. What does that mean?
Johnny Hunter:
Whether people realize it or not, you are in the middle of a system that you have created. And depending on how your system is designed, either your system is based upon artificial inputs and intense management of those inputs, or on the other end of the spectrum, your system revolves around more holistic practices that work with nature and boost systems that nature has already provided.
[My mindset] at that point in time was, this is how I've been taught how to farm… [But] I knew that sooner or later we would have another drought. As the leader of my company, as the leader of my family, I felt it was very import
ant for me to dig in. I had to come to terms with the failure…and get through that mentally and emotionally. And then I had to be strong enough to admit to myself that maybe what I'd been doing wasn't the right thing and it was time for a change.
Change is hard for everyone. I think it's especially hard for farmers because we're generationally minded and we grew up admiring our grandfathers and our fathers and our uncles and people who are involved in the operations. Changing what has worked for all those years is a really hard thing for most farm families to go through. But fortunately, I was in a position to do it. And my family supported me all the way through the transition and the change. And ultimately, I think it was the right thing to do.
Sandra Noonan:
So what changed on your farm and how difficult was it to make those changes?
Johnny Hunter:
We went from a kind of conventional minimum-till operation to a no-till operation.
Once I understood how tillage was affecting the structure of my soil, and how tillage really only provides the opportunity for more tillage, that was one of the first things that had to go.
Then we realized that the soil needed a living root in it as many days out of the year as possible. That's how the soil biology truly gets fed – through living roots. And then we needed to have diverse species of cover crop, or we needed diverse species of things growing on our land to build diversity into this ecosystem. We didn't realize we had a habitat or an ecosystem. Turns out we were just mismanaging it. The ecosystem let us know loud and clear that it had had enough of what we'd been doing. So in turn, we had to change. From there, we ended up changing our pest management program, where we began questioning the use of a lot of these insecticides and fungicides and how much benefit they were actually bringing to the farm.
We cut a lot of that out and ultimately cut it all out. Then we went to our fertility program and began to question how much fertilizer we really needed to do the job, and what forms of fertilizer could we use that were less abrasive on the environment and more eco-friendly.
And then it just flows on from there. And then you look up and you're like, holy crap, I'm on a sustainability journey. And that's the journey we're on today. It's just a lot of continual innovation of your practices, looking for more ways that work with nature rather than against it.
Sandra Noonan:
Rice farming, for many people, is associated with flooding fields. Did you flood previously and then go to a no-flood system?
Johnny Hunter:
Earlier in my career, we flooded our ice fields. And again, that's how we've been taught to farm. That's how rice farming has been done for millennia. But once we got soil biology on the top of our priority list, what you realize is that, hey, flooding doesn't fit into the picture anymore. The biology we're trying to promote and foster and give a home to in our soil profile is aerobic biology. Aerobic biology needs food, water, shelter and air. You and I are aerobic biology. You can't put aerobic biology underwater for four months a year and expect it to thrive. Only the toughest, meanest stuff on the planet can live in anaerobic conditions. And that's when we figured out something else to do, and it's made all the difference in the world for us.
Sandra Noonan:
I've also read that flooded fields are perfect conditions for methane. So there's the greenhouse gas component as well that you're avoiding by not flooding your field.
Johnny Hunter:
Yeah, there's a host of benefits. We've realized a huge cost savings by not having to go through all those steps to flood the field. And there's a huge water conservation component where we feel that, again, we're well below what the average rice grower uses in terms of water resources. When you make a change, you've got to make it for all the right reasons. Taking out the flooding was one of the first changes we saw where we could really move the needle for our sustainability, for sure.
Sandra Noonan:
Do you think that the transition to regenerative practices like this is inevitable? Or is there something just much harder about what you're doing that prevents other farmers from doing it?
Johnny Hunter:
The transition is hard for a farmer the same way it is for your average person who says, “You know what? I want to adopt a healthier lifestyle.” The biggest shift you have to make is a mental shift. It was incredibly difficult to shift mentally into this new way. But I think all farmers inherently have the ability to do this. And no, I don't think that sustainable farming practices are inevitable. I think technology has and continues to provide options to farmers who want to farm in a more conventional, traditional way. And if that's how they fit into the supply chain and they're able to be successful with that, well, who am I to tell them what to do?
However, for my family, for my company, sustainability sits on top of our priority list.
Sandra Noonan:
You had this incredible mentor in the form of Ray Archuleta. Do you think policy is important to shift farming towards regenerative?
Johnny Hunter:
I think so. When you look at the modern US agricultural system, yes, policy is always going to help shape what that future looks like. I think there's a real opportunity for policy to help farmers make this transition and to go down these paths. And what gets mentioned sometimes, but not enough, is people need to realize that inherently farmers always want to do the right thing for their land, but they don't always know how to do it. They don't always have the Ray Archuletas sitting next to them like I did who can help provide that guidance and that structure and the plan.
Sandra Noonan:
Understood. Just Salad is now serving Castor River Farms Rice. Is there anything you would want our customers to know about farming?
Johnny Hunter:
I think the average person would be surprised how much they have in common with their farmer. And I think the average person would be pleased to know that as a farmer, I want to feed my family the best food that we can get, just as they want to feed their family the same way. And so while we probably have different backgrounds and our daily lives look very different, there's so many straight lines you can draw back to your farmer. We're all sitting on this planet Earth, flying through space together, and it's the farmer's job to help feed this world – and we take that responsibility to heart, and that holds true through a large portion of agriculture.
Sandra Noonan:
Thank you so much John.
John Hunter
Oh, thank you all. We really appreciate this partnership. Castor River is here for you.