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Michaela Paukner:

Welcome to the No-Till Farmer podcast, brought to you by Yetter Farm Equipment. I'm Michaela Paukner, managing Editor at No-Till Farmer. Today's episode of the podcast is the first in a series of interviews you'll hear this year with No-Till Living legend Ray McCormick. As No-Till Farmer's 2024 Conservation AG Operator fellow, we're spotlighting the real-time decision-making that Ray uses to make No-Till or Never-Till, as he calls it, work on his farm in Vincennes, Indiana. We're going to start this series with Ray talking to Associate Editor, Ben Thorpe, and me, about how he first got involved with restoring farmland into wetlands, a key conservation practice in place on his farm.

Ray McCormick:

Back in those days, they were pushing for all these conservation programs and wetland programs, so they really needed a farmer to testify pro-wetlands, because you had the Farm Bureau up there and different groups and stuff, really anti-wetland. "No net loss," is what George Bush Sr. said, "No net loss of wetlands." So they had a hearing in Peoria Illinois. So they had had me on the list, and then the day before, they called me and said, "The White House just took your name off the list." And I went, "Okay, I won't be there." And then they called a few hours and said, "I don't know who did what, but they put you back on there." So I drove over there, if you're leaving now, and I get there in Peoria and they go, "Are you here for the concert?" Like, "What concert?" They said, "Crosby, Stills and Nash is going to start in 10 minutes."

I said, "See you later." And I went up to the box office and walked in and they were starting to play. So I got to watch Crosby, Stills, Nash. Come back to the room, and then I went down to the No Net Loss and it was packed with anti-wetland farmers. The Farm Bureau had the room stacked. And so the president of the National Farm Bureau was sitting next to me, so he gets up and gives this, "It's untrue wetlands do this, it's untrue, this, it's all lies. Wetlands don't do this, wetlands don't do that." He just went right down the line and said, "They're all not true. We got scientific evidence." So he sits down and he gets a standing ovation.

So I'm furious, I get up there and I said, whatever his name was then, I said, "I don't know where you were raised, but I was raised on a farm where we have wetlands and every thing you said wasn't true, is true." And I went down through there and really put it on him. So when I stopped, the rest of the crowd gave me a standing ovation. And, oh, he was, you could just see him, he was just, "Goddamn." And I'm like, "I'm a farmer, you're not. I have wetlands, you don't." And boy, I was laying it on him. So it was a big deal. Some of the people from Washington DC on the panel, I had met going to Washington DC as much as I used to and lobbying for that stuff, so there were some people there on that panel that knew me.

Michaela Paukner:

How did you first get involved with the lobbying and the government side of it?

Ray McCormick:

I think it was when Richard Lugar Center from Indiana was going to have conservation provisions of the Farm Bill, which included swamp buster. But how I really got started is Successful Farming magazine had a contest, nationwide, the farmer that's making the most impact on migratory birds. And so I did a video where I was in a woods and in a wetland and everything, and I sent it to John, I forget what his name was, and I sent it at the last moment, and he watched the video and he says, "I damn near cried." So he contacted people around here, like the local NRCS office, and they said, "What about Ray McCormick? Is this all true?" And they said, "If you make him the award winner, they'll burn your magazine." That was their response from the conservation office.

And so he ended up calling Dave Hudak from the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Which, when I first started in conservation, I was upset all the time about this and that, and this wetland being destroyed and everything. And he was head of the US Fish and Wildlife Service in Indiana, and he would always answer the phone. So he mentored me a lot on being aggressive and don't care what the rules are, do the right thing. And so they didn't know, but they called him, and he said, "Yeah, all this is true." And he said, "Well, we hear it's going to be real controversial that if we name him the National Award winner." He said, "Are you in it to promote farmers doing the right thing against opposition or not?" So they made me the National Award winner, and that kind of kicked off me being able to get into press and get a foothold.

So that was the first of it. And then National Wildlife Federation said, "We want to come do a story about you." And I said, "Okay." So I took him down to one of the wetlands, they said, "We want an interview. Let's go down to wetland." "Okay." And so I just marched out there, waist deep into the wetland, and the guy followed me with camera.

Michaela Paukner:

Did he?

Ray McCormick:

So the guy from, may have been Successful Farming Magazine, came to do, I think, a video. So I did several videos right in that time and we were riding around and he was saying, "You listen to music?" I said, "Yeah." "Well, who's your favorite artist?" I said, "Pat Metheny." He goes, "Man, are you real?" He was a big Pat Metheny fan. I know if-

Michaela Paukner:

I don't know who that is.

Ray McCormick:

Oh, my God, you can leave now.

Ben Thorpe:

I've heard the name. I don't know music.

Ray McCormick:

So he's a jazz guitarist that got six Grammys six years in a row for the best jazz album.

Michaela Paukner:

Wow.

Ray McCormick:

Yeah, he's phenomenal. It's not just his guitar playing, but the way he puts together the music, it's like you've never heard. So that's after that Successful Farming award, then other people started contacting me and then NRCS wanted to do a video on wetlands, and so I did several videos. And I was on ESPN Outdoors, you don't remember that, but every Saturday morning they would do outdoor stories from across the country. So they did one on me and wetlands. So I was on Nationwide TV on ESPN, and then it's just one after another. And then people started needing people to come talk and fight for wetlands. And if you're a farmer and you're fighting for the protection of wetlands, they really need you. Or if you're fighting for no-till or whatever the hell the cause was, endangered species, they had me come to Washington DC.

So they all knew that they could get Ray McCormick to come to Washington DC and fight for whatever, lobby around with the Congressman and stuff. Sometimes I testified before Congress on different things, different programs, some of them were for parks and stuff. So I went to Washington DC a lot.

Michaela Paukner:

So right now, looking ahead for this year, what are your top priorities in '24?

Ray McCormick:

Building my natural pond for my wife, and my labs. So I'm excited about that. This is what all this stuff is about, drawings and rocks that you can buy, and fiber mats to put under and over the liner and everything. So I'm really excited about that. And of course my son is going, he's never going to work, he's never going to help me. As you know, the corn price has fallen apart. So with corn now trying to get below $4, it's going to be tough to not lose a lot of money this year. And so I've got a lot of old corn, which is now not worth anything, and I'll be growing a lot of corn that's not going to be worth much, but a hundred percent of the corn I grow is non-GMO. So I sell it into specialty markets, which are all making drinking alcohol out of the non-GMO corn. So I don't know why people need non-GMO to poison their liver, but it's not for me to judge.

And then a hundred percent of our soybeans, and that's 40 cent premium on top if there's a positive basis. So I could get 50 or 60 over the board for that corn, but still I'm not getting $6 or $7, if you even get that, you're going $4.50. So dramatic fall in the prices. The soybeans are all non-GMO and they will be going, probably, overseas for human consumption. And I've got those sold, not priced, but sold for a $3.10 premium. So that'll help at least limit the losses. So all of mine's non-GMO, going into non-GMO markets for human consumption. And it's not for me to judge. People go, "Do you believe in this GMO?" And I'm like, "No, I don't believe in it, but I'm not the consumer. I believe in satisfying the consumer. If they want non-GMO, I'm going to help supply the non-GMO if they're going to pay more money for it."

So it's all going to be non-GMO. Of course, it'll all be no-tilled. I would say that it's going to be hard to make a profit, it'll be impossible to make a profit. But I'm selling 1700 acres of wetlands and woods, so I'll do a 1031 exchange for that and probably pay way over the highest price I've ever paid for land. But I want to exchange the money to keep from paying long-term capital gains. And for me, land is a long-term investment. So even though you may lose money the first year or two, usually in the long run, land's a good investment. So I've spent all of my life trying to accumulate land and I've been pretty successful at it, but I've done it in unusual ways that most farmers didn't understand or wouldn't do. But I was able to use the conservation angle to enter them in programs and get government payments, when other people weren't.

I want conservation on all of my land, so if there's a program that'll help pay for that, I'm doing it. And so that helps offset the loss of Title 1 income out of the Farm Bill, which used to be they just pay you on your corn acres, your traditional corn acres. Just pay you so much money, you weren't doing anything special, you're just getting paid because you're a farmer and you grow corn. Well, those are over, so a lot of farmers lost out on a lot of government payments. Now it's mostly emergency funds and conservation funds that go to the farmer. So if you want a lot of government money, you got to go to the extreme of doing all these really elaborate conservation practices. Because once I'd done a couple, they said, "Well, you've already done those. You got to find more or we're not going to keep supporting your conservation."

So I've got six additional practices I do on my farm that I didn't do before I entered in CSP. So it would be like leaving unharvested grain, making shallow water areas for migratory birds in farm fields, and leaving the water out there later in the season. We're doing irrigation monitoring with a crop consultant, nutrient management on those irrigated acres. So it's just a number of different programs that are all beneficial to the farm, but they're things I wasn't doing before I entered in CSP. So CSP awards you for the conservation you've been doing, but it wants you to do additional practices. And so since I'm in my second round, I'm doing like six additional practices now.

Michaela Paukner:

Okay, so how long does the first round last?

Ray McCormick:

I think three years.

Michaela Paukner:

And then to do it again, is it another three years?

Ray McCormick:

Yes.

Michaela Paukner:

So after that, do you have to add on even more stuff?

Ray McCormick:

I doubt whether they'll let me in again.

Michaela Paukner:

Okay.

Ray McCormick:

They didn't want to let me in again the second time, and it's a massive amount of paperwork to get in there. So you have to do things like go to your landlords and explain to them that, "I'm going to do conservation practices on your farm. I get the money, you don't get any of it." So that's, when you got several landlords, each one of them has to sign the paper and saying, "We understand that we don't get any of the conservation money of the CSP that Mr. McCormick is enrolling in." So a lot of farmers don't want to do that, and that's just one of the things you have to do to get in CSP. It's a massive amount of paperwork and a lot of people just aren't willing to go through all that to get conservation payments. I am, but a lot aren't.

Michaela Paukner:

How many CSP acres will you have this year?

Ray McCormick:

I think it's tied to every farm that I had when I first enrolled. So farms that I've picked up since then, which are several, those are not in CSP, I believe. I think it's just tied to all the farms I had when I originally enrolled. It might be now tied to the ones, after three years, that I had, I can't remember. But there was some pasture management and reseeding pastures, it was several different things I had to do.

Michaela Paukner:

Okay, and then how many corn and soybean acres are you going to plant this year?

Ray McCormick:

I think about, in generalities, 1,000 acres of non-GMO soybeans, 1,500 to 1,700 acres of non-GMO corn.

Michaela Paukner:

Okay.

Ray McCormick:

Until the river gets it. Then all bets are off. So we flood a lot. It's become way too common now to lose land of flooding. And my dad, as I told you, lost three out of four crops in the late '50s and early '60s, and it put him in the insurance business because he was starving to death. And we went a long time without much flooding, and then starting about in the '80s or so, it started really picking up. And then it got to where maybe three years ago I'd lost 11 out of 10 crops in a row. I think in 2010 was the only year for a long time I didn't lose crops to flooding. Now when I say lose the crops to flooding, it comes out, it takes your crops or takes half your crop and you got to go down there and replant it.

Sometimes you're replanting... It took the crop, one year, in roasting ear stage. So there it is, it's making ears, and the river's coming out in August, which it should never do, and you're losing the whole corn crop. They told me to just knock it down, it wasn't any good for crop insurance. And so when you're losing corn crops like that, you got to bounce back. So a lot of times we replant with soybeans. Just a few years ago we replanted, the 6th through the 10th of August, with soybeans and it made 32 bushels an acre.

Michaela Paukner:

Really?

Ray McCormick:

Yeah. That's unheard of, that's climate change. My dad used to say, "If you're going to plant soybeans after July 10th, you're just kidding yourself." Now all the farmers, we all go back in. And we've got varieties and we've got good planters and herbicide programs that allow us to get back in there. And so a lot of us have learned how to deal with it, but a lot of people could not deal with losing hundreds of acres late in the growing season, after you'd nitrated it and sprayed it and everything, and it's gone. You can look at the hydrologic predictions on your computer and say, "Well, in five days it'll all be gone." And it is, they don't miss it. So that's been a lot of my life is dealing with a lot of flooding and losing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of crops, year after year. So no-till is good for that, it allows you to get back in there and no-till it all back in there. And it makes harvesting easier.

So if you work that ground and you have all these little short soybeans, it's hard to cut them and the ground wants to slide up under you. So no-till really helps in those conditions. And in those river bottoms, I had a [inaudible 00:18:45]. And one year we put all the cover crop on with the combine. So one year I got to the field, put the head on and took off along the road, and forgot to turn the switch on to put the cover crops on. So I went a quarter mile without any cover crop. So all the rest of the field had cover crops on it. In the spring it flooded and took my crop. So I was going back in there to replant, and all along where that cover crop had not been planted, it took about eight inches of soil off of that. And to think we used to moldboard plow that ground, and disk that ground, and now it floods so easy.

Well, I've come to realize, after walking through timbered areas that had never been farmed, the ground is over three foot higher where it's never been scoured, than where the fields are. So you lose three foot of height across a massive floodplain, the river's going to get out across it a lot easier just because it's lower than it ever was. And so we lost eight inches right there where there wasn't any cover crop. And where there's cover crop, we're collecting soil. It's slowing down the current, it's sticking up and it's grabbing, so it'll get mud on it, and mud is money. One time down in the floodplains we have duck lines and so every time it floods we get mud all over the benches and the floors and we have to go down and wash them out. So one year I said, "Here's a board, which was the seat, it's flooded one time. It's covered in mud. I'm going to let that dry up and measure it." It was three-eighths of an inch. And three-eighths of an inch, I think, equates to about 30 tons an acre of topsoil.

Michaela Paukner:

Wow.

Ray McCormick:

That's how much we're gaining. So think about that, gaining three-eighths of an inch on your field. So then I took that and had it soil tested, and it was the best soil, the most fertile soil you could imagine. The pH, the cation exchange capacity, the organic matter. We knew phosphorus would be there, but to my surprise, it was loaded with potash. So it was really the perfect soil. And why wouldn't it be? Because the soil that you're losing upstream is the best of the best. What's going the fastest is the top, which has the most organic matter. And what portion of the soil has the most organic matter, that's what will erode first. So you're collecting what farmers are losing, that's the best soils in the world. And so now we put nitrogen and sulfur on the corn. We never put fertilizer in the river bottoms, because we've come to realize that it's getting fertilized much faster than we can use it up. So that's a good reason to no-till and use cover crops, is to anchor down.

Also, when the neighbors chisel plow their ground, all their residue floats over against the woods. When you have cover crops out there anchoring down the chaff and stalks and so forth, it doesn't wash away, and stalks' residue is money. We pick it about as high as you can pick it, and just snap the ears off of there and run the corn head slow, because we want that stalk intact. So if it floods, it doesn't get away from us. It's more or less that stalk laying the direction of the current, but not washing away. So we're trying to hang on to as much residue as possible. That brings up another point is, out of fear, I don't know why they do this, maybe machinery companies do it, it's all about residue management. How are you going to handle all the residue? I don't have any residue, it's all eaten up by the biology. So I'm alarmed. I want the biggest tallest corn you can get because when it falls onto the ground, when you come back later, the biology and the worms and everything's gobbled it all up.

So if you're going to feed two elephants an acre underground, that takes a lot of residue. And so part of it is I grow annual ryegrass. You learn all the time. I was at the conference and they said, "You know why you're losing all your residue is annual ryegrass is tender leaves for grazing." And that's what the biology's doing, they're grazing on the leaves of that annual ryegrass and that's why it's gone so quickly. So I'm always alarmed when I'm picking corn, there's nothing left on the ground. What the hell's feeding my biology? I don't know. They'll pull leaves down, worm will get up and grab a leaf and try to pull it down, but you're really starving out your biology. So I'm on a mission to get as much residue on the ground, because I got two elephants per acre to feed. That's a little different philosophy than running a terrible till and paying $60,000 for a terrible till, and busting all your carbon into the air.

Anytime you till that surface, you're going backwards for years on the organic matter and carbon you've saved in that upper soil. So don't do that. I do never till. No-till is a very misused word. People say, "Well, I no-till, but I work the ground when we plant corn, but I no-till the beans." Well, that's not no-till, no-till is no-till. As I've said, when my mother had a fly swatter, she goes, no means no. And that's the way it is with no-till and sequestering carbon, no means no, not occasionally or ever. No-till is never tilling the ground, and that's when you reap the most benefits.

Michaela Paukner:

Are you cover cropping every acre.

Ray McCormick:

Mm-hmm.

Michaela Paukner:

And what are you using?

Ray McCormick:

So when you say every acre, it's because we seed with our combine.

Michaela Paukner:

Okay.

Ray McCormick:

So it'd just be like if you were planting soybeans, would you not plant any acres? Or would you not plant soybeans because you got to fill up? No, naturally you'd fill up. So we're seeding with our combine, so on every acre, every year, irregardless of the calendar date, we seed cover crops. And we get to do it at a very low rate because the air seeders are so effective. I don't even like drilling because drilling leaves a seven and a half acre gap that rainfall can hit the ground on. I want it to look like your yard, where there's scattered plants solidly across the surface. So I'm using annual ryegrass. And the reason I switched to annual ryegrass, I originally was drilling where it was going to corn, 30 pounds of cereal rye and 30 pounds of Austrian winter peas, but when you're seeding with a small seeder, you got to use small seeded cover crops. So then I switched to annual ryegrass on every acre. So where I'm going to corn, I'm using 60% annual ryegrass, 40% balansa clover and crimson clover.

I was doing crimson clover, but I was unhappy because I couldn't find a bee out there. And again, you learn, bees, pollinators, aren't attracted to red, that's why I never see them out there. So I'm putting 50% balansa clover in there because it has a white bloom which bees will go to. And think of all the years I was using straight crimson clover and wondering, "Where's the bees?" And so I've switched to 40%, which 20% of the mix would be balansa clover and 20% crimson clover. Because the air seeder is so efficient that I'm putting on 13 pounds an acre, so it doesn't cost me anything to seed it. You're not tearing up the tires on your tractor, you're not tearing up the gauge wheels on your drill. You don't have your son out there, instead of helping harvest, have him out there drilling cover crops on every... So it's really made it much more efficient.

And when people say, "Well, it got wet this fall, I didn't get all my cover crop on." Wet this fall, means mine is all going to come up and be gorgeous, because you're going across that field no matter what. Nobody leaves their fields' unharvested. So when we're harvesting, if it rains, great, if it's wet, great, it hits the ground and sprouts and up it come. So it's really efficient and cost-effective to do it that way. When I'm going to soybeans, I do 12 pounds of annual ryegrass and one pound of turnips. So it's getting me a little diversity there and the turnips are feeding the ground. But mainly, I, and all my landlords, love to deer hunt and deer love turnips. And we graze cattle too, so cattle love turnips, but mainly it's for the deer. I'd like to have a little more diversity in it and I might do that in the future.

But the 12 pounds of annual ryegrass and one pound of turnips, a pound of turnips is a lot of turnips per acre. I'd used radishes, but radishes are a larger seed and much more expensive. And I've used some kale or mustards and so forth, but I've mainly stuck with the turnips. And so we generally don't worry about where we're going to soybeans. I've planted into it, sprayed it and planted into it. A couple of years ago where my son had quit spraying and it got too wet, so we got out there and all the annual ryegrass is fully headed out. And we drilled the soybeans into it and I said, "Let's just wait and spray it when we post-emergent spray the soybeans." And so you got soybeans growing out there in mature annual ryegrass, and they just did phenomenal. Now we did have every prairie vole in the county in there, but the beans did real well. So beans you do not have to worry about, you haven't killed it, you need to kill it, you haven't killed it before you planted.

Corn is the opposite. You got to be careful with corn and annual ryegrass. You got to get a perfect kill and you got to do it right before you plant the corn, because if the corn can see green, it doesn't like it, it'll hurt the yield. So what we do is wait at least, or try to be 48 hours at the minimum, ahead of planting the corn. So if it is less than 48 hours, we need to wait and let that roundup get into the cover crop. On the back of my planter, we don't use a boot putting on the nitrogen because I wanted to get away from using a boot in a hundred percent cover crops on every acre. And the boot was doing more soil disturbance than the Tru-V opener.

So if you believe the concept of, don't disturb the soil, as a soil health practice, you're eliminating more than half of it by not using a boot. So we use tubular off the back. So there's two rubber hoses that hang down in the back and put the nitrogen and the sulfur on it, but that burns the leaves of the cover crop. So if you try to spray it after you've done that or it's too close to when you've sprayed, you'll have green strips of annual ryegrass down each side of each row. Bad. So you got to spray it far enough ahead of planting that when the nitrogen burns the leaves on the annual ryegrass, it goes ahead and dies. So that's one trick I've used. And I love using tubular because you never plug up in cover crops. With the boot you plug up all the time about anything you run in the ground in all that massive annual ryegrass will plug you up, or will shear a [inaudible 00:32:35], and so forth.

Michaela Paukner:

I'd like to take a moment to thank our sponsor, Yetter Farm Equipment. Yetter is your answer for success in the face of ever-changing production agriculture challenges. Yetter offers a full line of both planter attachments designed to perform in varying planting conditions. Yetter products maximize your inputs, save you time and deliver return on your investment. Visit them at yetterco.com. That's, Y-E-T-T-E-R-C-O dot com.

Ray McCormick:

I use a whole different philosophy in planting corn than most people. And I've been very successful, and I've learned my lesson after years of doing it wrong. I used to give talks for Monsanto on how to no-till, and I was doing everything wrong, and I was the speaker. But you live and learn that you don't use your usual John Deere planter. Then I put row cleaners on it, that was a big step forward. And then I bought one that was all set up to no-till and that really jumped my yield. So there's a lot of things that you have to do to a corn planter to be successful planting corn. The one thing that's the most important, is delay planting. If you want big yields, plant it late. Just wait until the weather's warm and it's not going to rain cold water on it. Because in the environment we're planting into, you want vigorous corn and you plant it deep when the soil's warm and the air's warm, it'll come flying out of the ground and it'll be gorgeous, and you'll grow big yields.

You get those plants stunted from cold rain down into a wet cover crop mass, you're doomed. You're never going to grow a big yield. So that took me 30 years of saying, "You should delay." I told everybody you should delay, but I couldn't take it. And finally like last year, we just, plant beans, plant beans, plant beans, which is a big change in this area. Everybody's out here planting beans early to get the big yields, but I won't plant my corn until it's really warm out. And so it also helps that you got green corn when you're harvesting because you don't have phantom yield loss. So my system is plant beans early with a drill, not 15 inch rows, with a drill, and then plant corn when it's going to be warm or is warm and there's not cold rain on the way. Cold rain is bad for no-till corn.

Michaela Paukner:

So for you, in this area, what is early for beans?

Ray McCormick:

There are people planting beans at the first April, few have tried it in March. But used to it was like, well, they won't make it if you plant them in the cold. Now everybody does, because they're finding they get the biggest yields on the earliest beans they planted, which is, it's the opposite of the way we used to farm. But soybeans now, and they're learning, they've got oil in their stems and leaves and so forth. So where corn gets frosted, or really corn cold period, that shoot, it damages the cells on that corn and it's never the same. It can't grow out of that, it's damaged in the stalk. Where beans, with their high oil content and so forth, and they grow differently than corn, beans can hit a cold snap and come right out of it and take back off. Corn, people say, "Well, I've had it frosted. I made good corn." It's not as good as it could have been if those membranes inside those leaves and stalks haven't been damaged. That damage doesn't go away.

Michaela Paukner:

And why are you using a drill versus a planter for the soybeans?

Ray McCormick:

The great Mike Plummer, that did all the research in southern Illinois, so he did 20 years of 30 inch rows, 15 inch rows, and drilled. Okay? So he says, "You want to plant in 30 inch rows? It looks pretty, you can if you want and you'll grow big yields. You're just losing three bushel an acre if you planted them 15 inch rows." Said, "You want to plant them in 15 inch rows? That's what most people are doing. You get that pretty ribbon of beans down through there where they all come up." He said, "If you want to do that, you'll grow big yields, but you're just losing three bushel an acre if you had drilled them." So he says, "I've done it for 20 years and it always plays out. Not every year, but it always plays out, the drill wins." Well, people don't like that drilling, and some are up here and some are out there. And it's, you're spacing all those soybeans versus planting them on top of each other. So you're really freeing them up for sunlight and beans bush out well.

So you go, after you drill them and they come up, and you're like, "Man, I didn't get a very good stand. And I don't know." And then you're combining and going, "Why in the hell did I plant them so thick?" So beans thrive on having space to grow, and you plant them in 15 inch rows, one direction, you got them stacked on top of each other. That's why I drill. I love to drill. And ever since Mike Plummer said that, and we started out no tilling with a no-till drill for five years, we rented them from the neighbors, and planted it into cover crop. And after five years of that being the highest yielding beans, we said, "I think we can afford to buy a no-till drill." So we bought one of the first John Deere 750, 15 foot wide drills, and pouring bags out of a 10-wheeler into that drill. So that'll make a man out of you.

But we started out with a no-till drill. No-till drilling into cover crop is what convinced my dad that it worked well. To be a successful no-tiller, you have to have somebody that you're working with that allows you to try. So many people don't get the opportunity to do it because a dad or a grandpa, or somebody that rules the roost, says, "We ain't going to do that." Well, my dad allowed me to try and he says, "It'll never work." And then he went over and looked at it and said, "I don't know, you haven't got much of a stand." And then we harvested, and with that weak cover crop, weak, not good, weak cover crop, we didn't have hardly any weeds and the beans out yielded all the rest of them, and we controlled the erosion. That's one of the reasons we never grew beans on these hills is my dad and grandpa were very conservation minded, they would not tolerate erosion. So that's why we never grew beans on the hills because we didn't want the erosion.

And of course, in those days you planted them in 30 inch rows and you cultivated them to control the weeds, so the land just washed away on you. So being able to go into a cover crop... The first time, a guy named Fred Klein, with a fertilized plant, I said, "Fred," he was a friend of mine, I said, "Fred, what about this no-till?" He goes, "Oh, it'll work, but you got to do exactly what I tell you." And he said, "When you pick the corn, we're going to immediately spread weed out there with a fertilizer spreader, and then you're going to kill that." Back then there was no roundup. "You're going to kill it with Gramoxone and spray it with Surflan." That's the only chemicals we had. So that's what I did. And we couldn't even rent the drill until the neighbor got done with his no-till drill. And he had a no-till drill for doing double crop beans, not for planting his usual beans.

And so we borrowed his drill, and it was some off brand drill, and it was throwing the chains off in the weak cover crop and everything, but the yield was great. So after we bought a no-till drill, we still couldn't give up in the river bottoms. Let's work the ground, call to pack the ground, and drill into that. So we did, and of course, what happened? It rained so it turns the concrete. So we're out there with a rotary hole in the work ground trying to get it up. So people talk about the problems they have no tilling. What about that? The beans are breaking their necks off trying to come through work ground.

So that year we had 50% no-till beans, 50% field cultivate, used a, called a packer. The worst no-till beans beat the best conventionally tilled ground. We said that's it. We're no-tilling all the beans. So then I had to learn how to grow corn. So we had it licked, but only on the bean side. And of course on the corn side you got lots of residue and you don't have as much erosion, and so forth. But then I transitioned over into trying to no-till corn and that was much more difficult.

Michaela Paukner:

What is the drill you use now?

Ray McCormick:

N-5. It's a 30 foot, the new John Deere drill, it has a tank that's elevated up in the air. So if you have any problems with those very, very delicate paddles and so forth, you can open it up from down under without crawling and laying on your back on the disk openers of the drill. So you can get under there and clean anything that obstructs one of the hoses. It has monitoring on it, it has scales on it, and you can enter all the information into your computer. And when that thing is supposed to run out after 160 acres, it's right there. Because weighing it and it's putting it on exactly how it's supposed to put on. And the bags are weighed and everything... Or the bulk tanks' weighed and everything, so it comes out right exactly where it's supposed to come out. So it is a great drill.

Michaela Paukner:

The other thing I was going to ask you about equipment is what the cover crop thing you're using on the combine?

Ray McCormick:

I started out with the Gandy air seeders, and I had one on... I started out, before anybody had ever tried it, and I put it... I called Valmar and said, "I need an air seeder, I want to put it on my corn head." They said, "We can have you one in about six months." I said, "I need one in six hours, not six months. I want to put it on my corn head and try it this year." And we were in the middle of picking corn, and just bugged me for so long, I'm like, "There's got to be a better way." So then we called Gandy and I said, "I need an air seeder to mount on top of my corn head." "We can have you one in six weeks." I said, "I don't want one in six weeks, I want one in six hours." They go, "Well, we got one all tore apart in the back of the shop. You want that one?" I said, "I'll take it." So they put it together and shipped it to the John Deere dealer over here and he says, "Your air seeder's in."

And we went over there and got it and within a few hours had it mounted on the corn head, and the hoses up under the noses, and ready to go. Because I wanted to see why it wouldn't work so that next year we could fix all the problems so that it would work. So we went over to Wheatland Farm and 300 acres later, I'm going, "Huh, it's working." And nothing's going wrong, it's not dragging the hoses off, it's not plugging, it's working. So that's how I started. Then we put a Gandy air seeder on our platform to cut beans. And then we had a chance to buy a Valmar, one that was hydraulically driven, not electrically driven. So you could do variable-rate and it would monitor the rows and weigh it, and all these features, and it was much, much bigger. So we got that and mounted it on our corn head. And what we've learned is it holds so much seed that we'd only fill it up halfway, so we don't carry all that.

When you're my age, you got to stop and go to the bathroom, and that's way more often than you run out of seed. And really, so you say, "Well, I don't want to stop to fill up with seed." Imagine, I pull up the end, the seeder's on the front, the hose is hanging down on our bulk tender, so I pull up under there, they open the lid, they push the toggle switch, the seed goes pouring into it, and about two minutes they're smoothing it out, shutting the switch off and folding the tube back in. And I'm good for another 20 acres. And so filling them up is, least on the front of the combine, on the head, is a no-brainer, you can do it very quick and easy. And so we carry about three days worth of cover crop seed with us, so it isn't like every morning we got to go out there and fill up.

If you're only putting on 13 pounds an acre, that's a lot of acres in a seed tender. So we started off with two Gandys, took the second Gandy and put one on each side of our draper head now, so it balances the weight. And John Deere's run off of sensors on the ground. So we had a MacDon, who was the first draper makers, we had one of those, but those are all spring-loaded. So when you put the air seeder over here, it threw it completely out of wack and it wouldn't work. So we had to take it off and construct... Because they scissor, we put it right in the dead center, right under where you can see, and it would scissor back and forth with the head as it followed the ground. So then we switched to a draper head.

And again, John Deere's sensed the ground. So if you have a weight over here and not on the other side, it's sensing the ground, and the weight of that seeder doesn't have any impact on it. And we've now mounted one on each side so we can get twice as far. And they're just sitting there running and it's just spraying. Now on a platform, you're spraying it off the back because you can't put it out in front of it. And a corn head, we put it in front of the snapping rollers because Marion Calmer said you want all your residue going through the corn head, not the combine. So by living by that and thinking about that, then your cover crop needs to go on in front of your snapping rollers. So as they pull all the residue of the stalk through there, they're mulching your cover crop. So we mulch the cover crop with the corn head.

On a draper, you can't do that. So we spray it off the back of the draper and under the throat of the combine. And then we have a chopper, where we adjust it and are real aware of how it's throwing it, how the wind's affecting it, because we want every foot of that swath covered up with residue. And of course, that seed's on the ground, it's a little bitty seed, it's touching the ground, it's going to come up, but you throw a mulch on top of it, it's all going to come up, every time. And so it works real well doing it that way. But again, you got to live by, you shouldn't be combining with a head too wide for your chopper to cover the ground. Because the residue, the bean residue is money. And if you got a four-foot strip back there that doesn't have residue on it, it's being robbed of nutrients.

And if you follow the same lines, starting at the same side of the field, you're starving out that, what would eventually be an eight-foot gap, if it was doing four foot each way, you're starving the soil of nutrients. So you want to throw that soybean chaff evenly across the full width of your head. So we're using a 35-foot head and a John Deere 770 combine. So it can do it, it's got the chopper that'll do it.

Michaela Paukner:

If we could go over your inputs for corn and soybeans, in terms of nutrients.

Ray McCormick:

There's no certain formula on fertilizer, it's based on potential yield, soil test, river bottoms, so forth. So here's an example of, for each field, see, they got their own formula. So starting out with the planter, we put on 22 gallons of 32%, which gives us about 77 pounds of nitrogen, and then three gallons of Thio-Sul to get sulfur on the ground. Sometimes, like this year we're doing something new, is we're having the fertilizer plant spread all of the fertilizer, post-emergent. So they've always got, the problem is, you got to get this fertilizer spread so we can plant this field. And they're like, "We'll put you on the list, we're covered up." I said, "Well, what if we post-emergent? Because really your crops need it late in the season, they don't need it early." So the corn demand for nutrients skyrockets as the corn goes into reproductive stage. So you don't want to put it on in the fall, you don't want to put it on early spring, where you get heavy rain on it, you want to put it close as you can to when the plant needs it.

So we'll have them go in. And here I've got 77 pounds of nitrogen on the ground and then they'll put on nitrogen and Thio-Sul and certain amount of DAP and potash. Here's potash 120 pounds, DAP 46 pounds. This field's getting 72/70. So it's based on our soil test. When you have them put it all on, you have to pick one of the nutrients that you're going to put on, non-variable-rate. So if you're grid sampling your field, the rate that is putting on the potash is varying as it goes across the field. So you can get none in this area and get a heavy load in this area. But we keep the DAP the same because their fertilizer units can't variable-rate multiple fertilizers. So we put on the standard rate of phosphorus for that field so that you're getting a consistent amount of nitrogen out of the DAP. So if it's 18% nitrogen and you're varying that, some parts of the field aren't getting any and some are getting a lot. So we don't variable-rate the DAP, but we variable-rate the potash according to grid sampling and soil test.

And those can vary depending on the yield goals for fields. So some fields may have 140 bushel yield goal, and it's sand, and it needs a particular formulation like KMAG to get magnesium. And so it's mostly variable-rated. But when we're doing corn, the DAP is a consistent, all over the field. And when we do soybeans, we do the same thing now, is go in and post-emergent spread it and we variable-rate the DAP and keep the potash consistent. And that way each is getting variable-rated but different on each crop, whether it's soybeans or corn. And that's the way we're doing it now. And we really had good success spreading the fertilizer in corn this big, and beans that are this big. And they don't have near the demand on the equipment and help at that stage like they do, pre-plant. And my theory is you're getting the nutrient much closer to when the plant needs it. So that's what we're doing on fertilizer.

In the river bottoms we do same thing, 77 pounds of nitrogen, three pounds of Thio-Sul. Everything, when it gets either the fertilized spread or we side-dress the corn, gets another shot of Thio-Sul. So you just about can't get enough Thio-Sul in there. My friend that side-dresses twice with drops, he puts it on all three times. So we'll go in the river bottoms and just put nitrogen and Thio-Sul, and then we will come back and put different rates of nitrogen and Thio-Sul, depending on how vigorous the corn looks. So it's not using any kind of a sensor or anything, it's Ray looking down at the corn and says, "This corn looks phenomenal. It's getting the high rate." Now we're going over a sandy area or area that didn't have that great a stand. So I variable-rate it according to what I see in the field, and I know the soil types out there and so forth.

So you hit an area in which there's really a lot of great looking corn, I hit the button on the screen and now it's putting on 30 pounds more than the low rate, or 40 pounds more than the low rate. So that's what we're doing there. I'm going to an auction Saturday and I'm going to buy drops. And so it's going to put it on along the row versus pulling a side-dress rig. So we may use those once or we may use them twice. So last year we were supposed to side-dress twice. So I put on with the planter, I put on with the side-dress rig, and then I wanted to come up in when the corn was tall and put that final Y-Drop dose of nitrogen in there. So that was the plan on the whole river bottoms. And when I called the fertilizer plant and said, "I want you to go in and Y-Drop this 500 acres," or whatever it was, they said, "No, you're out of our territory." So it didn't get Y-Dropped and it grew by far the biggest yields we've ever had.

So it had about, generally, about 188 pounds of N on it and we were going to put on another 40 pounds of N or something. So we didn't get it on there, and the corn... But it didn't rain much, so I think the nitrogen all got used instead of being washed through the soil profile. But it would've been interesting to Y-Drop some of it and seeing how much more we got. But I'm going to an auction Saturday, I'm going to try to buy a set of them. It's not Y-Drops, but it's hoses that come off of stainless steel tubes and drag alongside the corn plants. And that also, sometimes if weather gets too tough and the corn's growing too fast, you can't get it side-dressed fast enough. And so in that case we can go right back in with the sprayer and use drops and put the nitrogen on even later, which is probably a good thing.

And anytime you got river bottoms, if you go in and put all your nitrogen on early or side-dress it, as soon as it comes up, if the river takes it, you just spent a lot of money on nitrogen and the river got it all. So if you can delay that nitrogen application, you got a lot better shot of not throwing your nitrogen away if the river takes it all. Part of being a river bottom farmer.

Michaela Paukner:

Yeah. How often are you doing the soil testing?

Ray McCormick:

I would say three years, and we're grid sampling quite a bit of the hills. But down into river bottoms where we're not applying any phosphorus or potash, we just get a general soil test every three to five years. But where we can intensely manage the field, we'll grid sample that every two to three years. Betsy Bauer with Sears Solutions, that's who I work with. So the fertilized guy, Rob, and her come in and sit down, like we are, and we go field by field by field and plug it in... I haven't showed you there, but I'll show you, plug it into my spreadsheet. So I got an intricate spreadsheet where each field, you plug them in, and then you plug in the prices and it shows you what each field's going to cost and then what's your total fertilizer costs. But it also is a sheet that Rob uses, so when it's time to do a certain field, we've already calculated out, to the pound, of how much each nutrient gets on that field and we just follow that formula.

So that'll all be decided next week when Betsy comes. And that's based on yield, it's based on soil test. Projected yield is plugged into the formula. Well, this is a larger version of one. See, up here? Nitrogen, a dollar four per pound, 32% side-dress, a dollar four per pound. So if you put on 95 pounds, it's going to tell you here at the end, not only how much nitrogen are you getting on, but what the cost is of the nitrogen and then the cost of, in the field, for all the nutrients you put on. So it gives you a per acre and then a total for the field. So when you go down to the bottom, you can see down here on these fields, it's $84,975. And that's what it should be when I get the bills, because they're following this sheet that we put together, next week. That would be the end of February or early March, if all the soil tests are back.

So all I can say is we're trying to be as efficient as possible, and put the nutrients on that are needed and not put ones on that are not needed, and it's still expensive. So fertilizer prices for '24 haven't gone down. They're about the same as they were in '23, which is down considerably from '22, but unfortunately the price of corn now is almost half of what it was last year. Corn was $7 last year. It's $4.06 today, I think, on the board. The herbicide program we go through on each field, and put down that formula. So I sit down with Pete Sloick, my good friend, and that's who I buy all my chemicals from, and then we have a prescription for each field of what we anticipate using and what the price of it is. And that should be a sheet that he will deliver the chemicals as we figured, and the bill should come out to what we figured the cost would be. So with non-GMO corn and beans, you wouldn't follow the same recipes that a lot of other farmers would follow.

So we will burn down the annual ryegrass with a residual herbicide in the beans and then post-emergent spray it with grass and broadleaf, and may put in some residual in that. And that's pretty consistent. It changes when you go into the river bottoms because we don't want to put anything on that won't allow us to plant the alternate crop if we lose it. So if you're planting corn, you can't put anything down that won't allow you to grow soybeans the next week or two weeks if it floods. Also, we're very careful about using herbicides that won't allow us to grow a good cover crop within a couple of months. So if you put it on in July and you're harvesting in September, that's not very long for that herbicide to be eaten up or used up or synthesized. Down here in southern Indiana we have warm temperatures, we have high rainfall, which I think works for you to dissipate that herbicide.

But also we have a lot of soil biology, which I think that also can help chew up and digest those chemicals that it won't hurt your cover crop near as much as it might where you come from in Wisconsin. Not near as long a growing season, not near as good a weather for that herbicide to break down. So we're fortunate, we grow great cover crops here. I wish I grew corn the way I can grow cover crops. I never have protect... One, I do a lot better than the other, but it sure makes me proud to see my fields with green cover on them and it makes my neighbors proud that they too have green covers on them. So you can go down Highway 241 here and it's almost the exception, a field that doesn't have cover crop on it. But living in an area in which a lot of cover crops are used makes it more socially acceptable to grow cover crops.

So believe it or not, I've had people call me from Illinois and said, "I heard your presentation," or, "I saw your article," and they got all these questions. And then they go, "If I do this, I'll be the only one in the county." So he's worried about what's going to be said about him at the coffee shop, because he's growing cover crops, and that's a threat to all those that are working and chisel plowing their ground. This guy's doing it a different way and he shouldn't be in our county doing that. It's a threat to their three generations of tillage, to see somebody doing it a different way, and that's a real problem. What you see at the National No-Till Conference, the best days of my life every year, is a common thread, these farmers are innovators, they're risk-takers, and they're not afraid to fail. And you hear that among all of them.

So like me, they're trying to figure out how to put the cover crops on with a combine, they're trying to figure out how to do this and that. They're trying all these things to reduce the amount of passes and grow cover crops and grow big yields, and they're just out there on the cutting edge constantly. And then they're not afraid to go out and try the cover crop, or try this or that, because they're risk-takers and they can withstand failure. So able to withstand failure, how many farmers have you heard said, "Well, I tried that no-till and my corn was 20 bushel an acre less than where we worked the ground." Well, the guy had no experience no-tilling. He used the same planter, he used everything the same and then blamed it on no-till that he didn't grow as big a yield.

And I've had a lot of failures where I tried something new or did something and it hurt the yield, or I didn't get a good stand, or something or another. And I'm like, "Well, I learned. Can't do that. I got to do it a different way." No-till farmers have a thirst for problem solving and figuring out how to break through and be the innovator, be the leader. At a conference, my favorite question is, what made you decide to do all this? And they get emotional. Each of them has a reason, and it's very personal. It's not because I wanted to make more money. What conservationists do you know, that say, "I'm doing conservation. I'm helping on wetlands, or I'm helping on prairie grass or helping migratory birds," say, "And I'm doing it for the money."? They're doing it to have conservation on their land or to preserve the land for their children, or to use less labor. Or, "I went to the National No-Till Conference and after I heard those speakers, I just went home and sold all my equipment and went to no-till."

So each are driven by these different forces that are very personal. Some of them, it's religious belief that they're here to take care of the land, and this is a better way of taking care of the land. When people say, "Well, how do you get everybody to do it?" There is no answer to that. If there was, I wouldn't be doing this for 40 years, trying to get people to do it, because it's these different stimuluses that play into people's lives that get them to do this.

Michaela Paukner:

Thanks to Ray McCormick for hosting Ben and me in February and giving us a tour of his wetlands, woodlands, and farmlands. Coming up in a future episode of the podcast, Ray will take us on a tour of some of that land. In the meantime, check out the first article from the 2024 Conservation Ag Operator Fellowship series in the May issue of No-Till Farmer or online at no-tillfarmer.com. Many thanks to Yetter Farm Equipment 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.