On this episode of Conservation Ag Update, brought to you by Sound Agriculture, we head inside the first-ever Conversations about Conservation workshop for landowners at No-Till Innovator Mike Starkey’s farm in Brownsburg, Ind.

Plus, we have boots on the ground at the World Ag Expo and National Farm Machinery Show. Associate editor Mackane Vogel checks in from Tulare, Calif., with an up-close look at Pyka’s Pelican 2 — the largest autonomous crop protection aircraft on the market. Meanwhile in Louisville, Ky., Beck’s agronomist Steve Gauck shares lessons learned from new studies on corn root architecture.

In the Cover Crop Connection, New Jersey no-tillers Robert and R.J. Fulper try using a planter-mounted roller-crimper while planting green as part of a North Jersey RC&D on-farm trial.

And in the Video of the Week, Beaver Dam, Wis., strip-tiller Ryan Nell plants his soybeans on January 31st!

This episode of Conservation Ag Update is brought to you by Sound Agriculture.

Sound Agriculture delivers bioinspired solutions that enrich soil and improve crops. Our synergistic products empower growers to achieve success while minimizing environmental impact.

SOURCE® activates the soil microbiome, unlocking nutrients for crops through advanced chemistry. BLUEPRINT™ offers the highest-quality arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF), extending root systems to improve nutrient and water access.

Beyond our products, Sound leads the way with programs that support growers in adopting sustainable practices to reduce reliance on synthetic fertilizers while maintaining productivity and profitability.

 

TRANSCRIPT

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No-Till Innovator Hosts Conversations About Conservation Workshop

 Welcome to Conservation Ag Update, we begin in the Indianapolis area, where No-Till Innovator Mike Starkey hosted a special event of his own. 

Let’s head inside the first-ever Conservations About Conservation workshop for landowners at Starkey Farms Partnership in Brownsburg, Ind. The innovative educational and networking event was designed to convey to landowners the benefits of no-till and cover crops, and how they extend well beyond the rent check. Bob Barr of Indiana University-Indianapolis helped Starkey put this together, along with the Nature Conservancy and other local organizations. One of the big takeaways here — fellow no-tillers might benefit from hosting an event like this to teach landowners what conservation practices will do for the land they’re renting out. 

“You got to get the thinking of, “Okay, what do landowners want to hear?” And so, instead of talking about how to improve their equipment for no-till or what kind of cover crop seed to purchase, so on and so forth, that type of agenda, they want to hear an agenda about their farm, their soil, their water, and hopefully transition their tenants in providing the soil health practice that I do.

“Contact your county and get a landowner list. I actually personally contacted all my landlords and a lot of neighboring landowners in our county through our Soil and Water Conservation District, because we know who owns the land. It’s public information. So, we just actually just went directly to the landowners and sent the email out and sending the agenda with the invite.”

– Mike Starkey, No-Till Innovator, Brownsburg, Ind.

“Why this is important today is, here in Indiana, the watershed where we’re at is about 50% of the farm ground is farmed by somebody that doesn’t actually own it. And so, today we’re shepherding a conversation between landowners and farmers about conservation outcomes. What’s something we can all better do together collectively?”

– Mike Dunn, The Nature Conservancy 

“The USDA and the NRCS understand and see that a lot of the rental ground is just not being managed with conservation practices. And that population doesn’t seem to really get a lot of the outreach. So, one of the things we wanted to try to do is USDA said, ‘How do we reach them?’ The farmers, the producers talk to each other. They go to the county extension agents. They go to the soil conservationists in the county. Absentee landowners or rented landowners often don’t do that. So, we wanted a way to reach those people. We came up with the idea of trying to put together an event, like we often do to talk to each other, but to reach out to people outside of that core community.”

– Bob Barr, Indiana University - Indianapolis

Our Mike Lessiter will have more coverage from the workshop on No-TillFarmer.com

Exploring Corn Root Architecture at National Farm Machinery Show

Another National Farm Machinery Show is in the books, and as always, it was quite the spectacle with over 300,000 people packing the Kentucky Expo Center in Louisville, Ky. 

Our team got an up-close look at some of the newest farm equipment, technology and innovations on the market. There were some great educational sessions as well. I learned quite a bit about tar spot from Beck’s agronomist Travis Coleman. He says there’s no silver bullet, but micronutrients, sulfur and early-morning fungicide applications can help mitigate risk. And you never know what you’re going to see at the show, like this Kioti transformer-looking thing and this corn root cage at the Beck’s booth. Steve Gauck, what can we learn from this? 

“Now as we think about roots, and every time we up population, we’re losing about 1% of roots a year on corn. Are there different ways we should apply nutrients? A horizontal root system takes the nutrients and water out of that top zone. Balanced roots go everywhere. Vertical root systems lean slightly towards a banded-type fertilizer. We’re also noticing some stress tolerance differences. Vertical roots can go deeper for water — a little bit better stress tolerance. Now, ultimately there’s not a perfect root system. There’s not necessarily a perfect root system for your farm. It’s going to vary based on your fields and soil types. 

“As we learn more about root architecture and you think about population. Horizontal roots like lower populations. They’re more of your flexier type hybrids; they don’t like that competition. A balanced root goes everywhere, and a vertical root system will actually perform better in higher populations, so there’s less competition as roots go down and pull nutrients out of the ground.”

Now let’s head west and check back in with Mackane Vogel to see what’s going on at the World Ag Expo.

Innovative Technology On Display at World Ag Expo

 Well, this week we’re going to highlight one of the coolest products that I found at the World Ag Expo in Tulare, Calif., we’re going to toss it off to the booth at Pyka where they’re going to be showing off their new product, the Pelican 2. It is an herbicide and fungicide sprayer plane. Take a look at some of the specs.

“What you’re looking at here is an entirely autonomous, fully electric crop duster, essentially. So it runs on 4, 25-kilowatt electric motors, and those are powered by 3 battery packs which live in the nose over here. These are mock ups right here, just sand bags, but these are about the size of our battery packs so 3 of them would fit in the nose there. And that supplies power. The payload capacity of the drone is about 80 gallons, you can see that on our tank right here. These are the fill lines, so we hold about 80 gallons.

“The aircraft, like I said, runs on a battery set with 3 batteries on it and in order for you to stay continuously operating with the aircraft, we provide the system with 4 different battery sets. Each battery set takes about an hour to charge and you generally get about 25-45 minutes of flight time out of each set. So by the time you discharge the one on the plane, you’ve got a full set ready to go here. And they are hot swappable so you just pull these out and slap one in the plane. And the idea is that it takes about the same amount of time to fill your plane to 80 gallons as it does to swap out a battery. 

“Basically all your mission planning happens here on this laptop. You can see a representative area here. So if you zoom in, let’s say this is what you want to spray. You just draw in the polygon whatever you want. So you kind of just draw these vertices and let’s say you want to spray this area roughly and you just upload this mission and it will plan a path for you. So this is the path that the plane will now fly. And then we have this 3D visualizer over here on the right, that’s simulating what the plane would be doing in real life.”

Alright, that's just one of several awesome products we saw at the World Ag Expo this week so stay tuned for future content in future episodes.

Cover Crop Connection: No-Tillers Try Planter-Mounted Roller-Crimper 

Today we’re highlighting another on-farm trial from North Jersey RC&D. Longtime no-tillers Robert and R.J. Fulper used a planter-mounted roller-crimper for the first time to terminate their covers while planting green. 

“The cover crops, when you plant through them, they lay down, they form a blanket, and it protects the soil and protects evaporation through the season. This year, with the dry weather, our crops did better than we expected they would’ve done."

– Robert Fulper, no-tiller, West Amwell, NJ

“I had a little damage crimping the beans, but it turns out in the end the yields were fairly even again. With the drought, maybe it’s because there was that extra thatch that kept the soybeans growing a little longer. If the yield is even every year, and it was all the same, I would still pick the cover crop and planting green because you’re going to get the long-term benefits out of it.”

– R.J. Fulper, no-tiller, West Amwell, NJ

Building long-term soil health is what’s all about for the Fulpers. They’ve been no-tilling since the 1970s. 

Video of the Week: Strip-Tiller Plants Soybeans in January!  

Beaver Dam, Wis., strip-tiller Ryan Nell likes to plant his soybeans super early. He’s always pushing the envelope, tut this year he took it to another level… planting some beans on January 31st!   

“3.5 acres of beans in the ground. We have been no moisture in the month of January. A little warmer here in the last week or so. Hit 50 degrees yesterday. We have frost about 2-3 inches, guys. Fall-stripped. We had to try it. I’m always up for a challenge. We’ve been doing March beans since 2018 and have not had a failure. Last year, March 3, planted 11 acres, I think they did over 80 bushels. Have to try it. Whether it’s right or wrong, I don’t know. This asking a lot of the beans. We’re asking them to sit in the ground for 3 months. I like the conditions. I like where they’re planted. Pioneer treated beans. 140,000. About 2-2.25 depth. We’ll see what happens. This is unknown territory. I hope it works out. We’re going to keep an eye on these. Realistically, I hope I don’t see anything until the end of April.”

If you don’t try, you won’t know. That’s Ryan’s motto.

That’ll wrap things up. Story idea? You know where to find me — Nnewman@Lessiter Media.com. Thanks so much for tuning in, see you for our next episode. Until next time, for more stories visit no-tillfarmer.com, striptillfarmer.com and covercropstrategies.com.