Harvest season is underway with 9% of corn and 6% of soybeans harvested according to the September 15 USDA Crop Progress Report. But before things really ramp up in states like Wisconsin, it’s the perfect time for a late summer field day.

That’s what we had in Rochester, Wis., last week. The Watershed Protection Committee of Racine County hosted its summer field day, featuring presentations from no-tillers Jim Stute and Rick Bieber. Bieber made the trip out from north central South Dakota, where he’s been no-tilling for over 4 decades. And I thought one of the most interesting parts of his presentation was when he talked about how he measures yield, and why he’s not even a big fan of the world to begin with.

“There’s too many times the word yield is used to scare farmers into purchasing stuff. ‘You’re going to lose yield, or you get greater yield.’ And yield is what pays the bills basically at the bank. You must have so much yield against so many expenses to make it work. I understand all that. But on our farm, and I don’t know what made me start this 30 years ago, we started measuring things by bushels per inch of water that God gives us. We have no irrigation. So, when we started this whole thing back in the 80s, we were at 3.5 bushels of corn for every inch of water that we got. Today with our system functioning the way it is, we’re between 10 and 12 for the last 5 years pretty consistently there. Before that, we were at 8. The numbers keep rising for us. Looks like we’re going to stabilize between 10 and 12 bushels per inch of water that we receive, which means we’ve increased by 300-400% our water use efficiency and if we can give up the nutrients and maintain yield after it comes back 3-5 years later, we’ve actually increased our nutrient use efficiency by thousands of percent.”  

Bieber will also be speaking at the first-ever Soul of the Soil Conference, which kicks off September 23 in Sinsinawa, Wis. More information on No-TillFarmer.com

Watch the full version of this episode of Conservation Ag Update.