Episode #78: Adam Chappell
Regenerative Agriculture Podcast
AEA Marketing
4.7 • 546 Ratings
🗓️ 30 December 2021
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Adam Chappell is a regenerative grower and cover crop advocate from Cotton Plant, Arkansas. Adam started growing with his dad and brother on their 7,500 acre property in 2005, but by 2009 pigweed issues alone had nearly pushed them into bankruptcy. Knowing there had to be a better way, Adam began educating himself about the power of regenerative agriculture, implementing a cover cropping strategy that he claims saved the family farm. Today, Adam's operation grows a variety of broadacre crops and continues to make strides in ecological health and crop performance.
Throughout their conversation, Adam and AEA Founder John Kempf discuss:
- Adam's start in agriculture and how cover cropping brought the farm "from the brink of bankruptcy to a profitable enterprise."
- Adam's current methodologies for crop rotation and cover cropping.
- How the adoption of regenerative practices has contributed to improved profitability.
- Adam's background in entomology and ecology and the shifts in insect populations he has seen over time.
- Questioning the necessity of soil testing and becoming wary of "sales tools."
- Implementing Dr. Norman Lupo's root intensification method and other row spacing strategies.
- Livestock integration and the story of Adam's first purchase of cattle.
- Why Adam's goals for the future include "getting smaller."
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi friends, this is John and this is the regenerative agriculture podcast where we talk about |
| 0:04.7 | agronomic sciences and cultural management practices that can regenerate soil health, plant health, |
| 0:10.2 | and ultimately public health. My guest for this episode is a farmer that you may have heard of, |
| 0:16.5 | but if not you're about to hear from him now, Adam Chapel from down south in the United States. Adam, it's an honor to have you here. If you could you're about to hear from him now, Adam Chappell from down south in the United States. |
| 0:22.1 | Adam, it's an honor to have you here. |
| 0:23.8 | If you could kick us off, tell us a little bit about your farming operation and how your |
| 0:30.0 | management has evolved over the last couple of decades. |
| 0:33.4 | Sure. |
| 0:34.0 | Glad to be with you this morning, John. |
| 0:36.4 | I farm with my brother, Seth. We farm about 7,500 acres in Cotton Plant, Arkansas. And if you're wondering where that is, it's halfway between Little Rock and Memphis. So in East Central Arkansas, it's really easy to find on a map. Just follow 40 halfway and then go up about five miles and you'll find us. We farm |
| 0:55.8 | corn, soybeans, rice, cotton, and some small grains in the winter, mostly wheat and oats. |
| 1:04.4 | And we've recently integrated cattle in the last few years whenever we can. That's a kind of a situation dependent process. So it's not |
| 1:15.1 | every year, but it's every year that we can. We started off farming with our dad in 2005 and he |
| 1:21.4 | retired in 2014 after a series of unfortunate events on the farm and we've had it full tilt from there and kind of got |
| 1:30.4 | started on this regenerative path not knowing anything about regenerative ag we i don't know if |
| 1:37.1 | your listeners are familiar with my story but if not i'll just go ahead and tell it to them of |
| 1:42.3 | yeah please tell us from the beginning we have many listeners from all over the world. Yeah, so we started farming in 2005 with Dad. So, you know, we got in on the tail end of Roundup's effectiveness and quickly figured out that Roundup was losing the fight to pigweed. You know, so we started doing everything that we were supposed to trying to reduce tillage. |
| 2:02.1 | Of course, we weren't completely no-till then, and we're as close to completely no-till as we |
| 2:05.6 | can get now, but we started reducing tillage and just overlapping residuals and mixing up modes of action |
| 2:12.0 | and rotating and doing everything we were supposed to do, and we were losing that fight to pigweed. |
| 2:16.3 | That weed was single-handedly putting us in the bankruptcy category. I mean, we were supposed to do and we were losing that fight to pigweed that weed was single-handedly |
| 2:17.7 | putting us in the bankruptcy category when we were getting closer every year just you know refinancing |
... |
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