Speakers
2027 Soil Health Conference Speakers
Karl Palmberg
Karl Palmberg farms along with his wife and family on his parent’s farm near Larchwood, IA. After growing up farming and raising cattle with his dad, Karl went to college at SDSU and then spent 12 years away from the farm pursuing a military career. Karl and his wife Carissa moved back to the farm in 2012, brought the farm out of retirement, and started farming as Karl continued his military service in the South Dakota Air National Guard. Since 2012, Karl has endeavored to increase health in the soil, plants, animals, and people. That pursuit led him to strip-tillage, no-till, cover cropping, and bringing cattle back to the farm. While pursuing the production of healthy food, the focus on the farm has shifted away from corn and soybean to grass-fed beef. Now that Karl has retired from the military and is concentrating fully on the farm, he sells grass-fed beef direct to consumers in the Sioux Falls tri-state area under the brand name Sunlight and Rain. Their focus is producing steakhouse quality beef that is healthy enough to be considered medicine. Through his vocation as a farmer, Karl desires to worship God through learning about, enabling, and telling others about the amazing interactions built into creation.
Keith Berns
Keith Berns combines over 25 years of no-till farming experience with 10 years of teaching agriculture and computers. In addition to no-tilling 2,000 acres of irrigated and dryland corn, soybeans, rye, triticale, peas, sunflowers, and buckwheat in southcentral Nebraska, he also co-owns and operates Green Cover Seed, one of the major cover crop seed providers and educators in the United States. Through Green Cover Seed, Keith has experimented with over 100 different cover crop types and hundreds of mixes planted into various situations and has learned a great deal about cover crop growth, nitrogen fixation, moisture usage, and grazing utilization of cover crops. Keith was honored by the White House as a 2016 Champion of Change for Sustainable and Climate-Smart Agriculture. Keith also developed the SmartMix Calculator, one of the most widely used cover crop selection tools on the internet. Keith has a masters degree in agricultural education from the University of Nebraska and teaches on cover crops and soil health more than 40 times per year to various groups and audiences. Keith was also appointed by Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts to be part of the Nebraska Healthy Soils Task Force and had the privilege of serving as the chairman.
Dr. Chuck Rice
Dr. Chuck Rice is a University Distinguished Professor of Soil Microbiology at Kansas State University.
He grew up in Yorkville, Illinois which had a population of about 1,500 people at the time. Throughout the years he became involved in many aspects of 4-H. Rice received his B.S. in Geography from Northern Illinois University. He then completed his Masters and Doctorate from the University of Kentucky. Rice began his undergraduate work in biology but it was a honors geography water resource class that would lead him to switching his major. “I liked the courses and faculty in geography,” Rice said, “I switched over and never regretted it.”
After graduating, he took an internship doing research at Argonne National Laboratory and found his calling. His advisor encouraged him to expand his horizons and go to graduate school — and he ended up at the University of Kentucky, where he earned both his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Agronomy. Rice said the mentoring from faculty helped guide him to his current occupation. In 1988 Rice joined the Agronomy faculty at K-State. “It was a job that was a great fit,” Rice said, “I liked the University, faculty, the culture of the Department, and how people worked together.”
Rice specializes in soil microbiology, carbon cycling, and climate change. His extensive research has allowed him to gain helpful insight in order to help his students. Rice advises students to take international trips and have a lot of diverse experiences. “Enroll in courses that have nothing to do with your major, you never know,” Rice said. “Even my geography courses have benefitted me by helping me better understand other cultures during my international experiences.” There are many positive aspects to being specialized, but it is challenging to link that specialty to broader areas. “It is important to teach how a certain area of specialty, such as soil microbiology, has an impact beyond the local level and get students to think about the bigger picture,” Rice said.
He is a co-winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his work with the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. His research has been supported by more than $15 million in grants from the USDA, U.S. Department of Energy, National Science Foundation, and others. He has advised more than 30 graduate students and has more than 100 publications.
In addition to his involvement in research and teaching in soil microbiology at K-State, he has been active with the Soil Science Society of America, where he served as president in 2011. He currently serves on the National Academies Board on Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Air Quality Task Force. He also chairs the Commission on Soils, Food Security and Public Health of the International Union of Soil Sciences, and is a Fellow of the Soil Science Society of America, American Society of Agronomy, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Dr. Rice spends his remaining free time relaxing by doing the things that he enjoys most, reading and gardening. Rice said he likes the physical work from getting outside in the garden. “I enjoy seeing the results and accomplishments from my work in the garden,” Rice said.
Dr. Thomas Dykstra
Dr. Thomas Dykstra is the Laboratory Director of his own lab, Dykstra Laboratories in Gainesville, Florida. For 28 years, he has studied bioelectromagnetics (how electromagnetic fields affect life), especially as it relates to insects. He holds entomology degrees from Cornell University as well as the University of Florida and has been awarded eight patents. Dr. Dykstra consults for farmers, agricultural companies, tech firms, attorneys, international governments, and insurance agencies. He has visited three continents and presents lectures on diverse topics covering entomology, olfactory physiology, biophysics, paramagnetism, neurobiology, and biological antennae. In terms of active research, Dr. Dykstra deciphered the insect olfactory code back in 2016 and characterizes chemoreceptors for various medical and agricultural insect pests. He teaches both farmers and agricultural consultants how to raise healthy crops for their families and for profit.
Erin Martin
Erin Martin is the founder and CEO of FreshRx Oklahoma.
An Oklahoman on track to be a lawyer, Erin’s first job in a retirement community inspired her to pursue a degree in gerontology instead.
During her Masters program at USC, Erin ran a team of advocates serving over 700 low income older adults in the Southern California area. She was troubled by how little support people get as they age. So Erin founded Conscious Aging Solutions, a company dedicated to helping older adults navigate health and social systems so they can age successfully. As Erin’s work focused on strategies for longevity, she found that food—access to quality food—had an enormous impact on our life spans.
As her interest in food grew, she became certified in Regenerative Soil Advocacy. Erin moved back home to Tulsa during the pandemic to find that the supply chain disruptions had only intensified what was already a food system problem in the city. Lack of access to nutritious foods was contributing to poor health outcomes and high mortality rates for Tulsans, especially those with chronic conditions.
In 2021, Erin co-founded a prescription produce program called FreshRx Oklahoma. The program’s success has launched her onto the national stage.
Now, Erin champions food as medicine to promote the longevity of underserved communities, increase nutrition security, support the environment, revitalize the agricultural economy, and decrease system-wide health care costs.
Roy Thompson
Roy Thompson farms and ranches with his wife, Meredith, and their three children near Akaska, SD. They use regenerative practices to grow crops and manage their grazing land, and they have begun a grass-fed and grass-finished beef enterprise. Thompson credits consuming regeneratively grown food with curing his Crohn’s disease.
“I started watching YouTube videos featuring Gabe Brown,” Roy says. “What he was saying about regenerative agriculture and soil health made sense to me. At the end of one of the videos, Gabe included his phone number, so I called it, expecting a secretary or someone else to answer. Instead, it was Gabe who picked up. I was shocked that it was actually him. After chatting with him for a while, Gabe recommended that I read Jon Stika’s book, A Soil Owner’s Manual. After more reading and learning, I began implementing soil health practices and following the six principles of soil health.”
Roy and his wife, Meredith, also started looking to stack enterprises by raising grass-fed and grass-finished beef, using adaptive stewardship grazing methods to maximize soil biology and improve the nutrient density of their beef. Roy says Meredith wasn’t initially sold on the idea, but then she tasted some steaks and burgers from their cover crop-finished beef.
“She said, ‘This is alright. I can definitely eat this beef.’ So that got me really excited,” Roy says.
Roy says that had it not been for the adversity he experienced through his battle with Crohn’s disease, he probably wouldn’t have been led down the path of regenerative agriculture—a path that has transformed his health, his soil, his farm and his family’s future.
… and more to be announced soon!
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