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“We started with no-till — and I say we, my dad and my two uncles that my dad had farmed with, they started no-till in 1983 here. At that time I was just a young man, 11 years of age. I didn't have to come home from university so many years after that fact and start talking about this wondrous thing called no-till, because my dad and my uncles were already doing it. I guess, I'm spoiled in the fact that my claim to fame is, as I'm a 50-year-old farmer this year, that I've never used a moldboard plow in my entire farming career.”
- Blake Vince
Nuffield scholar and Merlin, Ont., no-tiller Blake Vince sometimes finds himself in an irrigation pickle.
While areas to the south, west, and east frequently suffer from an overabundance of precipitation, Vince’s farm is on a narrow isthmus between Lake St. Clair and Lake Erie. Lake St. Clair creates a rain shadow that can sometimes steal or divert precipitation.
However, Vince doesn’t let that stop him. He employs multiple blends of cover crops and had a leg up because no-tilling was already a farming tradition when he began farming about 1,200 acres of soybean, corn and wheat.
He’s particularly proud of his cover cropping practices, which were developed as part of friendship with No-Till Legend Dave Brandt.
This week’s episode of the No-Till Farmers: Influencers & Innovators podcast is brought to you by Source by Sound Agriculture.
No-Till Farmer editor Frank Lessiter talks with Vince about his heavy use of cover crops, dealing with suboptimal precipitation, and more.
No-Till Farmer‘s No-Till Influencers & Innovators Podcast podcast is brought to you by SOURCE®️ by Sound Agriculture.
SOURCE®️ from Sound Agriculture is a soil activator that gives crops access to a more efficient source of nitrogen and phosphorus. A foliar application of SOURCE provides 25 pounds of nitrogen & phosphorus per acre and enhances micronutrient uptake by stimulating beneficial microbes, and its performance is supported by a cash-back guarantee. Learn more at www.sound.ag.
Full Transcript
Brian O'Connor:
Welcome to the No-Till Farmer Influencers & Innovators Podcast. I'm Brian O'Connor, lead content editor for No-Till Farmer. SOURCE by Sound Agriculture sponsors this podcast about the past, present, and future of no-till farming.
Blake Vince of Merlin, Ontario farms about 1200 acres of corn, soybeans, and wheat. Vince, a Nuffield scholar, is particularly proud of his heavy use of cover crops, inspired by no-till legend Dave Brandt. Here's No-till Farmer editor Frank Lessiter talking to Vince about his operation.
Frank Lessiter:
Blake, I know you're in Southern Ontario. Why don't you tell us a little about where you're located? I think one of the things that our US people can relate to is your soils along that north side of Lake Erie are much like they are in maybe Indiana, Illinois. Is that right?
Blake Vince:
Yeah, there's definitely some pockets that are similar soil type. Northern Ohio too, for sure. I'm located in a little place called Merlin, Ontario, Canada. North of Merlin, you'll find a small hamlet called Fletcher, Ontario, and it was an old railroad siding. We're approximately an hour's drive east of Detroit, Michigan, and I'm located straight across Lake Erie from Cleveland, Ohio. I'm right here in the bottom southern tip of Ontario, Canada.
Frank Lessiter:
I'm kind of familiar with where you are because I grew up 40 miles north of Detroit. My mother had two aunts that lived in Rodney. We used to catch the ferry across to, I think, Port Lambton, and then drive over to Rodney. In those days when I was a kid, there was still a lot of tobacco being grown in that area, right?
Blake Vince:
Yep, there's a lot of tobacco grown in that Rodney area, once upon a time. Not so much anymore. You still see little relics of tobacco buildings, tobacco kilns, but a lot of that has long since disappeared.
Frank Lessiter:
Sure. Did you grow up on this farm? Is this a multi-generation farm?
Blake Vince:
That's correct. Yeah. I'm a fifth-generation farmer here, Southwestern Ontario. My great-great-grandfather, as it were, immigrated from England. The home farm where my wife and I live presently, actually, my grandfather bought that, probably just at the end of the Depression. That's where we live today.
The original two home pieces where my great-great-grandfather came, I can actually see it out my back window, as well. The neighbors actually own that today, but, nonetheless, it actually borders on a farm that my wife and I own as well.
Frank Lessiter:
How many acres are you farming? Mainly corn and soybeans, or other crops too?
Blake Vince:
Corn, soybeans, winter wheat. We're right around 1200 acres. I also grow some cover crop for seed, and I started a small, little grazing initiative a year ago. I've got some areas set aside where we've got some cattle roaming across the landscape.
Frank Lessiter:
When did you first get started with no-till?
Blake Vince:
We started with no-till ... I say we. My dad and my two uncles that my dad had farmed with, they started no-till in 1983 here. At that time I was just a young man, 11 years of age. I didn't have to come home from university so many years after that fact and start talking about this wondrous thing called no-till because my dad and my uncles were already doing it. I guess I'm spoiled in the fact, that my claim to fame, as I'm a 50-year-old farmer this year, that I've never used a moldboard plow my entire farming career.
Frank Lessiter:
That's great. You're ahead of me. I can remember when we used it on our Michigan farm, but it's long gone. I'm a sixth generation on our farm, but the farm's been sold and now it's all houses. It's no longer a farm in our area at home. As my dad used to say, he said, "I think you as an editor found it was easier to tell others how to farm than actually do it themself."
Blake Vince:
Perhaps.
Frank Lessiter:
You've been really big on healthy soils, and cover crops, and no-till. Why don't you explain to us what you've done, how you've changed, how you've switched, et cetera?
Blake Vince:
The big thing that I brought home to the operation is the use of really elaborate cover crop mixes. For us, as no-till farmers, we used to use a monoculture approach of cover crops. Red clover would be the primary one. We'd frost seed that in the spring of the year as the wheat's breaking dormancy, just a spinner spreader on an ATV.
Then I decided, or by dumb luck I stumbled across David Brandt. David and I have become steadfast friends, and we challenged each other. Back in the early days, when I met David, his big cover crop go-to at that time was using primarily radish, oil seed radish or the tillage radish, as it's become known as, as well as peas in alternating row configuration with a white corn planter on 15-inch spacing.
Him and I started down this path, talking to different experts, advocates that we needed more of a diversified approach, these big multi-species blends. I remember that, in the early days, David had a summer field day. He had these great, big elaborate blends of summer cocktail, and it was over the hood of his, at the time, an Allis tractor.
Frank Lessiter:
I've seen those at his place too.
Blake Vince:
At that time, nobody was really doing that to any great extent in Ontario. David's only five hours south of me, and I said, "If he can do it here in Ohio, why can't I do it at home?"
I started down the path of starting to mix more elaborate blends together. The first year, I think we started off with five different species, and now we're up to 15 to 18. Depends on the year and what I can get for availability of seed supply. That's always the biggest challenge. I really see that diversity.
I'm a real advocate of diversity. It doesn't have to be dense, it doesn't have to be thick to be effective, but I really think that diversity has a lot of value, primarily because something will grow. It doesn't matter what is thrown at it as far as the weather constraints. Some species will tolerate wet feet, where others won't. Some will tolerate dry weather, excessive moisture, or lack thereof of moisture. It emulates the way the natural topography was covered years ago with extreme diversity. That was Carolinian hardwood forest.
Talking and networking with other peers like Dr. Dwayne Beck, his words ring true to me to this very day. He said, "Blake, what was your native vegetation?" I said, "Carolinian hardwood forest." He challenged me and he said, "Every year," he said, "that tree grows. You might not see how much it grows, but it grows every year." I said, "Yeah, that's true." "Every year puts on leaves, and it puts on seed." Said, "Yeah." "Some trees might even have fruit." "True enough."
He says, "That means one thing to me." He says, "That means you've got lots of water, you just have to figure out how to get it. The way to get it is by increasing soil porosity." That's why we do what we do, is to try and mimic nature to try and get the soil opened up so that our crop roots, our annual crop roots that don't have these deep roots like trees do, can gain access to water in the soil profile.
Frank Lessiter:
You told me earlier it's been a real dry year in your area. In your cover crop mix, what do you think is doing really well in dry conditions?
Blake Vince:
The things that are done really well in dry conditions tend to be things like millet. Grasses tends to grow without a lot of moisture. Some of these smaller seed species like clovers, hairy vetch, it doesn't take much to get them to germinate. Buckwheat, obviously, is another great one. Cecilia. But, when you have a larger seed like a fava bean, it takes a lot more water to get that plant to get established and get growing. Those are some of the observations with some dry land species that I prefer, or that have done really well this year compared to other years.
Frank Lessiter:
How about radishes? That's a popular one. That do well in wet conditions, or dry, or both, or what?
Blake Vince:
Typically, brassicas, as my Australian friends would say, they're a suck. They don't like wet feet. That's true to form. This year, the radishes are alive and well. They're thriving out there. It's dry. They're making lots of tubers. Everybody gets so enamored by the radish, the size of the tuber, so it's driving down deep in the soil profile and trying to get as much water as it can. The radishes are definitely doing their job.
As are things like kale, too. Sometimes we use a little bit of kale, or even some winter canola. But, really, for the most part, I try to stay away from kale and canola specifically because they don't die with winter like a radish does. Then that just becomes a weed that I have to manage the following year for my annual crop rotation.
Frank Lessiter:
What's your annual rainfall there?
Blake Vince:
Including snowfall, sadly, we're only at about 16 inches of precip. Where I live, we look at a map of the Great Lakes, that little puddle that's in the Great Lake chain, Lake St. Clair, that borders on Michigan and Ontario, that actually provides a bit of a rain shadow. Even though we're surrounded by all this fresh water, we're really at times ... The major storms will go north of us and drive across the shoreline of Lake Huron, going up north, Goderich, Bayfield, up that way. They'll get more extreme weather than we will.
Even when you see southern or northern Ohio, that would be the southern shore of Lake Erie, get bombarded with some extreme weather, we're sort of protected here because of that little Lake St. Clair. Then, that's good as well in the winter. Even our winter precipitation levels at times are pretty scant. We'll tend to get cold. That'll afford me the opportunity to go ice fishing, but, to have a lot of snow during the winter months, at times it's more of a rarity than it is a normalcy.
Frank Lessiter:
That amazes me, because when we farmed, we were about 40 miles north of Detroit and we were getting 30 inches of rainfall. But we were on the other side of Lake St. Clair, too.
Blake Vince:
Exactly. I see that all the time. Today, that's the downside of technology. Growing up, you couldn't see these storm events coming across to the same extent with Doppler radar, but now today when we're so in tune with our phones at our hips, we can see these storms that are developing. They'll start across the Midwest, get to Chicago, great big storm system, come screaming across the state of Michigan like you mentioned. Then they get to us, and they either drive north or they drive south of us. You're sitting here with your tongue hanging out, wanting a drink, and it's all for naught. That's the joys of farming.
Frank Lessiter:
We live in Milwaukee, and before my dad passed away, when I would talk to him, his first question always was, "What's the weather there today?" Because he knew north of Detroit's what they were going to get tomorrow.
Blake Vince:
Exactly.
Frank Lessiter:
This is a dry year for you. How much water or precipitation you got this year?
Blake Vince:
At the start of August, I'm doing a lot of edge-of-field research with my local conservation authorities. We have some high tech equipment that's measuring phosphorus and nitrogen that's coming out of tile drains, as well as we're measuring every ounce of precipitation, including snow.
I was talking to one of the technicians earlier on the project, and he told me, at the start of August, we were eight inches below our 30-year average. Our 30-year average, like I said, is about 16 inches. We were about eight inches shy of that, so half our normal precipitation for the year. You can imagine, when you're that stifled for water in a rain-fed environment, it's pretty hard on crop growth.
I say that kind of sheepishly, obviously, Frank, because I know a lot of my colleagues across the Midwest have been harder hit than I have even been. I'm trying to be respectful and sensitive, because I know guys are far worse off than we are.
Frank Lessiter:
Yeah, no doubt. How are you making the best use of this shortage of water that you do have?
Blake Vince:
That's why I work so tirelessly to use all these cover crops. Some people would say, "Cover crops are using up water." Because our base soil is heavy clay content, we're old glacial lake bottom, it tends to hold on to a lot of water, thankfully, but also it prevents you from getting planted at times in a timely fashion. There's a lot of the areas across the province have long since planted their crop, and we're still waiting for our soils to dry in the spring. But I know that time will come, and there will be an opportunity to plant.
That's why I work so tirelessly to maintain this residue, to trap winter precipitation to increase the water in the soil profile, having these robust covers trap every little ounce of winter precipitation I can get. As well as, it really helps prevent ... Later on in the season, when you've got that decay cover crop residue there on the surface, it provides that nice bio mulch to prevent a lot of water loss through evapotranspiration. That's the real advantage.
Then, as well as having soil that's not disturbed, we have a lot better porosity, so we've got a lot better air. Then you get air and water exchange ratios that are more in balance, increase earthworm activity, all of these great things that you and I know are a real advantage for a season like this when cards just aren't in your favor.
Frank Lessiter:
You mentioned Dwayne Beck earlier. We had him as a speaker at our very first national no-tillage conference in Indianapolis in 1993, and I still remember a comment that he made. He said, "You guys in Ohio and Indiana no-till to get rid of the water. Out in South Dakota, we no-till to keep every drop we can get."
Blake Vince:
Yeah, exactly. I'm somewhere in between that scenario, I would say truthfully. There's a lot of gems that come from Dr. Beck's lips that, really, I have come to appreciate the longer I know the man.
Frank Lessiter:
That's 30 years ago, and I still remember that one.
Blake Vince:
Exactly.
Frank Lessiter:
You was pretty well split 50/50 on corn and soybean beans, or ...
Blake Vince:
No, we tend to be a little heavier on soybeans in our rotation. Typically, our rotation is corn followed by two years of soybeans, and then winter wheat. The winter wheat will always get a big, elaborate cover crop planted after it. I would say we're not quite 50% soybeans, and then the balance of those other two crops, like I mentioned.
The reason we've done that is because, here, soybeans have been our more consistent, predictable crop, year in and year out, and so that's why, and one that has driven not only predictability from a production perspective, but also has been the one that's paid the bills. Corn can be a great crop, but we've all experienced the downturn in the market. Now it's very strong prices presently, obviously.
Wheat. There's a lot more variability with wheat. That's come a long way, with better introduction of varieties as well as different management techniques too. Wheat has definitely caught a lot of people's attention lately, with what's going on in the Ukraine. Then, of course, that's driven the price up too.
Frank Lessiter:
But then, in the Corn Belt down here, we've had a tough time getting farmers to grow wheat because the price wasn't that good, and they could make more money off corn and soybeans. But you're right. The prices of all three of these commodities is helping that.
You talked about the need for diversity earlier on, and same thing as in rotations. How do you convince people that are really corn and soybean diehards to put wheat in that rotation?
Blake Vince:
First off, there's a lot of things out of our control. Having accessibility to a market for us in southwestern Ontario makes wheat an easier conversation to have with most producers. I think we're spoiled. A lot of people in the Midwest, first and foremost, are discouraged to grow wheat because of the distance that they have to travel to get rid of the crop. If there was more readily accessible market, then maybe people would look at that again. I think that's the first stepping stone.
I don't want to beat around the bush, but I think a lot of it comes from the fact that the subsidy component goes a long way to determining what guys tend to grow and why they grow it. The power at be of the groups that represent those interests, they swing a big stick.
Frank Lessiter:
What are you using for equipment? What are you planting and seeding with?
Blake Vince:
I like to take a page out of Ray Styer's book, a long time no-till advocate from down in the Carolinas. Ray had an old Allis-Chalmers no-till planter, but I'm not that far back, Frank. I have an old John Deere 7000 planter that we have well equipped to no-till our crop. Over the years, we've put coulters on, we've taken coulters off. Today, I'm not running any coulters in front of my John Deere 7000, and, actually, that's a tip I probably learned from one of your speakers at your conference. It works just fabulously.
We don't have any lead coulters. We don't have any trash whippers. I have heavy duty down pressure springs. I have some other modifications that I've put on, a double set of closing wheels across the back of the planter to help try and close the seed trench when we're planting into some of these big covers. Notched cast closing wheels, but nothing really out of the ordinary.
The only thing, from a no-till perspective, we like to use a Keeton seed firmer, put a little liquid fertilizer down in the furrow, and, really, that's it. As pertains to corn, soybeans, and wheat, are sown with the 1990 John Deere CCS air seeder. That's what we're using in that regard to sow all of those cover crops, as well as wheat. It has worked fine for us in the past.
When we first got started no-tilling, there wasn't the tools on the market that are so accessible today. My dad and my uncles actually used a Tye grain drill with a Great Plains coulter cart. That's how they got started. They got some information on how to no-till corn, and they had three coulters set across the front of a 7000 planter, a smaller 7000 planter at the time, across the front, much like the Ray Rosson system out of Michigan, right?
Frank Lessiter:
[inaudible 00:19:53] Right.
Blake Vince:
Exactly. We found, in our soil type, though, that, some years when the soil wasn't quite a hundred percent fit, that that would just put way too much air down into the seed trench. The soils would dry out, and it would affect your establishment and affect seedling vigor. Now that, since we've gone just to using the double disc openers only, and even no lead coulter, really, our stands are really, I think, quite good for corn. Considering the technology, it's long since been bought and paid for.
Brian O'Connor:
We'll come back to Frank Lessiter and Blake Vince in a moment. I'd like to first thank our sponsor, SOURCE by Sound Agriculture, for supporting today's podcast.
SOURCE, from Sound Agriculture, unlocks more of the nitrogen and phosphorous in your fields so you can rely less on expensive fertilizer. This foliar application has a low use rate, and you can mix it right into your tank. Check out SOURCE. It's like caffeine for microbes. Learn more at www.sound.ag.
Before we get back to the discussion with Blake, here's no-till farmer editor, Frank Lessiter, answering a reader question.
Frank Lessiter:
Somebody asked me recently what I think are going to be some of the concerns with agriculture in the future. In the history book for no-till, which we did a couple years ago, there was one little section we did called Major Concerns Impacting Agriculture's Future.
With an ever-expanding world population, less fresh water, and warmer worldwide temperatures, there's going to be some impact on whether we can grow enough food to feed the world over the next few decades. For instance, by 2030, the United Nations predicts the world's population will reach eight and a half billion people, compared with 7.3 billion people a few years back. By 2050, the world expects to have 10 billion mouths to feed each day.
Looking at the climate change since 1900, the Earth's average surface temperatures increased by 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit. Some researchers expect another seven-degree temperature gain by the end of this century. By 2030, the world will need 30% more fresh water than what's used today. Increased emphasis must be placed on irrigation to boost yields in order to feed the world. No-till, regenerative ag, cover crops, et cetera is going to have a big impact on whether we can get this done or not.
Brian O'Connor:
Now back to Frank and Blake.
Frank Lessiter:
Let's talk about your cover crops a little bit more. What have been the economic advantages to you?
Blake Vince:
The economic advantages, first and foremost, you got to start to think about reduced depreciation on machinery. That would be the biggest economic advantage, because I'm not using any tillage equipment. Zero. I'm letting the roots do the work of driving down deep into the soil profile and providing that soil tills that everybody strives for by using tillage. Then, the next big savings is diesel fuel. I haven't even mentioned my time. That's another big savings. We look at depreciation, we look at fuel, we look at time.
The advantage of the cover crop then also becomes the production of nitrogen, vis-a-vis legumes. I have a lot of legumes in my mix. If I'm going to grow a crop like corn the following year, obviously I can reduce my expenditure. I don't look at it reducing it 50%, 30%, even. What I look at is ... A lot of guys get excited about maximizing nitrogen, especially a late season application of nitrogen in the form of Y-dropping to give them that boost during pollination.
I like to think that the value of that cover crop, as that nitrogen has been released from those decaying legumes, is a perfect sync with when the corn is pollinating, so that Y-dropping interval. Then I don't have the mechanical damage of driving through the crop, I don't have the time spent, I don't ... On, and on, and on it goes.
Then the things that we really have a hard time monetizing, which, that's always the case, are ... What are the cover crops doing as far as providing beneficial habitat for predator insects? As you guys have written about many times in your magazine, you talk about slugs. We're seeing a lot of beneficial insects. We've done pitfall traps in the past, capturing data on carabid beetles that are there, spiders, millipedes, all sort of insects, a multitude of insects that are going to help eat weed seeds as well as eat things like slugs that are detrimental to soy development. They go after that emerging cotyledon. Those are the things we start to see.
Then, the big picture, the 24,000-foot view of the farm, we start to see a return of avian predators too. We start to see things like ground-nesting birds, like a bobolink, have come back in full flight. You see evidence of their fledglings out here in the field, the little ... the birds that have left the nest. That's cool. It gives you the warm fuzzies.
But, are you making any monetary gain from those things? Lots of people would argue I'm not. But when I get people that come out to the farm, just total strangers, and they start sitting on the edge of the field and start taking pictures because they enjoy seeing some of these things, that gives me great satisfaction. I personally, like that old MasterCard commercial, in my opinion, that's priceless.
Frank Lessiter:
I've seen some people here in Wisconsin are using multi-species cover crop mixes, and they say one of the things they always put in is sunflowers because the people in the area really love looking at them.
Blake Vince:
Right. Exactly. I like having the sunflowers in there too, mostly because, when that sunflower plant dies, it's a black residue. For me, that black residue attracts sunlight, and then it helps warm up that soil more in the spring. Then, also, it's got a really nice, big, deep taproot, so again drives down deep in the soil profile, helps open up that soil, provide more porosity.
I call it a double-edged sword. It makes my wife happy, my mother-in-law happy. My sister-in-law's happy. I just give them a nice bouquet of sunflowers. Then, for me, it's doing all those other things that I mentioned as well.
Frank Lessiter:
How do you measure the fertility benefit you're getting from cover crops?
Blake Vince:
How do we measure the fertility benefit that we get from cover crops? That's a pretty good question, Frank. I use an independent agronomist, so we'll do some soil tests. This circles back a few years ago, where I had this agronomist. We did the soil test before we planted the cover crop. She knew what the soil tests were.
I just simply said to her ... Her name's Lynn. I said, "Lynn, let's go for a walk." I said, "I want you to walk to where you know that the lowest fertility in this field was." She pointed in the direction. I said, "Yep, that's correct."
We walked over there, and, in that area, that field was just dominated by this one species. It caught her attention. She says, "Blake," she goes, "What is this?" She goes, "I don't see it anywhere else in the field." I said, "This is millet." It just backs up what I said earlier, in that, when we have these diverse blends, something will grow. She goes, "Why don't I see that anywhere else? I see this millet has just dominated this low fertility area, but it's nowhere else to be found." I said, "In my opinion, the soil knows what it wants to grow for its own benefit."
As farmers, though, year over year, we plant corn there because we want to grow corn to make money. Or soybeans, or wheat, or whatever. But we're really ignoring what the soil wants to fix itself, to feed the biological community that's there. That's the only way, really, that I can describe it in layman's terms to you.
The next thing I did to my agronomist was I said, "Okay. What's the soil recommendation for these two fields?" We had Field A, which was 25 acres, and Field B, which was 25 acres. We'd done the soil test at the same time. They both have cover crop accordingly. I said, "We got to see what the value of the cover crop is." Agreed, and she says yes. I said, "Okay. On this field," I said, "We're going to put on 50% of whatever the recommendation is for P and K both, and, the other field, we're going to do full recommendation. Then we're going to take it to yield."
We did just that. 50% on Field A, 100% on Field B. We took both fields to yield. At the end of the day, there was no difference in yield. None. What field obviously made me more money? The field that I didn't spend the fertilizer on.
The longer story is, now, when we look at the indices, and we've come back to those fields and retested them again a few years later, the indices aren't showing a deficit. In actuality, the indices have not changed, period. They haven't gotten better, they haven't gotten worse.
I look at it and I say, "Okay. What's the value?" Are we able to start recycling some of this fertility that's stored at depth that is there, and allow those microbes to bring the stuff back full circle? We've all heard this time and time again, but, until you put it into action and see what is truly possible, do you finally become a believer in that we can get away from some of these things and not be so dependent upon them?
Frank Lessiter:
I've heard a number of people talk recently about phosphorus. Some soil scientists are saying we've got fields that have got 20 years' worth of phosphorus in the ground, and we keep putting more on it. Why? The question is, why are we doing that?
Blake Vince:
That's what propelled me, actually, to do my Nuffield topic of research, was because of phosphorus specifically ending up in the Great Lakes, Lake Erie. They were vilifying what I was doing as a farmer, as a no-tiller. They were saying, "Because you're no-tilling, you're increasing the number of earthworms, thereby you're increasing the conduits that are directly going into your tile drain that you have in your topography. Then that's carrying that water off the field and into the ditch, and ultimately into the river and then the lake."
I'm like, "Hold on a second." I said, "I don't want to stop no-tilling for all the reasons I've already stated, and I don't believe for a second that the lowly earthworm, Darwin's lowly earthworm, is the problem here." Like I said, nobody's capturing data as far as land overflows. It's easy to vilify a tile drain because you can put some measuring device on top of that, because it's in a fixed location.
I said, "What about when it pours six inches and things just run off the landscape in a random area?" I said, "Are you there to capture all that data that comes off there?" We already know the answer to that question. I said, "What about all the sewage and the human effluent?" I said, "What about the millions of people that live around the lake that aren't farmers?" I said, like you and I both know, "On a daily basis, they're contributing to the problem whether they like it or they don't." That's just human nature, but they don't want to hear that. They want to push the easy button and point the finger of blame at someone else.
Frank Lessiter:
Speaking of Lake Erie ... Just what you said is what we hear. We hear all kinds of flack from the Ohio side about what's going on in Lake Erie. Is this just as important on the northern side in Canada, or not?
Blake Vince:
Absolutely, it is. The difference is, Lake Erie in Canada is a federally regulated entity. In the US, that same water body is regulated by every state that borders on that water body. It's mired in several layers of bureaucracy on both sides of the border.
Here are the people in Ontario that live and surround the Great Lakes, and contribute to it either positively or negatively. Their voice, essentially, is either a municipal or a regional type voice with a conservation authority, or it's your provincial voice. But, really, the regulator at the end of the day are the feds. Just the opposite way in the states.
They try to put policies in place here in Ontario to help farmers work towards reducing the amount of input that they're using. As far as the four R's, the policy's alive and well on both sides of the border. You hear that time and time again. They want farmers to try and use soil tests when they're making their application to the field.
Obviously, there's policies written about manure application, things like that, but, again, sadly, we see many, many times through the course of the year ... This year was an exception, because it was so dry. When we have these big rain events and we see bypass happen at these wastewater treatment facilities, all of the work that the farmers do at the farm landscape is very quickly undone by these people that choose to allow this to continually happen instead of addressing the problem. We all know that expression. Pardon my French, Frank, but the thing will remain true forever. That shit does run downhill.
Frank Lessiter:
Right. You're planting green, right?
Blake Vince:
Yes, sir.
Frank Lessiter:
Everything, or ...
Blake Vince:
I try to plant soybeans green into cereal rye. I love cereal rye, and the fact that it's very allelopathic. It helps prevent things like ... You guys would call it mare's tail, Canada fleabane. It keeps that in check, and other broadleaf-type weeds. It's very, very effective at that. I'll just broadcast it after corn harvest into cornstalks, just as a fertilizer spreader. Try to achieve between 60 and 90 pounds, is my target of seed per acre.
Then we'll plant corn green into these big elaborate cover crops that are planted after winter wheat. Based on rotation this year, I had one field of corn that was planted into a wheat field that didn't survive winter. I didn't want to go back to third-year soybeans, so it became a cornfield. One of my planted green fields that was going to be corn ended up getting planted to soybeans because I didn't want to have that many corn acres.
I no-tilled one of my cornfields into just soybean stubble, which works fine, but really, then, I don't get the benefit of the legume for that corn crop. The soybeans don't need all of that legume benefit, really. It's just one of those years where things didn't work according to plan, but in an ideal year, yes. We would try to plant corn green into a big cover crop, and plant soybeans green and cereal rye. Sometimes you just got to deal with the cards you're dealt.
Frank Lessiter:
A few years ago you were pretty much non-GMO. You still that way, or not?
Blake Vince:
I'm still a hundred percent non-GMO.
Frank Lessiter:
Okay.
Blake Vince:
Soybeans and corn both. When corn is $5 a bushel and I was getting a 50-cent kiss, that's 10%. Soybeans, right now, white hilums are about $5 a bushel premium here. I'm growing black hilums. They're about $2 a bushel premium. Corn, though, sadly has remained fixed at about 50 cents to 75 cents. The base price for corn right now is over eight bucks on the board. The premium piece for corn has not kept up like soybeans has.
The advantages or the attractiveness of growing non-GMO corn is not nearly as attractive as it was when corn was not worth as much as it is currently. I'm constantly one of these guys that's looking at the economics. I would say that this year, for sure, I am behind my contemporaries, growing non-GMO corn, because they picked up extra bushels that I haven't got, growing non-GMO. The premium is not going to make up for that loss in yield.
Frank Lessiter:
By doing this, have you reduced your emphasis on Roundup?
Blake Vince:
For sure. No, definitely. Obviously I can't do an in-crop with non-GMO, of use of glyphosate, so that pretty much restricts me to using glyphosate as a burn down and/or post harvest. Sometimes you try and control perennials that way.
Again, this year in the drought, it's really made me contemplate my strategy, I'll be quite honest. We've had a lot of weed escapes this year because herbicides haven't worked effectively. You really look at yourself in the mirror, and dig deep and say, "Okay. Is this really worth the anxiety?" Because that's what it comes down to.
When you look across the road and your neighbor has a perfectly pristine field, doesn't have the weeds, and you're dealing with the weeds, and everybody's looking over the fence saying, "What the hell's he doing over there?" Really, it's been a hard pill to swallow this year as we've watched all this unfold, because, as farmers, I think we're all collectively very proud, we'd be fools to say we aren't, of how things look. We want things to look a certain way. But, at the end of the day, we're still making money. We're still making payments. We're still moving the ball down the field. It's okay.
Frank Lessiter:
There's pressure on right now. There's pressure on Roundup. There's pressure on paraquat. There's pressure on atrazine. If we get curbed on some of these, can we still expand the no-till acreage?
Blake Vince:
I don't intend to quit. I think that, like the rubber shortage in the Second World War, sometimes necessity is the mother of invention. I hope that there's other people that are looking at things the way I do, either with a sharp pencil, like I try to push, or with pride. Whatever it is, whatever their motivator is, that they're willing to get their back up against the wall and figure this out.
Like most farmers, I try to do some experiments annually. I would agree with Marion Calmer that probably the best return on investment is nitrogen. I've done some zero end checks, and that inevitably is not what I'm looking forward to if they ever decide to curb us on the use of nitrogen. I think they're trying to by pricing it accordingly, and deterring us from trying to use as much as we have in the past.
Your question regarding reverting back to using, or, can we continue to no-till? The price of diesel fuel in itself is my biggest deterrent. The cost of machinery is right up there as well. I don't understand how guys aren't intimidated or aren't as concerned about doing all of this recreational tillage. I still see it happening out there to a great extent, even with diesel fuel priced the way it is, and machinery the same thing, right?
Frank Lessiter:
Right.
Blake Vince:
I'm confident that my system that I've got in front of me can perform adequately with a significant amount of restriction. I think that's a better way to go about it, is if we can reduce the amount that each farmer is entitled to based upon your farming operation, might be one way to consider and figure it out. The industry has allowed farmers to use these tools ad hoc, because now that's the technology we've paid for with resistant plants. Of course, they're going to just say, "Here you go. Here's your free pass to go use it accordingly," and we haven't given much consideration about the long term effects.
Frank Lessiter:
When you talk about water ... It's interesting. In California, we've got all these vegetable and fruit producers, and almond producers. What's happening to them, they're losing water. They can't overcome the fact that they're being restricted on their water use. With other chemicals, and fertilizers, and herbicides, there's some alternatives, but they haven't got any alternative when they can't get water. There's people that are plowing up almond orchards because they can't get water.
Blake Vince:
One of the scary stats that I learned, Frank, when I did that scholarship, my Nuffield Scholarship that you asked me about a while ago, was 50% of North America's fresh fruits and vegetables comes from one state, which is California. I think the bigger concern is, when all of that produce, a lot of the fresh produce, and almonds the same way, or almond milk, for that matter, or dairy, when that leaves that state, all of that water that was produced in that water cycle never returns to that water cycle. It's gone. It's shipped from the West over to the East. It'll never go back to that West Coast, that water.
I think that's the bigger tragedy that we really need to start looking at. What have we done to ourselves? What have we done to those people that live in California because we're just exporting all their water?
Frank Lessiter:
You mentioned the Nuffield project. Why don't you talk a little about what it's about, and what you did, and traveled, and what you learned from it?
Blake Vince:
Lord Nuffield invented the MG automobile. Lord Nuffield contributed greatly to the British effort during the Second World War, and amassed a lot of wealth. Lord Nuffield, one of his other enterprises was agriculture. He went on to produce the British Leyland tractor as well, and the Nuffield tractor, which became the British Leyland tractor that got gobbled up by AGCO.
Anyways, Lord Nuffield realized, in order to have healthy people, you had to have healthy food. He started these agricultural scholarships which have been found in the Commonwealth countries since early 1950s. In Canada, we're a Commonwealth country. Luckily, these scholarships have been around since the '50s. I did my scholarship in 2013, and at that time Canada was putting out three scholars a year.
It afforded me the opportunity to go around the world. I visited 11 countries in 2013, in 2014. My top study at that time was conserving farmland with cover crops and the importance of biodiversity. That's what I studied. I was already sort of doing my own edge-of-field research here on my own farm, and I thought, "What a great opportunity to go around the world, learn from some people in this space, and bring the information home to Canada."
That's the whole premise. We want the scholars, whatever their topic is, to go and study abroad, bring the information home, and disseminate that freely across the landscape for the betterment of the agricultural community. We don't want the information glean to be proprietary. That's not the premise of a scholarship.
Essentially, you use the Nuffield alumni network found throughout these Commonwealth countries as a bit of a bed and breakfast, and, those scholars that you go to visit, have them point you in the direction of interest for the scholar. I was fortunate enough ... I really enjoyed my time down in South America. I got to see the likes of Frankie Dykstra, and Rolf Derpsch, and Carlos Crovetto. I spent a lot of time with Carlos Crovetto as his own captive.
Frank Lessiter:
We've had all three of them as speakers at our no-till conference.
Blake Vince:
Exactly. I was very fortunate to meet those guys. It really opened my eyes to the world, and how grand agriculture is at a scale outside of this area that I'm so familiar with here at home.
What Nuffield does, at the end of the day, it made me realize that, in the grand scheme of things, as I have a business to run, a farm to operate, but, really, my farm means nothing. It's my voice that matters. My willingness to share, to teach other people, to lead, to give back to the community that I live, and play, and operate in. That's what I've tried to do because of Nuffield.
I've been very honored to be the chairman of Nuffield Canada since 2019, and now we're up to the level of ... We're putting out six scholars annually on average. The program is growing.
I'm very happy to tell your audience as well, Frank, that now my American friends can apply for a Nuffield scholarship, because Nuffield is available in the US as well.
Frank Lessiter:
Right. [inaudible 00:47:33]
Blake Vince:
We've had Nuffield scholars come from Delaware, from Carolinas, from the great state of Iowa, from California. It's gaining a foothold in the US, and we're always looking for people to step up and be part of the Nuffield community.
Frank Lessiter:
That's great. It's been a great program. We did an article about you. You spoke at the National No-Tillage Conference a few years back, and we did an article. I want to read you a paragraph that pretty much sums up what we've talked about today.
Our paragraph says, "It's all about soil. Everything else doesn't matter. It's not about the planter attachments, it's not about the machinery. It's not about the seed. It's not the chemicals, it's not the fertilizer. It's getting back to the soil first, and then everything else will fall in place around that." I think that's a great comment you made.
Blake Vince:
Thanks, Frank. That still rings true to this very day. I hear so many farmers talk about being a real soil steward, and I wish that that was indeed true. I know everybody tries to do their business to the best of their ability, but I still see that there's lots of room for improvement.
That includes myself. I'm always trying to improve myself and improve my lot in life. I always appreciate the opportunity to share, and learn, and be part of the conversation. I just simply want to say thank you for thinking of me, and inviting me to share on your podcast today.
Brian O'Connor:
That was Blake Vince talking about cover crop use, rain shadows, and other issues relating to farming in Southern Ontario. Before we go, here's Frank Lessiter one more time.
Frank Lessiter:
Another question that came up recently is, what's holding back no-till? I look back in the history book, and this is something that we wrote in 1981. What's holding back no-till? The Conservation Technology Information Center listed seven reasons why no-till has not caught on faster among US farmers, and most of these ideas still hold water today.
Number one is the conflicting agendas among farmers, educators, government officials, and suppliers about the value of no-tilling, although it's much better than it was back in 1981. Number two is a concern about the economic payback from no-tilling. Which, I think most no-tillers have shown there's no drop off in yield, and you're cutting expenses.
Number three is acceptance of the 25% to 30% labor-saving benefit of no-till, which is much higher among growers in Latin America than in North America, but we're making progress there. We're seeing more precision, and we've got autonomous tractors coming which are going to help us save the labor situation.
Number four, back in 1981, soybeans were more favorable for successful no-till than corn. I think people would argue today that they're both easy to do with no-till if you know what you're doing.
Number five was, site-specific solutions are needed to gain acceptance with no-till corn due to the cool, wet planting conditions in some areas of the Corn Belt. That's still a concern with some people, but then we got other people making it work.
Number six, more intensive and profitable rotations need to be combined with no-till in the Great Plains. We've got a ways to go on this, particularly in the Corn Belt, where corn and soybeans are what we have. That's not quite what a diverse crop rotation should be with no-till.
Then, finally, number seven, there will be faster adoption of cover crops in the Southern US before no-till will become widely adapted. We're making some progress on cover crops, but we still got a long ways to go.
Brian O'Connor:
That's it for this episode of the No-Till Farmer Influencers & Innovators Podcast. Thanks to our sponsor, SOURCE by Sound Agriculture, for helping to make the series possible.
You can find more podcasts about no-till topics and strategies at no-tillfarmer.com/podcasts. That's no-tillfarmer.com/podcasts. A transcript of this episode will be available there shortly.
If you have any feedback on today's episode, please feel free to email me at boconnor@lessitermedia.com, or call me at (262)777-2413. I know No-Till Farmer editor Frank Lessiter would also love to answer your questions about no-till and the people and innovations shaping today's practices. Please email your questions for Frank to listenermail, all one word, @no-tillfarmer.com. If you haven't already, you can subscribe to this podcast to get an alert when we release a new one. Find us wherever you listen to podcasts.
For Frank and our entire staff here at No-Till Farmer, I'm Brian O'Connor. Thanks for listening. Keep it no-till.
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