The Cowan family has a long history of utilizing no-till practices. Their first exposure was back in the 1980s when Art Cowan came across a no-till meeting while traveling in North Dakota. When he returned to Manitoba, the Cowans decided to give no-till a try.

Fast-forward, and today Art’s grandsons Nick and Del Cowan are running the operation, along with their dad Bill (Art’s son). While Art and Bill started no-tilling to combat dry conditions, about 10 years ago the Cowans grow perennials on up to 20% of their land to help combat wet conditions, Nick says. In total, they have 10,000 crop acres. 

About 10 years ago, the brothers started to move toward regenerative agriculture practices. 

“At that time we stopped flipping equipment and put more money toward land debt as a safety net in case regen didn’t work out,” Nick says. 

Fertility Plan 

So far, though, the Cowans are seeing the benefit both in their crops and the bottom line. Nick says for a number of their acres they are only doing one pass with herbicides. “We’re also cutting back big time on fertilizer and are trying to get down to zero,” he says. 

This year, the Cowans applied 165 pounds of urea on corn, 155 pounds of urea on wheat and 190 pounds on their canola…