On this episode of Conservation Ag Update, brought to you by CultivAce, No-Till Farmer’s Conservation Ag Operator Fellow, Ray McCormick, showcases how he’s taking conservation ag to the next level in Vincennes, Ind., with ponds, solar panels, duck hunting and more.

In the Cover Crop Connection, agronomist David Kleinschmidt emphasizes the importance of C:N ratios when putting together your cover crop gameplan.

Later in the episode, we catch up with Haxtun, Colo. No-tiller Roy Pfaltzgraff at the Big Soil Health Event. Pfaltzgraff gives us the inside scoop on Seeding Circles, an online community he’s building for farmers.

Plus, we go “Ahead of the Curve” with MACH CTO Rhett Schildroth for the latest on autonomy developments. And in the Video of the Week, no-tiller Les Seiler shows the key adjustments he’s made to his sidedress system in northwest Ohio. 

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

CultivAce is a West Coast manufacturer and distributor of a comprehensive line of foliar and starter fertilizers. CultivAce offers innovative solutions that drive agricultural crop yields and cultivate profitableoutcomes.

With a relentless focus on delivering the highest quality foliar and starter fertilizers, we are committed to empowering growers with the tools they need to achieve remarkable results. CultivAce is built on two fundamental principles: products must be the highest quality, and they must make the grower money. If a product doesn’t meet these standards, CultivAce doesn’t manufacture it.

For more information go to CultivAcegrowth.com.

 

TRANSCRIPT

Jump to a section or scroll for the full episode...

Elevating No-Till with Ponds, Panels, Pollinators & More

Welcome to the last episode of 2024. We’re going to kick things off with an update from our Conservation Ag Operator Fellow, Ray McCormick. To say that Ray takes conservation to a “whole ‘nother” level would be a massive understatement. From ponds to solar panels, Ray’s got a lot going at his Vincennes, Ind., farm. 

“The sun’s coming up. We’re also working on our natural pond that will be full of water, rocks, frogs and fish. Then here’s our solar panels below the house that we charge our car and pickup with. Then I have a pollinator garden right here. Our natural pond will be surrounded by native plants. Beyond that, we have fields where we run the cattle. Those fields were all used as cover crops to feed cattle over the winter. We seldom take them off of it. We let them chomp around out there. We planted the corn and soybeans directly into the grazed cover crops. The crop seemed to like it.”

“Also, the stream that runs through the farm, we have conservation buffers on all sides, to buffer the ground against nutrient loss. But primarily on our farm, they’re for wildlife habitats — good pollinator habitats and quail nesting habitat. Because our farm is in long-term no-till, when we get these great big rains, the water just infiltrates into the ground. We don’t really need the buffer to keep nutrients out of our stream. We’re pretty proud of the way we farm, and we try to include every aspect of taking care of the environment, being good conservationists, helping out pollinators. And then right over here, we have a duck hunting business, so you see a duck blind that we built and we’re training our labs with. We’ll be putting in the rest of our duck blinds in pretty soon.”

Check out the feature article on Ray’s eventful year in the upcoming Conservation Tillage Guide, which should be arriving in your mailbox around New Year’s Day. Or read it on No-TillFarmer.com.

Cover Cropping in Integrated Farming Systems

Well last week we had boots on the ground at the Big Soil Health Event in Cedar Falls, Iowa where agronomist David Kleinschmidt emphasized the importance of considering Carbon to Nitrogen ratios of cover crops and residues, particularly when making decisions about cover crop termination. Let’s dive in a little deeper.  

“If we start using cover crops, we have to understand that the microbial activity of that cover crop, or the soil is going to break down residues and so we’ve got to look at — if we’ve got respiration rates that are really low and we throw a lot of carbon out there, that baby soil can’t digest — it’s kind of like having a steak out there. So they can’t use it, they can’t digest it, it just goes onto the floor. So we need to feed lower carbon to nitrogen ratio plants or change when we terminate that cover crop and stuff like that to make sure that those ratios aren’t going to tie up the nutrients.”

“Now, when we get a higher Co2 respiration rate, then we can build those cover crops and allow them to mature longer and have a higher carbon to nitrogen ratio because they are going to break it down and mineralize it and feed it back to the soil and the plants quicker. I also use the analogy — it’s kind of like building a fire. So, when you’ve got low C02 respiration rates — think of that like building a fire with a small kindling and you throw on a 3-foot log onto that fire, what did we do, we just smothered it out. So if we have a bigger fire with bigger sticks on it, now we can throw on that 3-foot log and it’ll burn pretty good. So, that’s the higher carbon to nitrogen ratio. Now people will go out and apply nitrogen on a cereal rye cover crop in corn and say well I am giving that nitrogen to my corn crop. Well, the microbes in that soil were sitting there and saw all this carbon material but they didn’t have enough nitrogen. So the nitrogen we apply is kind of like pouring gasoline on the fire and you’re going to get a huge burst of energy but what’s going to happen is that outside that wood will just be charred . Because the microbes have all this carbon and want nitrogen and now they’ve got nitrogen to break down some of this carbon and it gets locked up and doesn’t get released to the next cash crop.”

Really great analogy there to talk about kindling on a fire to explain nutrients and cover crops in relation to termination decisions. 

Dryland No-Tiller Builds Online Community for Farmers

Tons of great action at the Big Soil Health Event. It was good to see some familiar faces like Roy Pfaltzgraff. The Haxtun, Colo, no-tiller gives us the inside scoop on his new online community called Seeding Circles, which he says is the culmination of his dryland no-till journey.

“A lot of times, we feel like feel like we’re competing against the neighbor across the road, but if we talk to someone 500 miles away, there isn’t that competition or risk of being judged. Seeding Circles allows like-minded farmers to come together and help each other because any one of us can’t feed our population in our country but working together we can all change the food system, improve the profitability of farming, reduce the stress of farming — that’s what we’ve seen raising so many different crops. We’re actually less stressed. We have less work because we’re not trying to do as many acres in a short period of time. All these different factors played into this. And we can share it with others, and we can help others go down that path. That’s where Seeding Circles came from, was that desire to help others and address the mental health issues in agriculture.” 

And for more information on Roy’s project, head to SeedingCircles.com. 

Ahead of the Curve: Mach Showcases Latest in Autonomy

Time now to go Ahead of the Curve with Rhett Schildroth, chief technology officer at MACH, an OEM provider of autonomous software and hardware. He says this kind of technology has come a long way and is pushing towards the mainstream faster than you might think.  

“This is our full remote control with operator interface where you can actually lay out your entire field, create a job and run field with it, as well as one of our sensors for obstacle detection. We have a system with compute built into it. It’s looking out at the perimieter, looking for people, vehicles, animals, anything that might get in the way and cause the vehicle to stop or go around those obstacles.”

“I think what people might want to realize is how far this technology has come. Some applications like GUSS orchard sprayers, where you can go to your dealers and write checks for this now. I think you’ll see that at a lot of dealerships in the next 6 months because technology has reached the maturity point where it’s very practical for the average operation to utilize it.”

Video of the Week: “You Can’t Do It All at Once” with No-Till

I visited Les Seiler’s farm in northwest Ohio not too long ago, and the first thing that caught my eye was the personalized license plate on his car, with the letters “NO TIL.” Seiler’s passionate about the practice. 40 years into his no-till journey, he’s still making adjustments all the time, as he shows us here with his sidedress rig in the Video of the Week. 

“Slight angle, lay the 28 beside it and it’s pretty easy. It just doesn’t cause problems. We put a little closing assembly here to send the dirt back on. When you look down that row there, there’s a lot of stuff. When we were pulling knives and nozzles and stuff, everything was a mess. We’ve come a long ways with this equipment by working and trying different things. It didn’t all happen at once. It’s all work in progress. You can’t do it all at once, but you find something you like and try to expand on it.” 

That’ll wrap things up. Story idea? You know where to find me — Nnewman@Lessiter Media.com. Thanks so much for tuning in. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year,  and before we go, here’s a special message from Iowa no-tiller Kelly Garrett. 

Have an interesting photo or video from your farm? Or a story you’d like us to feature on the broadcast? Send me an email at Nnewman@lessitermedia.com.

And that will wrap things up this edition of Conservation Ag Update. Until next time, for more stories visit no-tillfarmer.com, striptillfarmer.com and covercropstrategies.com. Before we go, let’s send it out to Dave Hula for a preview of his upcoming presentation at the National Strip-Tillage Conference. Thanks for tuning in! Have a great day!

Of course, I’m sure not everyone was so lucky with the weather. Shoot me an email—nnewman@LessiterMedia.com— let us know how harvest is going in your neck of the woods.