Is there an amount of, uh, tillage that's within that no-till regime that is probably okay, but if you start really going beyond, that's when major damage starts to happen?

Yes.

Very good point.

One, just one thing that I like for the audience to, uh, the listener to understand, you used the word we use carbon.

It's more we lose carbon, because plants don't use it, carbon from the soil.

We lose it in terms of basically CO2 as a mechanism of respiration.

We accumulate carbon in the soil by bringing it in, and we lose it from CO2 emitted.

So all these different forms of carbon, when you talk about that, how do you explain this to people and, and how do you value these in the system?

Bruno, can you speak to some of the technology that Jeff or other farmers have used?

I think Jeff mentioned the critical one, which has been the opportunity of mapping fields, thanks to the opportunity to have GPS on the fields.

If I take everybody back about 25 years ago, you would not have straight lines as much as you do now.

So the opportunity of having GPS and knowing exactly where these different yields are coming from has been eye-opening for us as a scientist.

what we have added to the technology is that not every farmers will have yield maps.

And so we always, as a university advanced research in the field of agriculture, we would love to help Jeff, but we need to help all the other farmers.

It's like the parents love all their children, right? So we need to transfer the technology to others that do not have the yield mapping.

Bruno, can you speak to this, the statement?

What cover crops would be beneficial to have in the ground under that snow cap, and why is that beneficial, and how does that play out over the season from the fall through the freeze to the thaw?

Very good.

Um, I was hoping we will get there because if you notice so far, we have not mentioned one word of, uh, possibility of continue to degrade, um, the land, which is erosion, soil erosion.

So if you retain the residues, and you have those roots as a cement that they keep the particle, doesn't matter you got snow.

The snow blows, but not everything else.

So first benefit of keeping the soil green in terms of having a cover is to protect from rain erosion and wind erosion.

Okay? Second, remember that wheat, winter wheat resist to a temperature of minus 17 Celsius.

They're sharing nutrients.

Are there specific plants or crops that are net carbon sequesterers? Like they are going to end up putting more in than they take out at the end of the day.

Okay.

So that, question like like the complexity behind it depends on if you isolate a plant by itself without management associated with it is one story if you manage so the example that obviously comes natural would be a corn plant right you know a corn versus a native a sweet grass or a native a mix of native vegetation now Corn, if it is managed properly can reach a significant amount of biomass that is accumulated.

And it's still one of the king of the crops.

It sequesters more carbon than a forest at saturation, because saturation meaning that has already growth.

But even yearly, when you accumulate the woods, what does the forest brings in terms of sequestering? The leaves.

Then the leaves come.

But if you have nitrous oxide, which is worse at the end of the day, shouldn't there also be some concern about containing nitrogen within the system? And is nitrogen the same as carbon? If you reach that carbon saturation point in the soil where it's at equilibrium, wouldn't Could nitrogen be the same in a natural system where everything that's being used is being stored in the soil, either in the biomass or in the living microbial biomass in the soil?

How do you view carbon sequestration when it comes to soil?

Yes, carbon sequestration is a pretty hot topic.

It's covered in the media extensively, and we should ask, why is it that? I would say soil with no carbon is like a body with no soil.

It's just basically the life of the soil.

And The goal is to sequester carbon, which means taking it from the atmosphere through the process of photosynthesis as we convert the energy from the sun into carbon and carbon is sequestered by the plants and is accumulated in the soil in two ways.

One is by having roots growing in the soil, that's organic compounds, organic materials, they stay in the soil.

And at the end of the growing cycle, When you have anything that we call, you know, stover residues, you obviously want to keep them in the ground because that's carbon that was sequestered from the atmosphere.

At the end of the day, if you put that system in a vacuum, does it balance itself out where if one unit of carbon comes out of the atmosphere, one ends up in the soil?