Farmers will plant less corn and more soybeans this spring according to the USDA’s Prospective Plantings report. Corn planting is projected to be down 3% and soybean planting up 4% from last year. A record-high soybean acreage is expected in Wisconsin, where no-tiller Kevin Klahn broke the state record with a 115-bushel yield on his 44-acre experimental plot last year. Let’s go to Kevin, LIVE in the cab now. Kevin — how’d you pull it off?

“We’ve divided that 44 acres into 4 sections. We run 3 corn plots and 1 soybean plot and then rotate that soybean plot through those 44 acres. So, it’s a 4-year rotation for soybeans on that. The longer we can go in between soybean plantings, the better potential we have.”

“Last year, everything worked out well. We planted early in dry conditions. That’s key. If you go to that custom work thing that we’ve worked on throughout our career, we’ve pushed the envelope on the early side, not necessarily because we knew it was good for the potential of the crop, but we just got more done so that we could be available to do the custom work that we had to get through and had a big workload to tackle.”

Kevin’s also seeing big ROI with NEXTA biologicals, which he says is like giving the plant ibuprofen when it’s not feeling well. We’ll have more details on Kevin’s championship formula in the upcoming No-Till Farmer Soybean Champs Special Report.

Watch the full Video of this episode of Conservation Ag Update.