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Conservation Ag Update is brought to you by Bio Till Cover Crops. Hello, and welcome to the show, great to have you with us as always. Big news last week, the USDA announced plans for a new $700 million pilot program to help farmers adopt regenerative practices and support their transition to conservation ag. So we were visiting with Cambridge, Illinois no-tiller, Monte Bottens shortly after this news broke. Well, here's Monte's initial take on the big announcement.

At this moment in time, we're about two hours after the live stream announcement. You and I know as much about that as everyone else there's a lot of devil into details here. So what is that going to mean? I don't know. I like the fact that they're recognizing soil health is connected to human health, so that's a point. I like the fact that they're going to focus on farmer-led pilots, so it's what is right for that context and let the farmer lead the pilot, I like that. How this is all going to happen could be really interesting because they want to use existing NRCS programs. So using an existing program to get money to a pilot of something that doesn't ever exist, I'm not quite sure how that's going to work, but it's a start. It's not regenerative's wackadoo and a long-term no-till and soil health practices or wackadoo, it's a recognition of that. It's a recognition that it can affect human health.

Great stuff there for Monte, and we reached out to the USDA for a clarification on which regenerative practices exactly will be encouraged. We'll keep you updated on that, and in the meantime, head to notillfarmer.com to read more about the regenerative ag pilot program and how you can sign up. All right, with harvest in the rear view, now's a good time to start focusing on planter maintenance and making sure you're ready to roll when spring rolls around, it'll be here before you know it. Bill Lehmkuhl, Precision Agri Services is going to help you do just that during a workshop ahead of the National No-Tillage Conference in St. Louis, January 6th. So Bill, what can we expect?

Noah, some of the things I'm going to focus on is the agronomic side of the planter for one, and what happens if we have, for example, row unit on the planter, different pieces and parts of that planter, how that can affect you agronomically and what it's costing you. For example, too much down pressure on our closing system back here, depending on what types of closing wheels you're running, downforce on your row unit, et cetera, or lack thereof. Whether that's springs, airbags, the latest and greatest hydraulic downforce, what that's doing for you. We will talk about seed disc openers, we'll dig into looking into the seed trench and seeing how a poorly managed planter, what that's costing you.

Fellow no-till innovator, Phil Needham will co-host this workshop with Bill, and Phil will focus on residue management, what to look for when buying a new or used drill, and much, much more. You can reserve your spot at notillconference.com. Now let's send it over to Mackane for today's cover crop connection. Mackane, what you got?

Thanks, Noah. Cover crops are sure to be a hot topic at this year's National No-Tillage Conference, so here's Minnesota no-tiller and cover cropper, Tom Cotter, to give a brief preview about his presentation at the conference, plus why he finds the event so valuable as an attendee.

I'm going to talk about using your senses. We always look at soil health and think that we have to measure it and we got to have the soil test, and I like soil testing, but I also like being accountable for myself so I talk a little bit about senses and how we as farmers, caretakers can see what's going on. And then also I think my plus negatives, people really like that because like I said, it's a common sense approach. We're not getting fancy, nature is, yes, it's crazy and intricate, but it's also very simple and easy to go with if you let yourself. And sometimes that's hard. The name of the true potential, that's hard on people because a lot of people, I don't know if they're truthfully giving it all to their best, and this is just kind of my way of giving it my best.

Yeah. Well said. You've been at this a long time, the no-till, the cover crops, and it's especially interesting. You're in Minnesota, there's tons of people, tons of farmers you say, the farther north you go, the colder it gets, can't be done, it's too hard. What do you say to those people?

Well, right behind me, you can see the snow, and that snow is protecting my cover crop. I can overwinter cover crops with good snow protection and good structure and your plants out there, I can overwinter really good. I've been pleasantly surprised over the years that if you build it, it'll stay healthy and be there in the spring for you.

For the farmer who's out there and maybe hasn't tried cover crops yet, but is in that northern part of the states and it's cold and they're just maybe a little hesitant to do it because of the climate, because of the things that people say about that. What's your word of advice for that farmer who's not tried it yet, but is thinking about it and is maybe in a similar climate to the one you're standing in right now?

I always tell people, when in doubt, plant something, but that, but also patience. So up here, everywhere actually, we're so used to a corn soybean rotation, we don't even know what another plant looks like without calling it a weed. So up here, network with people, there's so many opportunities to get something planted. I often tell people, Johnny Appleseed, go throw some seed out there in the corner of the field and just see what happens, and people will be surprised if they're truthfully honest with themselves with what's going on.

Separate from your presentation, what's kind of your favorite thing about the No-Till Conference? What do you get out of it as a farmer? And maybe it's the sessions, maybe it's the network in the hallways, what do you like best about it?

It's absolutely the networking. Well, I do like that I have tons of different options to hit specific areas that I might have to improve on because no one's an expert at this, we're all just trying our best and so I find my weak points at home and when I go there I can mark off the classrooms I want to hit. But tell you what, farmer to farmer, you can't beat farmer to farmer.

Well, we hope to see you all in St. Louis to learn lots more about no-till, cover crops, and all things conservation ag. That's all for this week's Cover Crop Connection. Until next time, I'm Mackane Vogel. Back to you, Noah.

Good stuff. Thank you very much, Mackane. Moving on, nearly 70% of farmers who participated in our recent Ag Biologicals benchmark survey said they've used a biological product on their farm before. Biologicals expert, Pam Marron says although Biologicals make up about 10% of the total crop protection market right now, there's still a whole lot to learn about them.

If you look at the innovation in Biologicals, there's about 70 to 80 new active ingredients for crop protection going through the EPA and only about eight or nine new synthetic chemicals. So that means that there's going to be many fewer chemicals as we know on the market, and that will be replaced by Biologicals. So by 2040, the Biologicals market will be as big as the chemical market if you look at the growth of the Biologicals and the growth of the chemicals, so they'll cross over. But that said, about half of all farmers in surveys that I've seen around the globe continuously always says that about 50% of all farmers still don't know anything about Biologicals, are not aware of them, don't know how to use them, and if they have heard of them, are not confident in using them. So there's still a lot of work to figure out how to educate farmers and how to properly use Biologicals because they have very different modes of action than chemicals.

Yeah, just scratching the surface there, really looking forward to Pam's presentation at the No-Till conference. All right, let's wrap things up with our video of the week. So last episode, we toured the Terramax facility. Well, today we're stopping by the 39 North Ag Tech Innovation Hub in St. Louis that more than 35 growing companies call home. Pretty cool stuff, let's check it out.

And one of the reasons we wanted to create this coworking space is that prior to this being opened in June of 2024, there wasn't really sort of this neutral ground space for companies to come and have meetings or for people to co-work and run into people serendipitously. And what we've found over the last sort of year that we've been in operation here at the hub is that folks really enjoy that sort of random connection like, "Oh, I don't know who's going to be in the coworking space today, but whoever it is, I might have a strike up a conversation." And then you have these cool interdisciplinary interactions. So a company working on Biologicals, a company working on precision ag or gene editing, talking about issues they see or solutions they found or relationships they've built with farmers or marketing folks or other backend services to help their business run that you wouldn't find elsewhere because you're sort of in isolation in your own company or in your own lab.

So as we think about plant science and Ag Tech becoming more interdisciplinary, it seems like more and more of these relationships and conversations need to be happening, and this is a great place to sort of do that without having to spend a lot of your own energy sort of building these relationships yourself.

Impressive facility. Okay, that'll wrap things up. If you have a story idea or just want to chat, shoot me an email at nnewman@lessitermedia.com. Thanks so much for tuning in, hope you have a great day and we'll see you next time on Conservation Ag Update.