“The older I get, the more I think about the future and the other generations that are going to come along … and how so many of the systems that we use currently are having a deleterious impact on the landscape. And we're not doing enough about that. We only get one set of soils to use, and there's a lot of other civilizations that have failed. And, I’m passionate about not just turning a blind eye and going along with that.…” — Zack Smith, inventor of the Stock Cropper
Finding ways to improve farm profits without taking on more acres is one of Zack Smith’s goals. In fact, the Buffalo Center, Iowa, strip-tiller has a name for it – biohacks. With his mindset of finding natural, vegetative solutions for farm problems, he recently started developing a unique autonomous structure he calls the Stock Cropper that integrates strip-cropping with mobile grazing.
For this No-Till Farmer podcast, we caught up with Zack to hear about the Stock Cropper, including why it has an inverted roof, how he envisions utilizing them at production scale, how it can help farmers keep more money in their pockets, the importance of transparency in the consumer relationship and more. He also explains why he ran a lawn mower over some of his corn acres this spring – on purpose.
No-Till Farmer podcast series is brought to you by The Andersons.
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