The future of no-till is now. But what’s it going to take for the next generation to continue promoting and increasing the adoption of conservation practices? I asked a couple young farmers for their take at the No-Till Conference, let’s listen in to what they said.

“The younger crowd has to really step up. I can count on my hands how many guys that are under 40 farming in my area. And we're a pretty good-sized area, the average farmer is probably 1,500 acres, so we don't have a lot of really big farmers, so there should be a lot more.But it trickles down, we have to all step up and do more. I mean your communities, churches, and fire departments are short on help. So, we need to find a way to bring young people back and that's kind of my goal. I don't like airing my laundry out, but I like to tell people how my operation got started because my long-term goal is to try and find a way where if we could put one young farmer in every county in the Midwest or United States farming, that's extremely doable. Every county has at least one guy wanting to retire that doesn't have another family member. If we could rejuvenate that with a young family, I mean that would just multiply in ripples and help communities.”

– James Hepp, No-Tiller, Rockwell City, Iowa

“I think a lot of things. I think it's not unique to the farming community first of all. I think all of our rural communities are struggling and it's maybe most signified on the farm, but there's so many little towns across rural America that are a shadow of what they once were. And we're probably young enough that we've never even seen them how they once were, but we hear stories, and you can see old buildings falling in that used to be thriving businesses. And I think it's a problem that's bigger than agriculture. But to try to focus it in on what we can do, I think it's being open to young people in your community that might be interested and find a way to get them on your farm. I know that's going to look different for everybody and finding good help is hard, and paying good help what they deserve is even harder. But we've got to be open to it and looking. And if you're not looking for something, it's very difficult to find it because then they've got to find you. But if we can be proactive in trying to find good people rather than good people just falling in our lap, that's going to help us a lot as an industry.”

– Joel Reddick, No-Tiller, Bardwell, Ky.

James is a first-generation no-tiller in Iowa, and Joel farms with his dad, Brad, in Kentucky. They started no-tilling about 7 years ago.


Watch the full version of this episode of Conservation Ag Update.