We begin with big news out of Elizabethtown, Pa., where No-Till Innovator Jim Hershey has received the prestigious Leopold Conservation Award for land stewardship.

Jim and his wife Shirl started no-tilling in the early 1980s to reduce fuel and labor costs. It helped them overcome high debt and soaring interest rates at the time. Just about every year since, Jim’s added something new to his bag of tricks like cover crop mixes and planting green. And today, Jim’s no-till system helps prevent erosion and runoff while saving him big money on nutrients and herbicides.  

Jim Hershey, No-Tiller, Elizabethtown, Pa.: “So, we’re capturing all the nutrients that this cover crop has provided and it’s also helping to hold the nutrients from running off into our streams and waterways.”

“Look at all the roots there that’s helping to hold the soil together, giving food to microbes and helping to recycle all the nutrients that are available in the soil.”

Lamonte Garber, Stroud Water Research Center: “You might ask, why would we need a riparian buffer? When Jim planted these trees with the USDA CREP program, these trees working with the great soil management that he has on his farm are really the ingredients to restore this stream into a much more biologically rich ecosystem.”

“That (the water) looks really good right? This water that we just pulled right out of this stream here that’s flowing through Jim’s farm is perfectly clean. That’s a great thing for the stream. We know then that the soil that’s on Jim’s fields is staying on his fields growing healthy crops and not ending up in the stream.”

Jim co-founded the Pennsylvania No-Till Alliance in 2005. He also leads the state’s Regenerative Ag Research Foundation and serves on the State Conservation Commission Board.