Let’s get back to the CTIC Tour now, where no-tiller Zeb Winslow III talked to attendees above the cover crop program on his 4,000-acre farm and the difference it’s making for his soil health.

“Moisture retention and weed suppression, that’s the low hanging fruit that you’re going to get to really quickly. Then you start seeing the amount of life come back into your soil. When I was a kid, if we needed worms to go fishing, we went to the woods. You can go into my fields now and if you pull up one of my corn plants or take a shovel full of soil out of the ground, you’re probably going to find 1-2 earthworms in there. If you get down and look underneath that residue, you’re going to see all kinds of ground beetles and other decomposers and shredders that are there doing their work. I’m not sure how much we can stack on top of that as we go further down the rabbit hole, but I think there’s a lot of possibilities that we can do with this that we don’t even know yet.” 

Winslow III covers 100% of his corn, soybeans and cotton acres.  

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