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“For decades we've had other environmental disasters, and I would assume that just as in others, nothing will happen. Change is difficult, and farmers are hard to change. But I, as a conservationist, am terrified about the loss of soil and the degradation of our country's natural resources, and this is a bad sign.”

— Ray McCormick, No-Till Legend, Vincennes, Ind.

Ray McCormick, a No-Till Farmer Living Legend, is lucky to be alive following an accident with his trackhoe doing tornado cleanup on his Illinois farm.

In today’s episode of the podcast, brought to you by The Andersons, No-Till Farmer president Mike Lessiter talks with McCormick from the hospital just a few days after the accident about what happened, his memories of the late Dave Brandt, the deadly dust storm crash in Illinois in May and more.

Related Content

Near-Fatal Accident on Ray McCormick's Farm, No-Till Legend in Recovery

No-Till Community Reflects on Life & Legacy of Dave Brandt

Could No-Till Have Prevented Deadly Illinois Dust Storm?

Watch the VIDEO REPLAY of this podcast.

No-Till Farmer podcast series is brought to you by The Andersons.

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Full Transcript

Welcome to the No-Till Farmer Podcast, brought to you by The Andersons. I'm Michaela Paukner, managing editor at No-Till Farmer. In today's episode of the podcast, No-Till Farmer's President, Mike Lessiter talks with No-Till legend Ray McCormick from the hospital just a few days after a farm accident that nearly took Ray's life. Here's Mike to get us started.

Learned here in just today that we had a bad accident and there's people who are worried about you. And tell us a little bit about your own words about what happened and how you're doing now.

I'm just the incredibly lucky to be alive, and happy to be alive. This may be a life change. If you can change your life at 69, but yeah, I'm so thrilled to be alive because I had no chance of surviving an accident where we were clearing tornado damaged so we could farm the area and a tree fell onto the controls in front of me in a track hoe, and it made the track hoe take off with a log coming through the cab, a very large log, and I thought I never had a chance of surviving. I accepted that and lo and behold it pushed me out the back and then settled on my leg and off across the field we go with a track hoe driving and the log on top of me.

And because of some skilled work with a man with a bulldozer, he was able to get out in front of me and circle around and get in front of my tracks and get me stopped and shut the machine off. And then he was able to get some ratchet straps. He didn't have any big chains or anything and he was able to carefully get that log off the top of me. And here I sit very happy to be alive.

You've been in the hospital about 10 days now?

I've been in the hospital 10 days. So I started from the emergency room to intensive care and now it's all about therapy so that I can go home and then able to, my wife's got to work, so I got to be able to go to the bathroom and feed myself and get up and down out of bed and do all those things. So here in physical therapy aren't not only there helping me to be able to walk again, but be able to go home and be at my home and live with not the danger that I'm going to have something bad happen while I'm trying to take care of myself.

That moment when you were thought you were going to die, what does that actually like in that situation? Like people talk about various things. What went through your mind in that-

That? The track hoe is advancing forward with the tree coming at me. So you only got a second or two, but soon as I saw it I went, "Oh no," and then I grabbed it. So it's this close to me by that time and I was like, "No use." And then all of a sudden everything stopped and I was able to reflect that here I'm going to die, I'm going to die really quick, and this is the day I die and this is how I die. And then literally the videos, the movement begins again and it comes into my chest and I'm like, "This is it." And it's crushing me. And all of a sudden everything's breaking and busting and everything.

Next thing I know, it's got me partially exited out the back of the cab and now it's on the move. And I guess the track hoe was ashamed what it had done. So it's heading over the countryside. So that was the first part of it. But that I lived through that initial push of that log into my abdomen and chest. I can't understand how anyone could survive that, more or less than a hairy hillbilly from down here in southern Indiana. But somebody was looking down on me. But you hear about that, but everything stopped and I had this, I guess your mind can operate so quick. It was just this peaceful feeling that, "Oh, this is how it ends."

Everyone's pitching in back home at the fireman that you're okay?

My son Nate, who's now 43, he's capable of doing everything, but it takes both of us because if you're operating a sprayer or planter and a drill, all these bigger pieces of equipment that we're all using right now, because we're not done planting corn, and not done with beans, and we're spraying and we got a big wheat crop coming. So he's having to take all that on. We've got three good employees and so forth, but they can't drive the very expensive and skilled equipment that he and I could. So he's had a lot of pressure put on him here. I'm relaxing in the hospital. I'm watching Andy Griffith on the TV, but I'm appreciative and lucky that he's there. He's been trusted to do all these things and that a lot of neighbors have called and said, "If there's anything we can do."

So more than likely during wheat harvest, I'll ask them to come in and help us get all this wheat out, and it's beautiful wheat, no-till, and get that wheat out and get our double crop beans in because in this area it's big double crop bean country. So it's just as important as the wheat crop. So you need to harvest fast, get it dried, and get the beans planted instantly. So again, we got a big load ahead of us here in a few weeks of getting that wheat crop out.

We've talked a little bit about Brant, our good friend Brant, No-Till legend, and someone you've known a long time, but someone who if you were going to try to encapsulate what he meant to conservation no-till cover crafts, what comes to mind?

Well, I called him a leader. And the reason I said that he's not leading a group of people, but he certainly led the movement, and he did that by this tremendous ability to communicate. So what he was doing on his land, whether it was a professor from a college, or somebody at the Soil and Water Conservation district, or a farmer, or different groups of people, he could break through and give you that vision of why this is the way to go. He has the vision, he has the knowledge, and he has the ability in so many ways, that when he communicated that people wanted to follow him. They wanted to come to his farm, they wanted to hear him speak, they wanted to have him come speak.

And part of that is he made this sacrifice over and over and over again to go to those places, to go to those farms, to go to those people, to go to Europe, to do as much as he could and make all those sacrifices because this is so important to the future of not only our country, but of the world. And he gets a lot of responsibility for that. I say he's still here because the impacts of all he did is his legacy. So he's everywhere around us because all of these great things he did surround us and he's still here. So good job, Dave.

He invested so much in friendships and relationships that there's hundreds if not thousands who are carrying the torch forward now even though he's gone.

You asked me if I was a good friend of his. How many people would answer yes. Thousands of people, that he had to smile, he took the time, and took his picture with him, and everybody has him printed in him the picture of him and his big turnip. And what I always liked is, and I've known other farmers that way, he could come in and have said, "Oh, bib overalls." And I don't care how intellectual or smart you were, he was the best speaker. He was the best communicator. He was making the most impact.

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Can I ask you a couple questions about what happened in Illinois in the-

Sure.

... dust storm?

We aren't going to like this answer.

Yeah, yeah.

No, go ahead and ask me.

Well, I'm not sure what question to ask other than I'm thinking about-

Well, the ultimate

... where this goes?

The ultimate question is do those landowners bear responsibility for the deaths of people that were on that highway? And my answer is yes, of course. This wasn't the first time that wind erosion had blown across there. You're being negligent that you don't have the soil armored as we call it in the Soil Health Movement. So you were letting this precious resource get away. I'm sure dust had blown across that highway before. So well, they were at fault. They could have stopped this and people died because of this. So I, like so many people, when we see a lot of erosion now is, I mean, people that don't even farm ask me how this can be that we still see blowing soils and we still see massive erosion and all this ground being worked, and I can't answer that except change is difficult. But in this case it costs people their lives. But ultimately losing all this soil is going to cost a lot of people their lives because we won't be able to feed the world at this rate of soil loss.

So what do you think will happen now that this story is getting attention and seemingly had there been cover crops and no-till, these people, these six people, seven people did die, and 30 did end up in the hospital. What will be the reaction legislatively or loss legal litigation? What do you think is going to happen?

For decades, we've had other environmental disasters and I would assume that just as in others, nothing will happen. Nothing will change it. That change is difficult and farmers are hard to change and they're going to say, and I imagine maybe the Farm Bureau will defend them, it's not their fault. But I as a conservationist am terrified about the loss of soil and the degradation of our country's natural resources, and this is a bad sign, and it's not like we all haven't been seeing it for your entire lifetime. People like Frank Lessiter and No-Till Magazine have made an impact, but it's certainly not fast enough. The rate of loss is still far higher than the rate of gain we're making.

We've got the answer. There's no debate in that. We've got the answer to Gulf hypoxia and climate change and feeding people and all of nutrient loss. We've got the answer now. Being able to communicate that the way Dave could, the way No-Till Farmer, that's one of the keys. Education and communication that is it happening fast enough? It's not. So we all like Dave Brant, anytime we get asked to go speak, anytime we ask for somebody to come look at your equipment and see how you're seeding copper crops with a combine, I always say we never say no, because we feel this responsibility to get to as many people and have as much impact as we can.

Do you think that this tragedy that took place in Illinois, will it wake some people up? Will they see this before and-

No, I think it will wake some people up. Legislatively I doubt that there will be any legislation, they will do something like a bandaid maybe. Let's put some logs up along the road they do out west to keep the drifts from going up. Now, can you imagine we're going to put up logs to keep the soil from drifting and blowing across the highway.

But certainly that others may think about this and say, "We can't let our farm blow away." So I'm hoping some good will come out of it, but will there be a big change? It's like so many, I doubt it, but I hope it does. I hope it does. I'm doing a 100% of everything I can and it's not good enough. I'm always searching for a way to do a better job at it. So it's a long learning curve and some people don't want to go down that highway of having to understand how to change the management of their land to better take care of it.

Will you pursue office again, do you think?

No, no. I certainly want to make a change, but before when I'd tried to seek appointments in the USDA and so forth, I'd been told several times, "Don't do it. You're having more of an impact with what you're doing privately. What you're doing out here across the country is having more of a impact than you will being in Washington DC." And so I think having lost running for Congress and being able to come back to the farm and having different opportunities come at me where it makes a big impact, and I can make an big impact, I'm like, "Yeah, I think they're right. I think I can make more of a difference being Ray McCormick back here on the farm." We got a farm bill, and it's tremendously important, we have world issues and I'd like to have been a part of that, but would I have made as much difference? A lot of people don't think so. So very happy to be back on the farm and enjoying it. Like many farmers, enjoying it more than I ever have. I love farming.

You are making an impact. We're glad to have you back, it was great seeing you in St. Louis, and you would have been a damn fine politician. Yeah, you're in a place where you're going to impact an awful lot of real farmers too.

I was very touched to have went to the National Association of Soil and Water Conservation Districts' annual convention because I had left, I was very upset and had left the association and so forth. And when you leave behind those Dave Brants and really the state leaders in those states for these conservation movements, and boy I missed them. And I was able to go to New Orleans this past winter and there's many of them there. So it's hugs, haven't seen him for six or seven years. And to be able to look them in the eye and say, "I miss you so much and I..." Because these are national leaders or state leaders and conservation, and so that was an extremely rewarding experience. A young man that came to my farm and never had farmed and was at the local university, I took him onto the farm and kept him there and actually had him stay there when he is doing his graduate work and so worth, he was the outgoing president of the National Association, Michael Crowder.

So it was a very warm experience going to the National Association at Conservation Districts and being able to see conservationists from all over the country. I didn't go outside the hotel. For me, the best vacation in the world is to go to a national no-till conference, go to a national association, go to a T&C, and to be surrounded by conservationist. You can't, sunshine on a beach doesn't compare to being the sunshine and innovation and the dedication of so many of these people across the country that feel like I do and feel like Dave does. We got to sacrifice, we got to go. We got to give it everything we got. Even if that means leaving the farm behind for a week because it's that important.

That's inspiring what you just said.

I hope so. It's true, not making it up. That's why they do it. You don't ever talk about that, but their kids are at home, their farm's at home, and then they go again and again and again. And here it is seven years later and they're all still there. Seven more years of doing that, traveling and organizing meetings and resolutions and all the stuff they do to try to push conservation forward, and they've made a lot of progress. When I was there, I was pretty discouraged with a lot of the pushback on conservation from people out west, whether it was WOTUS or whether it was the Endangered Species Act. I'm kind of a purist on those things and I didn't like fighting with conservationists. So whether we should do those things, there's no doubt in my mind, being with the Nature Conservancy I'm surrounded by that and they're mighty powerful and make a big difference. So I settled back with the Nature Conservancy and on their board and had a conference call, a Zoom meeting, on working with Native Americans.

Great.

Mm-hmm.

I had dinner with a good friend of yours from TNC, when I was in state, around the strategic planning of CTIC.

Yeah.

Kind of recruit me, Larry.

Clemens?

Larry Clemens, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. In fact, he had at recommendation help support the conference for that.

He was on the call today, and we talk. We're very much alike and we bring conservationists down to our farm for a yearly duck hunt of trustees that want to go and so forth. We had the governor's wife down this year to hunt with us and so forth. And so we've got, not because of me, but we got the biggest increase in conservation money in the history of the state.

Thanks to Ray McCormick and Mike Lessiter for today's conversation. A full transcript and video of this episode are available at no-tillfarmer.com/podcasts. Many thanks to The Andersons for helping to make this no-till podcast series possible. From all of us here at No-Till Farmer, I'm Michaela Paukner. Thanks for listening.