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Once a Naysayer, Agronomist is Now a No-Till Champion
Years of no-till experience enables Bud Smith to help no-tillers find the weakest link in their field, such as seed placement and nitrogen timing.
Pictured Above: CHECKING UP. A soil penetrometer shows compaction in a field. To correct the issue, Bud Smith is planting a cereal rye cover crop and no-tilling. He’s used the penetrometer to not only show farmers compaction in their fields, but how mellow soil can be, too, such as in acres coming out of CRP
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NAME: Gary “Bud” Smith
POSITION: Agronomist (retired)
LOCATION: Caledonia, Mich.
YEARS PROMOTING NO-TILLING: 20
I’M NOT SURE anyone has changed their stance on no-till more than me. As the agronomy manager of Caledonia Farmers Elevator in Michigan, the farmers I advised always looked to me for the solutions to their problems. When the early innovator farmers I worked with started attempting no-till, I watched a lot of failures and I didn’t have any good answers at the time.
I like solving problems. I grew up on a small farm. My father was a truck driver who farmed about 150 acres when he wasn’t working his other job. I helped. After high school, I was drafted and did a tour of duty in Vietnam. I was a bit disoriented when I returned home a year later, unsure of my direction in life. College was free to veterans, so I enrolled at Michigan State University where I ended up staying and earning a degree in crops and soils.
After graduation, I spent some time working at a fertilizer company before landing at the Caledonia Farmers Elevator. I spent the next 37 years developing the…
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On this episode of Conservation Ag Update, brought to you by Martin-Till, precision specialist Chad Baker, co-owner of Baker Precision Planter Works in Orangeville, Ill., helps a first-generation no-tiller with planter setup, and later encounters a couple problems with a strip-tiller’s new 24-row planter. Plus, veteran agronomist Brad Forkner checks in with a couple tips for farmers to keep in mind before they take the field.
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