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Full Transcript

Conservation Ag update is brought to you by Sound Agriculture. Come on in. Welcome to the first episode of 2025. We are coming off a very exciting week in Louisville, Kentucky, where not even two snowstorms could stop the 33rd annual national No-Tillage Conference. In attendance were more than 600 farmers, researchers, educators and industry experts from all over the US and countries like Australia, Canada, Hungary, Italy and New Zealand. There were 14 general sessions, 24 classrooms, 34 round tables, hours of networking. And boy, oh boy, what a grand finale. The Innovators and Experts panel gave the audience plenty to think about with some advice for when Mother Nature throws them a knuckle curveball this spring.

You need to have a general plan that you want to follow, but have that equipment and everything ready to go, and have alternative plans. Don't get caught with having to make changes that you hadn't anticipated. Just always figure the weatherman is going to throw some changes at you.

You've got to have a soil that's resilient to dry, and that goes back to organic matter. So either you've got to be really good at selecting your grandparents who knew where to find that high organic matter soil, and that's where you farm; either that or you've got to have an intentional management plan to build organic matter.

April 25th, I had some of the best looking rye I ever had. I was set up for the relay crop. We're out there fixing tile. Oh, we'll wait a day or two to get the tile fixed. Well, 30" of rain later, I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth and butcher it. And we decided, I guess we're growing rye that day. So I called the insurance agent. I was like, "Well, I guess we're going to grow rye this year. Can I put some hail insurance on it?" Well, the next day the feedlot guy comes and says, "Hey, I need some rye. I need forage." Two days later, we're planting beans in that field because he took the rye off and we could plant beans in there. So learn to adapt to whatever Mother Nature's throwing at you, and you know how they always used to say, "Lemon, lemonade," but learn how to throw a little vodka with it when you get the chance.

Growing annual rye grass on every field year after year, and quite frankly, my corn roots are down there where they've never been before. Nutrients and water availability with deep root systems, I don't see hardly any impact on my corn. So in these wet fields, I don't have drowned out areas. I got a crop from one end of the other, and it's very resilient to drought. So Barry said the word, resiliency, so that your farm can take a wet rain, but your crop can take what is statistically there: longer, more intense drought periods. And that's just a fact. And if you have a system that's resilient, then you're going to come out ahead.

And of course we'll have lots of coverage in the coming weeks. And we also have some breaking news right now. Next year's conference will take place in St. Louis, January 6th through 9th. Super early bird registration is currently underway.

All right, well, during the conference, North Jersey RC&D was honored as the no-till innovator of the year in the organization category. They recently worked with 25 farmers on various cover crop termination methods. Jeff Bowlby participated in one of their planting green trials with crimson clover, which usually plants in late August or early September. So on one field he terminated before planting; on the other field, he let the clover grow about another week and a half before planting into it. And the East Amwell, New Jersey no-tiller estimates he gained 30 extra units of nitrogen by allowing the clover to reach its maximum potential.

I upgraded a lot of my equipment so that I could do the planting green practice, or at least try it. The idea is to allow the vegetative growth to go as long as possible so that you do not have a lapse in life cycle on your ground. I was nervous the first time I did it, and there's a lot of people that I make nervous doing that. Some of my crimson clover stands that I plant through, you come to the end of the field and the only thing that you visibly see is all your vegetation just knocked down. They say, "How do you know it's working?" Just sit in the seat and look forward. Don't worry about what's behind you. It's scary. Until the seed comes out of the ground, I don't sleep very well. Even though you're planting through what looks like a jungle, it will work.

Yeah. In the first year of the trial, Jeff's planting green field produced 40 more bushels of corn per acre, and the second year, 15 more bushels of soybeans per acre. Let's keep the cover crop talk going now and send it over to Mackane Vogel for the Cover Crop Connection.

Thanks, Noah. Mackane Vogel here with this week's Cover Crop Connection. Well, the Cover Crop Strategies podcast is officially back for the start of 2025, and we're going to have lots of great interview guests on the show in the coming weeks. But to start off the year strong, here's a clip from the first episode of the new year with Olivia Caillouet. She's the Soil Health Program Manager at the University of Missouri's Center for Regenerative Agriculture, and she's currently working on several cover crop-related projects, including what's known as the Women Landowners Leading Regeneration program.

This project, Women Landowners Leading Regeneration, has really two components, the first being we are going to train women conservation professionals to implement these practices, women caring for the land, to help women landowners engage in conservation practices. About 25% of the US farmland is owned by women. A lot of it is rented, so we're focusing specifically on non-operator women landowners who are renting out their land.

And then that second component is going to be directly supporting our women landowners, hosting trainings in Missouri, Kansas and Iowa to bring together women landowners to idea share, build network, and continue to empower them to implement conservation practices on their land; cover crops definitely a strong component of it. And then exciting part about this project is we are getting to pull in those other synergistic practices, no-till and reduced-till, riparian buffers. And we are going to be offering resources to the conservation professionals as well as women landowners to find funding for those diverse conservation practices.

Olivia says the project is still waiting for final approval, but you can find any and all updates on the University of Missouri Center for Regenerative Agriculture website, as well as an interest survey, which is live right now. And be sure to head to covercropstrategies.com to check out the full podcast episode and to hear lots more about what else Olivia is working on. Well, that's all for this week's Cover Crop Connection. Until next time, I'm Mackane Vogel. Back to you, Noah.

Thank you very much Mackane, and good luck to your Baltimore Ravens this weekend. All right, let's fire up the question of the week as we turn the page to 2025. We asked, "What do you see as the future of no-till and what needs to be done to increase adoption?" Let's see what you said. Pennsylvania no-tiller DC Johnson says, "Herbicide-free, pesticide-free, selective mid-till, strip-till and no-till seeding into cover crops is the future, working with the biosphere instead of against it. Farming needs to change from dominion, productivity and efficiency to cooperation."

Martin Kontz, checking in from England says, "There's a growing debate around whether the reliance on herbicides, pesticides and fungicides might be more harmful to soil biology than occasional tilling. This has made us rethink how we manage our system," he says. "If our goal is to build soil life, we might need to critically evaluate practices that might harm or disrupt the natural systems designed to feed plants, removing or reducing inputs that kill or suppress soil life is becoming a key part of this conversation. And it's shaping how we approach soil management going forward."

Blaine Baker farms in the Western Lake Erie Basin. He says, "Our county has been a leader in the conservation for many years. Much time, energy and money has been spent to encourage no-till to no avail. With input costs rising, one would think more farmers would switch to no-till. With a savings of $30 to $50 per acre, you'd think more farmers would try it. Looking at the millions upon millions of dollars spent in the WLEB with little success of resolving the problem, I, along with other area farmers, feel regulation is eventually going to happen. When it does, you'll see an increase in no-till."

And the one and only Raymond Cormick says, "Those that work their ground will simply not be able to compete in the future. Higher yields with lower costs will make healthy soils that come from no-till with cover crops the high profit acres of the future."

What do you think? Join the discussion at No-Tillfarmer.com. We included a link to sign up for the email discussion group in the article for this episode. Going ahead of the curve now with Dave Thompson in Amboy, Illinois, our good friend, a precision specialist from Case IH dealer Johnson Tractor. I tagged along as he installed a TrueSight row guidance system on a corn head. And Dave says it's been a hot seller lately for several reasons. Take a listen.

This right here, the sensor I'm putting in, so I've had customers very, very hesitant, thinking they don't need this. I believe it was 2022, we had a tremendous amount of downed corn in this whole area across here, from storm damage, of course. Guys that were hesitant, they didn't need it, they didn't want it, at the end of that year, they were very happy they had that, because once again, it took the fatigue level ... Yes, they're still combining downed corn. Yeah, you might not need that to drive across a perfectly straight row of corn, but when you get into some adverse conditions, it's very helpful.

And wrapping things up with our video of the week, featuring our interview with Desmond Miller at the No-Till Conference. The Parker, South Dakota farmer talks about his modified ridge till system, which he says is perfectly compatible with no-till.

Well, the first thing I did was I bought a Buffalo planter and cut it up into a million pieces and rebuilt it, first of all by lengthening the distance between the ridge cleaner and the planter so that all of this material, copious amounts of residue, can pass through without plugging up. I think that's one of the big frustrations early ridge tillers had, was it just plugged up and couldn't handle the residue.

The other thing I did was I just totally threw away that little bulldozer shovel in front of the Buffalo planter and put on my own big 24" concave coulter, single coulter, in front of the machine. It acts as a roll cleaner, gets rid of all of the residue, and about 1", no less, I mean no more than 1" of soil. So it just carefully scrapes off the top. And those two features made the mechanization of ridge till work for me very, very well.

Interesting stuff there. Desmond says he does very little tillage; just once every three years, he tosses soil and residue from the valleys to the ridge tops. And that'll do it for this week's story idea. You know where to find me: NNewman@LessiterMedia.com. Thanks so much for tuning in. We'll see you for our next episode, January 31st. Have a great day.