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Full Transcript

John Dobberstein:

Welcome to the latest edition of a No-Till Farmer podcast, brought to you by Yetter Farm Equipment. I'm John Dobberstein, Senior Editor of No-Till Farmer. In part two of this podcast series, Dennis Michelsen and Michael Musselman, hosts of the podcast, Innovations in your Field, powered by NewFields Ag, interview No-Till Farmer editor, Frank Lessiter, and Lessiter Media president, Mike Lessiter, about the role improved corn genetics played in the growth of no-till and the value proposition of the practice even with today's high input costs. Frank also talks about the beginnings of the National No-Tillage Conference, mixing in anecdotes from decades of interviews and farm visits to lend perspective. With that, let's go to Dennis and Michael for part two of this fascinating interview.

Dennis Michelsen:

Frank, how have the changes in hybrids helped make no-till even more easy for folks to do as far as to get a good result out of it?

Frank Lessiter:

Well, for one thing, we've got much improved genetics. We started out in 1972, I remember we did an article on what traits do you want in hybrid corn for no-till, and basically the corn companies all said, "Oh, you can plant any hybrid, it doesn't matter." But what really mattered is something that could take some cold tolerance when the soils were cold in spring underneath the residue or underneath the sod, and then you wanted something that was going to yield well and could handle either wet or dry conditions.

Mike Lessiter:

The key is that no-till you generally have to plant later than your conventional farming neighbors. No-tillers can sit on the sidelines, wait for the conditions to be perfect while all their neighbors are running out and working the soil up, warming it up.

Frank Lessiter:

I got two stories along this line. One is with a conventional guy. I was in Illinois once interviewing a no-till farmer, and it was about harvest time. And he said to me, "The very first load of corn that I get does not go in the bin. It goes in our flat storage. And in the back of our flat storage, there's a moldboard plow sitting there and I take and dump the first load of corn over the top of the moldboard plow, so I can't get it out in the fall when all our neighbors are plowing."

Michael Musselman:

That's a great story.

Frank Lessiter:

And the other thing that came up, Michael was talking about planting later, we had a guy who'd been to our no-till conference maybe 9 or 10 years in a row, and he called up one year and said, "I'm not going to make it this year." And Alice Musser, who worked for at the time said, "How come?" And he said, "Well, we're going to have a baby." And we did a little calculation and to keep from planting ahead of his neighbors who were doing conventional tillage. I think he conceived the baby near [inaudible 00:03:15]. It makes for a good story.

Dennis Michelsen:

And Frank, one thing that I really think that the no-till community, for lack of a better description of calling it, really caught on to more than the rest of the ag industry, people love to brag about yield. It's worse than bragging about the size of fish you caught out on the pond, but the no-tillers were the first to really make that connection that it wasn't about maximizing yield as much as it was maximizing their return on investment.

Frank Lessiter:

Right. There's no doubt about it. But at the same time, the world record for corn yields right now is over 600 bushel per acre and it's done by a strip-tiller in Virginia. And his son holds the record right now for the best no-till corn yield. He and his dad, David Hewlett.

Michael Musselman:

And that's something that I've noticed in looking at these contests at times is the no-till, strip-till methods often for these winners, and we know that they're not getting whole farm averages obviously of 600, but we can find good examples where the no-till farm averages are as good or better than conventional tillers. And so it's always one of those things where I try to encourage someone to think about the fact that if you look at it, there's guys doing 260, 280, 300 and above on no-till. So it's learning how to do these things over time and working together with your suppliers and your agronomists and putting together a program that can help get you to the top.

Frank Lessiter:

Well, early on in the 70s, I'd get calls from people that said, "I'm thinking of no-tilling, but I think in the fourth or fifth year I might have to moldboard plow." And I said, "Okay, have that attitude. Go ahead, try it." Well, after four or five years, they never plow.

Michael Musselman:

Yes. And what they found was getting into the system, they began to make it work, right? And that's one of the principles that we like to encourage farmers about and it's no different in your business. You decided to make it work, not just give it a try. And I think that's important when you go into anything new is to figure out how it can work and will work for you and doing more than just trying, but making it work.

Frank Lessiter:

Dennis mentioned return on investment. There's an interesting story there. We used to plant soybeans in 30 or 40 inch rows and then we got down to planting soybeans maybe in seven and a half inch rows. And now it's going back the other way. More people are probably planting soybeans that are drilling them, but there were a number of early trials that showed soybeans had two or three bushel per acre lower yields than no-till did. But I always said, "That's fine. Return on an investment's going to be better if you plant soybeans rather than drill because you only have a corn planter. You don't have to buy a drill. So you could take a loss of five bushel per acre with soybeans and still have a better return on investment."

Michael Musselman:

Yeah, looking at those total costs is very important. And one of the things I've noted in your magazines at times, you'll take those charts or those little spreadsheet and show some of the economics and metrics for them so that they can get an understanding. In your book, Frank, there's these guys, and I don't know if everybody knows them, but Cowboy Pete and No-Till Ned. Tell us about that cartoon and when was that kind of at the timeframe that you had it, but tell us about those guys and why you brought them out.

Frank Lessiter:

Well, just for the heck of it came out about 1973 or 1974, and we just had some cartoons drawn and it was called Plowboy Pete versus No-Till Ned. And it would show Ned doing really well with no-till and Pete having a disaster, whether it was a flooded field or equipment stuck, whatever. And we did this for several years and then we quit for a good reason. And we had a contest going, which we would show the next cartoon and somebody would write the caption. And so whoever got the winning caption, we would, I think it was, we treat them to dinner for four people someplace and a number of people did it. And then one time a Virginia guy won it and he sent us the bill for four people out. It was like $450 and that's the day we took-

Mike Lessiter:

In early 70s.

Frank Lessiter:

That's kind of when the contest went away.

Mike Lessiter:

So the captions you saw in there, Michael, those came from farmers whose subscribers who submitted a caption with the funny picture that they'd seen.

Michael Musselman:

All right. That's great.

Dennis Michelsen:

Frank, when I talked to ag producers in my neck of the woods here in East Central Illinois and we talk about reduced tillage options, I have had quite a few people tell me, "Well, I tried that once and it didn't work." While I've had the successful no-till and strip-till guys tell me, "It takes several years of that practice change until you really maximize the benefits." You are the guru of no-till, my friend. How long should an ag producer expect to see the changes that they hope to see by switching to a no-till practice?

Frank Lessiter:

Well, there's no reason you can't see them in the first year if you look at all your costs. Most people say it'll probably take three to four years. There was just a Michigan State study that came out that showed it took 13 years to pay off the new equipment with no-till, which I think most no-till innovators would laugh at because they think they got back within three years or so. We talked about a little bit about the value of no-till, and I got a chart here that talks about how much no-till is worth per acre, and the answer is $262 maybe at the top. The general public gets about $112 per acre in environmental value, that's with reduced erosion, runoff, etc. Then the farm value of no-till will run anywhere from $25 to $150 per acre. I mean, we got no-tillers that say, "I'm making an extra $150 per acre with no-till."

I mean, the ag economy is kind of tough right now and people are hurting, but the no-tillers, hey, they got up to $150 advantage over people using other tillage systems. And we're seeing a lot of people today who in the past have no-tilled corn and no-tilled soybeans. And today they're no-tilling soybeans, but they've moved to strip-till for a number of different reasons, dealing with cold soils, being able to ban fertilizer, place a plant on a little berm that's a higher temperature than the rest of the field.

Michael Musselman:

Well, Frank, you bring up some good comments there regarding sustainability and the environmental friendliness of no-till and strip-till farming. And I think those are key metrics by which the farming community will be judged as we go forward, both in the past and also in the future.

And from a sustainability standpoint, a reduction in the use of diesel and so forth is our metrics that can be measured and managed. And the other piece that we just always want to encourage the farmer and the industry to keep in mind is the issue of externalizing the cost of production on the soil in terms of those ideas that you talked about from a savings on erosion, from a savings on nutrients that leave the farm and so forth. We always know that's a fine line we have to walk. So we really appreciate, and I think that these are key areas where it's coming of age where people know that they can use these techniques and they're starting to see the benefits in soil health also. And so do you have any comments towards the soil health aspect in terms of some of the farmers that you've talked to in the past?

Frank Lessiter:

Well, oh boy, you hit it on one of my pet peeves and it's sustainability. Sustainability and soil health today is basically reduced tillage, not minimum tillage, but no-till or strip-till. It's diversified rotations. It's cover crops. And hey, our no-tillers have been doing this since 1972. It's not new today. One of the problems no-tillers have today with getting paid for carbon sequestration is they already been doing these for a number of years and the carbon companies won't give them credit for what they've done in the past. Now we got one or two carbon companies that are looking back maybe five years, but the no-tiller is frustrated because he can't get paid for something he's been doing for five years. And soil health, I mean the microbiology is there, you don't tear it up. You don't freeze out some of the insects or bacteria that's in the soil when you turn over the furrow-

Mike Lessiter:

Earthworms.

Frank Lessiter:

Earthworms is another one. You'll get many more earthworms with no-till then you will with conventional. And they used to say, "Well, one of the problems going to be is when you come through the cornfield with anhydrous ammonia as a side dress, you're going to kill the worms." But it's been proven that's not true. And what happens was is the earthworms hear the equipment coming and they go down deeper into the soil so they don't get knocked off by the anhydrous... But soil health is the big word these days and no-tillers have been doing it forever.

John Dobberstein:

We'll come back to the episode in a moment, but first I'd like to thank our podcast sponsor Yetter Farm Equipment. Yetter Farm Equipment has been providing farmers with solutions since 1930. Today, Yetter is your answer for finding the tools and equipment you need to face today's production agriculture demands. The Yetter lineup includes a wide range of planter attachments for different planting conditions, several equipment options for fertilizer placement, and products that need harvest time challenges. Yetter delivers a return on investment and equipment that meets your needs and maximizes inputs. Visit them at yetterco.com.

Dennis Michelsen:

Frank, do you sometimes think though, that when it comes to soil health that people are not looking at that as much if they just rent the land rather than own it?

Frank Lessiter:

Yeah, to some extent, and it depends on how they're dealing with the landlord. If they've been with him for 10 years or so, they can probably talk him into doing some things soil health wise, and maybe he'll do some of it. The same with cover crops, we got guys doing... But we also got guys that won't spend an extra nickel on rented land for something that they're not going to see immediate return on investment with.

Mike Lessiter:

There was a study or a chart that came out last week that showed that cover crops was utilized to a far greater degree on owned land versus the rented land, which is not a surprise, but at some point here, and I'm interested in this topic, at some point here, land that's been no-tilled for a long time must have greater value than the next piece of land that doesn't. For all the things that you guys just were talking about, the soil health and the earthworms and years in cover crops. There was a professor who did a study, it's still pretty modest, but he was putting a multiplier effect on land value that had been no-till for a long time.

Frank Lessiter:

Yeah, I think he's down in North Carolina. A couple of years ago I had an Illinois farmer call me and he'd been no-tilling for 30 years. He had 100 acre field that had been no-tilled for 30. And a neighbor accidentally... He had an employee who he sent out to chisel plow, and the guy got in the wrong field and he chisel plowed this 100 acre field that had been no-tilled for 30 years. And so the question was, he wanted to know how much he could get from the insurance company or the farmer for making this mistake. So we went to three or four people and said, "What do you think?" And the first year extra expense was about $5,400, but they said there were long-term losses. It would take five to six years to restore the soil. It was going to take 20% more fertilizer over five years. And they suggested he asked for $8,000 per acre on what he lost. I doubt if he got that much, but that's what they thought the loss would be from someone accidentally chisel plow in a no-till field.

Michael Musselman:

So those are amazing values in terms of how that no-till and strip-till can improve the soil as we go. And we're hearing some of these stories where they're adding 1, 2% organic matter in some of these soils in a very short period of time. So we know that there's restorative abilities in that reserve. And keeping the soil healthy is very critical important to us. The biological activity is something that is critical for the health of the soil, the plant and how it interacts and brings nutrients available. So these are all important metrics that we consider when we look at the value of a healthy soil to build a healthy crop.

Frank Lessiter:

I've seen the time Jim Kinsella strip-tilled at Lexington Illinois, and I've heard from several editors who were riding in a pickup truck with him and after a rain, he would stop and pick up earthworms in the middle of the road and toss them into his no-till or strip-till fields. And the other thing that happened, and Dennis, this is down in your area, Central Illinois, a year ago, May 1, we had this huge dust storm on the interstate. There was a 90 vehicle pile up, eight deaths and no-till could have prevented this dust storm, no doubt about it.

Mike Lessiter:

Does that get much attention 15 months later that still talked about?

Michael Musselman:

Yeah, so I'm about an hour from where that happened, and I drive that road often and I know that it's been discussed briefly. I've seen something in the press about it. I've not heard anything locally again from that. And I'm waiting see if something potentially comes out of the legislative house in Springfield and... Yeah, that's an amazing situation that happened. And you're right, we could have cut that soil loss by having buffer strips there out into the field. So hopefully these are some of the things that people will begin to voluntarily take a look at and consider as they go forward.

Mike Lessiter:

Yeah, we pray that it never happens again, but I know that a number of studies said had cover crops been on those fields, there was very little cover crops in that area, it may have been prevented.

Dennis Michelsen:

Mike, I have a question for you. A lot of ag producers feel that responsibility if they're the generation that is taking over a centennial farm or a farm that's been there for 150 years or even 200. Is that part of the reason that you felt really good about coming to the family business was to continue this legacy that your father started?

Mike Lessiter:

Yeah, that's a good question. I had seen growing up what my father's role was in this ag industry and I had left to another... I was in the manufacturing space, but started to apply what I watched him doing when I was a kid and the place that he had in it. And when the opportunity showed up, I really did want to work with my father. I wanted that experience much like most many of your listeners do. There's always rough spots, but it felt like a calling to come back. I was relatively new to agriculture 20 years ago if you didn't count my high school internships and that kind of stuff, him throwing me in the car with him.

But I thought ag was special. I thought what he was doing here was really special and we just needed a few more resources to grow. We were an 11 person company back then and we're about 40 today and I think freed him up to cut the swath and no-till that he continues to do and would like him to do it as long as he's willing to do it. So it was a pretty cool lining of the stars, I think, to come back at a time where ag was about to become very, very dynamic.

Frank Lessiter:

So Michael was a junior or senior going into his senior year at University of Wisconsin-Madison, and he had an internship with the US Olympic Committee in Colorado Springs. And so I drove him out there for his internship and then... Or I flew home, I went with him in the car. Well, we made a stop at one of the early no-till manufacturers in the town up in-

Mike Lessiter:

Lexington.

Frank Lessiter:

Lexington. Nebraska, Orthman. And so I knew Henry Orthman and I knew the kids. And so I spent an hour or so talking to him. Michael never got out of the car and now he sells advertising to that company. So I tried to get him in early, but he wouldn't listen.

Mike Lessiter:

Didn't know where I'd end up. But Dennis, if you want to cut that part out, you can feel free to...

Dennis Michelsen:

That's what we call in the podcast business as gold [inaudible 00:24:28].

Mike Lessiter:

Okay, gotcha.

Dennis Michelsen:

Frank, the big rage now, and you can save money on your crop insurance. You can get all kinds of benefits for growing cover crops. And when I see all the stories about cover crops, it's like this is some magical new thing that people have thought of. But this again goes back to the no-tillers as being the originators for something that is now a cool thing to do.

Frank Lessiter:

Yep. And you hit it right on the head. I remember my dad seeding cover crops in the late 40s and early 50s, and then we got them in more commercial fertilization after World War II and cover crops dropped off. But today in 2017, we had 15 million acres of cover crops, and in 2022 we went to 18 million. So that only represents 4.7% of the total US crop land in 2022. Now the no-tillers average... Our surveys, we survey the no-till people, the strip-till people and the cover crop people and average cover crop acreage for a no-tiller is 493 acres. So he's seeding 43% of his cash crop ground to a cover crop. And the average cover crop acreage with a strip-tiller is 571 acres and that's about 40%.

But when you look at... And this came out of the 2022 USDA census of agriculture, and it says that when it comes to seeding cover crops, no-tillers are two to three times more likely to use cover crops than farmers who are using reduced tillage or conventional tillage. So what this really means is we got 18 million acres of cover crops and no-tillers are seeding as much as 12 million acres of that. So the no-tillers see this and the other people haven't seen it yet. And there's a big problem there. We talk about return on investment. Well, it's hard for some people to see the investment they're going to get off cover crops. They expect better yield or cheaper fertilizer build the first year, and that's not happening. But the no-tillers know there are many benefits of cover crops.

Dennis Michelsen:

Okay, Frank, I've got to ask this question. You've been doing this over 50 years. When you talk to an ag producer that is doing something innovative in their field, how often per year are you a little bit surprised by the things that you find out are going on that you then report in No-Till magazine to the rest of the world?

Frank Lessiter:

Well, you always find something practically every field that you go to or tour or whatever, you're going to find something that's new. Precision has really helped no-till and strip-till, particularly strip-till because you can build these higher berms in the fall. And then with GPS you can come back in the spring and run your planter right on top of that berm. And the other thing is we've got no-tillers who are kind of ahead of the curve by using... Reducing compaction because some of them... If you've got a 36 row planter or a 24 row planter, you can run that tires of that planter in the same tracks across the field. So even if you lose one or two bushel per acre because of a tire track, you only lose it once. You don't have... Because you ran the tires in the same place. So compaction has been a major concern for farmers and controlled traffic is helping them fix this problem. And that's particularly true of no-tillers and especially strip-tillers.

Mike Lessiter:

Dennis, I think I'd add to that question that sometimes as we're out in the field days and reporting and going to the presentations, we don't always see how much of a single practice might be evolutionary for someone in another part of the country. And as an example, we're a hundred percent paid subscription publication, means farmers have to want it, [inaudible 00:29:16] with their checkbook. We have a lot of people out in various parts of the country, even the Palouse area out west and we're located here in soy and corn country. But they've told us that they like just seeing what's out there because it's different than the practices in their own backyard. They get a window into something novel and new that's taking place in another part of the country. It's like the flywheel that keeps it going out there.

Frank Lessiter:

I got a story about that. It was probably 15, 20 years ago. I talked to a farmer from Oregon who had subscribed to No-Till Farmer, but he wrote me a note and said, "I'm not subscribing again." So I called him up and said, "Why?" He says, "Because you don't do anything on Oregon farmers". And then there was another guy from Oregon I talked to and I told him this story and he said to me, "The reason I subscribe to No-Till Farmer is because you don't do any stories on Oregon farmers who are my neighbors. I want to see what's going on in other parts of the country that I can adjust for my operation."

Michael Musselman:

That's a great story. It talks about why people want the things that they want and how we try to serve many different people and often we can, but sometimes we can't.

Frank Lessiter:

One of the things No-Till Farmer got going for her, is we can go in depth on things. So you got the general farm magazines. They're trying to have content that goes to 10 different audiences, strawberry growers, almond growers, cotton growers, vegetable growers, corn growers like that. And they're limited on how many pages they have in print these days.

So if they do a story on no-till, say it's on soil stratification in no-till and this has actually happened, maybe they do a one page story and that's about all they can do on it. Well, we'll take the same subject and do three or four pages on it and where the farmer can get some real ideas out of what's happening in that. And then the general farm magazines, they still want to sell advertising to people with tractors and chisel plows and combines and sprayers and everything else. But high horsepower tractors are not that important to a no-tiller. John Deere just came out with their new tractor, I think it's 900 horsepower or something like that. And so I calculated how big a no-till planter you could pull with that, and it was 114 rows.

Michael Musselman:

Amazing.

John Dobberstein:

That's it for this episode of the No-Till Farmer podcast. We'd like to thank Dennis Michelsen and Michael Musselman for taking the time to interview Mike and Frank about the history of no-till practices and where we stand today. We also want to thank our sponsor Yetter Farm Equipment for helping make this podcast possible. A transcript of this episode and our archive of previous podcast episodes are both available at notillfarmer.com/podcasts. If you're interested in the books Frank Lessiter has written about no-till, go to our website at notillfarmer.com, visit the store section and go to the book section. For Dennis and Michael, Frank and Mike Lessiter and our entire staff here at No-Till Farmer, I'm John Dobberstein, thanks for listening. Keep on no-tilling and have a great day.