During the March 29, 2024, episode of the No-Till Farmer podcast, No-Till Living Legend Ray McCormick mentions that a flood took out a “Pacers cup” worth of soil where he had forgotten to flip the switch to spread cover crop seed while combining. McCormick, who’s also No-Till Farmer’s 2024 Conservation Ag Operator Fellow, seeds cover crops as the same time he harvests his cash crops using air seeders mounted to his corn head and draper header.

About ¼ of a mile of the no-tilled field ended up without a cover crop, and come spring, McCormick made a startling discovery after the field flooded.

“I was going back in there to replant, and all along where that cover crop had not been planted, the flood took about 8 inches of soil off the field — and to think we used to moldboard plow and disc that ground,” McCormick says. “I realized right then, I’ll never question if cover crops are worth it. Where there's a cover crop, we're collecting soil. The cover crop and stalks are slowing down the current and grabbing the mud like gills of a fish. That mud is money.”

He used a cup from an Indiana Pacers game to illustrate just how much soil washed away and took this photo:

Ray McCormick used this cup from a Pacers game to illustrate just how much soil washed off an area of a field that was no-tilled but did not have a cover crop. He lost about 8 inches of soil to the floodwaters.

“I've come to realize after walking through timbered areas that had never been farmed, the ground is over 3 feet higher,” McCormick says. “When you lose 3 feet of height across a massive floodplain, the river's going to get out across it a lot easier.”

Here’s an example of the flooding that McCormick deals with during the spring. He took this photo June 6, 2008. After one 11-inch rain in south-central Indiana, the river ran over the new 4-lane U.S. 50 highway and flooded McCormick’s field alongside it.

After an 11-inch rain in south-central Indiana on June 6, 2008, the river ran over the new 4-lane U.S. 50 highway and flooded McCormick’s field alongside it.

“All is lost,” McCormick says. “You can see the tops of my corn. I was sidedressing the day it rained, but we didn’t get any rain.”

Hear more from McCormick in this episode of the No-Till Farmer podcast. 

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