Sonny's Journey in Regenerative Practices

On a surprisingly cold morning in March, the Soil Health Labs team went out to visit Sonny Price on his farm, Bruce Price & Sons Farm, in Dillon, SC.

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My first impression of Sonny was of generosity and joy. I met him for the first time as a new writer on the Soil Health Labs team and a stranger on his property on that early morning, and he was still beaming at me, ushering us into his office to get warm. He was laughing and smiling even when talking about losses sustained by his previous modes of farming.

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“Lord, we were putting out so much fertilizer. Maintenance fertilizer, that's all you could hear– ‘The crop pulled all of this off, and you've got to put it back cause it's gone.’  We were wasting so, so much money! I wish we had it all back, I could have been retired by now,” he says with a gentle laugh and something like honest mirth.

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Sonny’s journey in regenerative practices

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A little over ten years ago, Sonny was one of the recipients of a Conservation Innovation Grant from the SC NRCS, incentivizing him for the first time to implement consistent cover crops. He has been cover cropping ever since. But cover crops were not the only change prompted on his farm at that time.

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When Sonny started working with the NRCS and the Soil Health Labs team, they dug some soil pits on his land in order for Sonny to get more personal with his soil profile. He was shocked.

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“There’s already so much down in the ground, it's unbelievable. We thought, what if we could pull those nutrients from deep in the soil profile back up with these roots, these cover crops? In time, we started reintegrating these nutrients back into our entire soil profile. But we got a lot of ridicule from the fertilizer guys.”

Something Sonny reminded me of in this moment was the incredible effect of peer pressure, and its sometimes manipulative outcomes. Sonny has witnessed himself and others being dismissed, laughed at, or talked down to when trying to share unfamiliar farming methods. Fear of being treated this way in one’s community can often discourage farmers from making curious, bold, or necessary choices.

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“I mean, you couldn't stand in a meeting and talk about not putting fertilizer down. We were called down. Even some pretty academic types called us down, they told us, ‘You can't say that.’

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In farming, as in any industry, there is a strict set of norms, and those norms have their many dedicated adherents. Of these adherents are not only farmers and farming families, but also the many people that work alongside farmers, selling equipment, and dealing fertilizers and other chemicals; essentially pushing a strict set of farming practices. The careers of these salespeople and the successes of their business often rely upon farmer’s staying committed to standard, sometimes antiquated, farming practices that rely on the things they are selling. This dynamic opens a rich space for slight deception or coercion, as often is seen in the sales industry at large.

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“I’m not going to let the guy I'm buying fertilizer from do my soil sampling ever again,” laughed Sonny. “So instead, we brought in an independent guy to do our sampling for us and our recommendations. And, tell you the truth, even he was just covering his behind. Up until we got the Conservation Innovation Grant, every input recommendation was an overestimation. They would rather estimate over than under, because then, under the conventional wisdom, it couldn't ever be their fault if your yields suffered.”

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Along with cover cropping and input reduction, Sonny has also gone to true no-till on his fields. He’s noticed a flurry of benefits since. He used to subsoil, but he noticed that it would soften the ground to the point that if the land received rain, it would bog when he tried to get out there to plant or harvest. He quit subsoiling in 2015, and now he can get into his land to plant a lot sooner than his conventional-till neighbors.

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“A couple years back, when we had all that heavy rain, everybody had a time getting soybeans out of the field because they were bogging the combines up. And we trucked right along, we got our crops out earlier,” explained Sonny. “A lot of fellows lost beans that year because they couldn't get them out. And then the following spring everybody had to go back out whether you were strictly no till or whatever, a lot of guys were going back out there and having to disc all this land up to get the ruts out that the combines made to prepare the land for spring planting. And we didn't have to pull a disc back out on our land at all.”

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All in all, Sonny’s soil structure has gained integrity. He told us an anecdote about his friend and nearby farmer, Carl Colemen, taking a soil sample from his farm and from a neighboring, conventionally-tilled farm, and then driving out to Columbia (about two hours) to show the soils at a demonstration. “He had put those samples in a pan, and on the way to Columbia, the pan that came out of the conventionally tilled field just turned to mush. It was soup when he got there. The no-tilled soil held its structure, it was just as pretty as it was when he dug that soil out and put it in a pan. We were just amazed by that soil.”

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Regenerative Wariness

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Farmers practicing adaptive, regenerative approaches to their land management tend to have a different disposition than farmers following traditional techniques. Traditional approaches are often prescriptive, leading farmers to feel trapped or frustrated if soil responds poorly, while they’ve been ‘doing everything right.’ Sonny is one of many in the regenerative movement that understands that the land is more variable than a simple problem to be solved, it’s not something that can be dominated by the human mind or machinery.

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He’s still facing new challenges with the soil; he is still learning about the needs of the soil. To him, this doesn’t reflect any failure on his part or on the soil’s part. “I think what makes farming so exciting is to see change, especially now. I used to get in the same rut, same routine over and over, but the cover cropping has really been eye opening– it’s been a challenge, and still is a challenge. We’re still learning. It brings me more questions every day, and I’d rather have questions than think I know all the answers. I don’t think I’d be doing right by the soil if I approached it like I had all the answers.”

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Sonny is currently struggling with developing longer taproots with his cotton to access deeper levels of the soil and develop a stronger hold in the soil for harvesting. He’s found that he has a very dense subsoil layer as built up by years of horizontal tillage. Price references agronomist Ken Ferrie regarding this soil compaction issue: Ferrie has studied the phenomenon that occurs when soils that have been horizontally tilled for generations stop being tilled entirely. Ferrie explains that dense, stubborn subsoil layers are often the result of many years of horizontal tillage, and that prior to switching to no-till, it may be fruitful to employ even just one round of intentional vertical tillage.

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Ferrie urges that prior to switching tillage techniques, farmers should determine what layers are present in the soil. Ferrie’s preferred method is to dig up corn roots during the growing season:

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“Paying attention to resistance as you dig, seeing how roots penetrate and examining soil moisture levels will show you whether layers exist,” Ferrie explains. “Knowing the depth and seriousness of layers will help you decide what tool or tools you need to transition to a vertical system.” (Do You Have Soil Compaction and Density Changes That Impede Roots and Water? Here’s How to Find Out | AgWeb)

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Farmers oriented toward soil health seem more often open to sharing their tools and experiences with other farmers. We asked Sonny how he feels about the accuracy of this trend.

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“I want to see everybody do good. And this is a good thing. It's been a great journey for us to see what the Lord created. And I want to always share the Lord with people. And this is one way I know I can do that,” he sat back a bit in his chair, in the endearing office of his Southern family farm. “I think as farmers a lot of times we forget the soil is alive, we get in the mindset that we’re doing all this ourselves. But this soil is alive, it is divine– and if we can give ourselves to it, it will give us a livelihood.”

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To see more from Sonny and his soil health journey, visit our Farmer Scientists and Cotton and Covers videos on YouTube.

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