On this episode of Conservation Ag Update, brought to you by Yetter Farm Equipment, Ohio State Univ. retired ag engineer and No-Till Innovator Randall Reeder discusses the true cost of erosion, and why no-till and cover crops would help cut down on dust storms.

Later in the episode, Wood Lake, Minn., no-tiller David Stelter showcases his custom-built interseeder. In the Cover Crop Connection, associate editor Mackane Vogel has the scoop on the new National Cover Crop Variety Test Report.

Washington, Iowa, no-tiller and founder of Continuum Ag, Mitchell Hora shares how farmers can prepare to cash in on the 45Z tax credit, which is locked in through 2029 after the passing of the Big Beautiful Bill. Plus, No-Till Legend John Bradley discusses the key to increasing no-till acreage, and in the Video of the Week, a fellow No-Till Legend ties the knot!

This episode of Conservation Ag Update is brought to you by Yetter Farm Equipment.

Since 1930, Yetter Farm Equipment has been providing farmers with profitable solutions. From residue management and fertilizer placement to seedbed preparation, our equipment is designed to maximize your inputs, save you time, and deliver a strong return on investment. Explore our full line of planter attachments, precision fertilizer placement options, strip-till units, and stalk rollers at yetterco.com. Let Yetter help you prepare your equipment lineup for success today.


TRANSCRIPT

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Reeder: More No-Till & Cover Crops will Eliminate Dust Storms

Just a few months ago, Chicago issued its first-ever dust storm warning after thunderstorms swept up loose soil from farm country and hurled it into the atmosphere. Dust storms typically don’t get tons of national media coverage, but a new dataset shows there were 232 deaths from windblown dust events from 2007-2017.

The number jumps up to 240 if you include the deadly I-55 pileup in Illinois a couple years ago. So, how do we put an end to these dust storms? No-Till Innovator Randall Reeder has the answer.  

“Illinois had three straight springs with dust storms, some more tragic than others. I think I can guarantee you, if all the land, and I'm not picking only Illinois, if all the farmland was no-till with cover crops, there would be zero dust storms because that soil was always going to have a cover on it, and we would not have any dust storm. We'd have minimal erosion from rain. It would take a big rainstorm to cause any erosion.”

“We've got research in Ohio, 40 years on a steep slope and corn and they were measuring the sediment in pounds per acre, not tons, a few pounds, and it just shows the value and how we can just flat out eliminate erosion with no-till and cover crops.”

Minnesota No-Tiller Showcases Custom-Built Interseeder 

Next up, we’re headed to Wood Lake, Minn., where no-tiller David Stelter tries to keep all his acres covered year-round. To help make it happen, he built a piece of equipment to interseed corn at V6. Let’s check it out. 

“A neighbor of mine and myself designed this planter for intereseding V6 corn here in Minnesota. I got the idea from a gentleman named Brady Wolfe by Benson, Minn. They did theirs on 40-inch rows, we did this on 30’s. Trying to get some soil movement when we planted instead of just dropping the seed on top of the soil. We get enough soil movement from these rotary tines from the rotary hoe to mix the soil and seed up a little bit. And of course, the rain does wonders.” 

“What happens is this thing will meter out the seed, it will blow it out into these deflectors, and the deflectors will deflect the seed in the 30-inch row and the rotors churn the soil and you pray for rain. When you get timely rain soon after you do it, germination will take place in 3-5 days. But you don’t always get it. Some years you have to wait for the rain to come. If the ground isn’t completely flat, the seed has some particles to attach to. The two seasons we’ve used it now; we’ve had what I consider good results. We did find that you can’t use a PRE on your soils.”

David had cover crops on almost 100% of his 750 acres a decade ago, but since then, he’s fought mud each fall, making it difficult to get covers established in some areas. 

National Cover Crop Variety Testing Program

Thanks, Noah. Mackane Vogel here with this week’s cover crop connection. As part of a $10 million effort funded by the USDA, the first National Cover Crop Variety Test Report is being released publicly. The project is led by the University of Missouri’s Center for Regenerative Agriculture and includes data for 25 varieties representing six different cover crop species tested across 12 states to help inform cover crop decision making based on winter hardiness, biomass potential, weed control, and other key cover crop traits. Here’s a clip of Etienne Sutton, Program Manager and Senior Researcher at the Center for Regenerative Agriculture, discussing some more details from the testing program. 

“So this is an example from our Vermont site. The evaluation metrics are listed in the top row of the table, and then the species and varieties are along the leftmost column, and the values in the tables are the averages for each variety across those evaluation metrics. You'll want to note that the winter canola and radishes are both lumped together into a brassicas category at the bottom of the tables. and then, in terms of analysis for each site. We analyzed the data to see if there were statistically significant differences across varieties for each species, and where there were significant differences.” 

“We indicated this with letters such that any varieties that do not share a letter are indeed statistically different from each other. For example, across winter pea varieties in Vermont there were significant differences. In spring stand survivor, which is marked with an A is a variety bred for winter hardiness in early Greenup, and showed significantly better spring stand than frostmaster, which is marked with a B. The other 3 varieties Wyo Winter, Austrian winter peas and keystone are all marked with both an A and a B, which means that they had intermediate performance and were not significantly different from either survivor or frostmaster.”

If you want to download and review the full report or watch the replay of that webinar unpacking all the details from the report, you can head to the website or the YouTube channel for University of Missouri’s Center for Regenerative Agriculture.

No-Till Windfall: Cashing in on 45Z 

The recently passed Big Beautiful Bill officially locked in the 45Z tax credit through 2029. 45Z incentivizes the production of clean fuel and could result in a windfall for no-tillers producing low-carbon corn. “A game changer,” if you ask Washington, Iowa, no-tiller Mitchell Hora. The Continuum Ag founder hosted a press conference to helps farmers cash in. 

“We don’t know all the final details yet, but this is absolutely happening. It is going forward. It is locked in. We need to be ready to roll. At a minimum, know what your CI score is. And that’s free, it doesn’t take very long either. We do it at Topsoil.ag for free or google the GREET Model and go and get your CI score. Just know what you’re dealing with, understand how it works. The full GREET Model is pretty complicated, that’s why we simplified it. You own your data in our system.” 

“Be prepared, you’re going to have to verify your CI scores field by field. That’s how this is going to work. The data may be aggregated at a farm level. It may remain field by field. We don’t know, but regardless you have to have scores field by field, agronomic data field by field, and you have to undergo these audits. Whether it (undergoing audits) be proactively, like what we’ve been doing under our CI certification program, or it’s going to be required by the grand buyer — the ethanol plant.”

CI stands for carbon intensity. The closer your CI score is to 0, the likelier it is to translate to a tax credit for the ethanol plant and ultimately additional income for your farm.

John Bradley Shares Key to Increasing No-Till Acreage

Special treat now, we’re catching up with No-Till Legend John Bradley. The longtime Univ. of Tennessee agronomist was instrumental in the development of no-till in the south in the 1970s and 80s. Bradley credits much of the success to the local farmers who stepped up to the plate as champions for the practice. 

“An extension agent would go out and work with a farmer on new innovations. And then they would use him, if you would, as a leader or an example and have field days around him.”

“And where we had those people, you could actually pinpoint where we would get it going. And then when that particular local leader or leaders, maybe it was two or three different farmers, would fade out that no-till went down. To do no-till, one of the first things I recommend is you need a mentor. And that's what this person acted as, a mentor. They could go to him ask questions. They could go to his farm. They could look at his drill. They could look at his planter. They could look at his spray rigs.”

“The concept that I had and worked with was the extension setup test demonstration farms. When I worked for Monsanto, we called them Centers of Excellence. And I went to all the cotton states, and we set those up mainly one for state, sometimes two. And those farmers became the local leaders and spokespeople. And then we would use them in local regional meetings to give how they made it work in their situation.”

“And we had noticed when something, it was pretty much a full-time job keeping them going and answering questions. But when they dropped out of the picture from one reason or the other, the acres went down.”

Video of the Week: Marion Calmer Celebrates Wedding

From one No-Till Legend to another for our Video of the Week. Congratulations to Marion and Charla Calmer, who tied the knot earlier this month.   

The Calmers exchanged nuptials on their “Calmer Waters” boat in Alpha, Ill. Looks like it was a fun ceremony! Cheers to Marion and Charla on their pre-harvest honeymoon. Looking forward to seeing Marion at the No-Till Conference in January. 

That’ll do it for this week. Got something you’d like to feature on the program? Shoot me an email at Nnewman@Lessiter Media.com. Thanks for tuning into Conversation Ag Update. Until next time, for more stories visit no-tillfarmer.com, striptillfarmer.com and covercropstrategies.com.