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Welcome to the Conservation Ag update. This is Mike Lessiter from Lessiter Ag Media. This week we were in Washington D.C. seeing the Ag Retailers Association, the Fertilizer Institute, the National Association of Conservation Districts and Field to Market. Welcome to this week's Conservation Ag update.

Conservation Ag update is brought to you by Yetter Farm Equipment. Great to see you for Conservation Ag update. I'm Noah Newman. Hard to believe we are halfway home in June, which means side dressing time for many of you. That's what no-till innovator Jim Leverage is doing out in Sparta, Wisconsin and he switching things up with a new Blue-Jet liquid fertilizer applicator. Let's check it out.

I used to have an injection coulter, but I went to the knives and I like the knives. I don't know if they'll plug in corn stalks. They work fine in bean stubble, it's no-till, but I have some corn on corn this year, but we'll see. And so if we get into trouble, we'll just put the injector back on there, the spray injector instead of the knife. But the knife is so much better, because if you're side dressing with the spray injector every night you have to wash the applicator. It splatters too much. It just ends up all over the place. So I hung onto my anhydrous bar a year and a half or two, I guess, and then I finally sold it. I traded it for this unit.

Jim's injecting fertilizer about two to three inches deep around V3, V4, and he says he'll probably mix in some ATS with 28. All right, now let's check in with McCain out on the East Coast for today's Cover Crop Connection. McCain.

Thanks Noah. McCain Vogel here with this week's Cover Crop Connection. And as I said before, we're in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania at Jim Hershey's Farm. And why don't we see what Jim Hershey's been working on this year with cover crops?

This barley here will be harvested probably in two weeks, and then we want to plant a sedan sorghum to try and get some green cover, and we're going to do a live planting demo, the day of the event. It still looks a little... I think that would plant on top. Huh, you might have to consider that here. Hey, it's plenty moist enough, but I think for just shallow no-till, I wouldn't want to plant all my crop in that [inaudible 00:02:43] of the soil. But I think too, I like that. Yeah, plenty of wet down lower, but I think it's enough of dry soil on top there. It crumbles well enough, but just look at the root development there just from the barley. It goes down there three, four inches just from the barley, so that's great. I'm glad that's drying out. That needs enough to get some planting done here in this area for the soil pit.

Well, there'll be lots more content from my East Coast farm trip to come in the coming weeks, but that's all for this week's Cover Crop Connection. Until next time, I'm McCain Vogel. Back to you Noah.

Great stuff, McCain. Thanks so much. Safe travels. All right, from the East Coast of the Great Plains and the Flickner Innovation Farm in the Wichita, Kansas area, local deer dealer Prairieland Partners is testing See and Spray on Ray Flickner's no-till on strip-till farm and product innovation specialist Bryan Berggren explains why this kind of tech is set to take off.

John Deere changed their strategy as far as the pricing structure. So right now, this season and moving forward, you're only getting charged for the savings, which means you're getting charged for the acres it does not spray. Okay, so that takes some of this equation out. There's such a thing as fallback mode when the boom gets too high or you go too fast, it starts spraying solid in that section. What that does is that gets the price way down to an acceptable price point. And people want this technology. They want to be able to use this to number one, save chemical or money on chemical and all of that to be responsible just a little bit with what they're doing with the land. Nobody wants to spray chemical all the time, and this is really, I would say gaining a lot of traction in the industry as a whole is moving this direction. They're coming fast and there's lots of other companies developing this type of technology. I would say personally I was very skeptical from the beginning, because I've run a sprayer for 20, 30 years and worked for some commercial applicators.

It never ceases to amaze me how sensitive it is. It sees more than we can see actually with our own eyes, and even moving at 12 to 15 miles an hour through the field, recognizing a crop versus a weed. It's unbelievable.

Moving on, an all-star panel discussed the future of conservation ag during last month's Conservation in Ag tour, our Mike Lessiter moderated the session and he asked the panels for their biggest no-till success stories. Well, Brian Hefty shared a personal one of helping his dad move away from full tillage in North Central Iowa.

Now, for my dad, it, I think physically hurt him every time he had to drive past the field, and see that the field didn't look perfect all the time. He could not stand the residue out there in the spring. It drove him nuts. But as we looked at it throughout the next couple of years, we had a lot less erosion. And the other thing that I mentioned right away with my grandpa is we have the technology today that he didn't have. So herbicides were mentioned, that the equipment, there was no, no-till planter, no-till drill. There's no way you could do it back then. And the other big thing I talk an awful lot about is drain tile properly placed. I'm not saying draining cup ponds, but when it's out in a normal field situation, keep the water table down. Well now we don't have to do the tillage to dry the field out.

That top two feet is dry and now it gives us more opportunity to do strip-till and no-till and those kinds of things. So when I step back and I think about for my dad, that was a massive change. And without my brother and me here, I don't know that he would've made that change. I mean, he's a smart guy and wants to do good things and everything else, but if you look at why did soil organic matter decrease in the United States for like a hundred years in a row, it's because of the massive tillage we had. We have to figure out how do we reduce tillage. It doesn't necessarily have to be no-till. Strip-till, is a great compromise I think, but we have to reduce tillage somehow some way. And the big thing anymore that I talk to farmers about is soil organic matter is good. If we have good soil organic matter, our soil is more spongy, less likely to compact. We have more nutrient release, we just raise better crops, and our ground is worth more.

Great story from Brian there. Now the panel also featured Carrie Vollmer-Sanders, president of Field to Market, and Brian Chatham, agronomy manager for Ducks Unlimited. So definitely check out the full conversation on no-tillfarmer.com. Time now for the video of the week, got caught up with Iowa State's, Rebecca Vitettoe for a preview of the upcoming Strip-Till Field Day taking place ahead of the National Strip-Till Conference July 30th. Let's check it out. And do you know how many strip-till toolbars will be out here?

Yeah, so we've got 10 confirmed strip-till toolbars as of right now. So that'll be awesome to have different manufacturers, different strip-till bars here for people to take a look at. We've got about 40 acres that we can work around in to do some of those different demos in. And then in addition to the strip-till bar demos, we've also got some companies that will be joining us just having more of a static display and whether it's the live demos or the static displays, there'll be opportunity for people to visit with those different companies that are here.

Now, I know our attendees have been asking for an event like this for quite some time. They want to see equipment in action and just what can you say about the value of an event like this where people, maybe some beginner strip-tillers or veteran strip-tillers, or even people thinking about getting into strip-till can see this equipment in action?

Yeah, I think anytime you can get out and just see something, get your hands on, it's a great learning opportunity whether you're totally new and you're just thinking about maybe exploring strip-till and just wanting to know what's even out there. Or maybe you're a more seasoned veteran and you've been doing strip-till just to see and learn from different people and even share expertise.

And free to attend. But you're asking people to RSVP so you can kind of get a head count for lunch.

The Strip-Till Field Day is free to attend. We are just asking that people do register ahead of time. That is more so to help us, like you mentioned, get a head count for lunch. So we're working with our local pork producers. They're going to be grilling some pork burgers for us.

I'm hungry, just hearing that.

Want to make sure you have enough pork burgers for everybody.

Yeah, it's going to be a lot of fun. We'd love to see you there. And if you have more questions about the Strip-Till Conference, head to striptillconference.com. That'll wrap things up. Questions, comments, story ideas, you know where to find me, nnewman@lessitermedia.com. Thanks so much for tuning in. Hope you have a great weekend and we'll see you next time on Conservation Ag update.