In the second installment of No-Till Farmer’s Ask the Operator webinar series, 2023 Conservation Ag Operator Fellow Loran Steinlage of West Union, Iowa, welcomed a Ukrainian no-tiller named Konstantin, who shared the challenges of farming in wartime and what North American no-tillers should know about the ongoing war in Ukraine. The No-Till Passport series is brought to you by Martin Industries.

John Kempf, chief vision officer and founder of Advancing Eco Agriculture, hosted a webinar titled “Regenerative Tools for Your No-Till Toolbox – Bringing Life to Your Soil.” In the webinar, Kempf dives into the relationship between soil biology and no-till farm management, and shares the value of biological inputs and the changes they can bring to your soil. One key to understanding this topic is understanding the rhizophagy cycle, which can be summarized into 5 stages:

Steve Martin grew up on his dad Howard’s farm raising tobacco, corn, wheat and soybeans. After trying no-till farming in the early 1970s, Howard Martin wasn’t satisfied with the results he was seeing. Roughly a decade later, he decided to give it another try.

The family was presented with several obstacles in the first few decades including a factory burning down, financial troubles, Whalen’s grandfather getting cancer in the 1970s and eventually his own mother passing away in 1980.

No-tillers often struggle with losing a large portion of their applied fertilizer. With soil microbes, farmers can increase the efficiency of the fertilizer in their systems and cut back on costs.

The 2023 National No-Tillage Conference felt like a return to what most attendees had grown accustomed to before the Covid-19 pandemic.