From the cab of his truck, the future of Vincennes, Ind., No-Till Living Legend Ray McCormick’s newly planted corn doesn’t look promising. 

“That water is 3 feet deep out there,” McCormick says. “It’s going to be on there for a long time. I was planting all this field until 9 Sunday night. I almost got it done in a day.”

The 2024 Conservation Ag Operator Fellow was out scouting Wednesday, May 15 — one day after Vincennes received 5 inches of rain in a matter of hours. The downpour resulted in heavy flooding and set back an already wet planting season. McCormick had approximately 80% of his soybean acres and 60-70% of his corn acres planted. Much of the corn was planted around May 13, and the heavy rain drowned about 80% of his corn stand in one large 250-acre field.

“The stress has been unbelievable,” McCormick says. “We have to have a 3-day window if we spray the cover crop, so it was drama every day of what we’re going to do, where we’re going to go and where we’re going to move.”

The benefits of having every acre seeded to cover crops outweigh the termination challenges McCormick encounters in the spring. He says the covers transformed his fields into a sponge capable of absorbing heavy rainfall and improved soil organic matter.

“Your soils are not headed to the Gulf of Mexico,” McCormick tells a neighbor out scouting at the same time Wednesday. “A rain like that could take…