Brought to you by:
On this episode of the Cover Crop Strategies podcast, brought to you by La Crosse Seed, we’re headed to Davenport, IA to catch up with Robb Ewoldt, who’s the president of the Iowa Soybean Association. Ewoldt fills us in how the prestigious role is allowing him to make an impact not just in Iowa, but all over the globe.
Ewoldt’s family started planting cover crops in the late ‘90’s mainly to produce feed for cows. His approach changed in 2005, when he saw how covers boosted yields during a drought year. Ewoldt tells us which crops give him the most bang for his buck and which one was a disaster.
Ewoldt and his wife, Jennifer, recently won the Advocate for Agriculture Award for their efforts in the community, including an open farm day that gives the public a chance to learn all about their operation. A teacher at heart, Ewoldt also has some advice for farmers who are thinking about planting cover crops for the first time.
The Cover Crop Strategies podcast series is brought to you by La Crosse Seed.
Solving the SOIL HEALTH Puzzle? La Crosse Seed Has You Covered.
La Crosse Seed has put together a leading conservation seed platform by offering respected cover crop and native seed brands, plus practical support along the way. Quality products, helpful tools and expert advice make La Crosse Seed a strong partner with the pieces you need to succeed in this growing market. Dealers: Learn more at soil1st.com, or call 800.356.SEED.
Full Transcript
Noah Newman:
Hello, and welcome once again to the Cover Crop Strategies Podcast. I'm Noah Newman, associate editor. Solving the soil health puzzle, La Crosse Seed has you covered. Cover crops are an important piece to future profit, but it takes work and it's puzzling at times. La Crosse Seed delivers quality Soil First cover crop products, plus training and tools to help you succeed. Whether you're looking to grow your cover crop seed business, get product tips or find a local Soil First dealer, La Crosse Seed is ready to help. Learn more soil1st.com. That's soil1st.com or call (800) 356-SEED.
Noah Newman:
All right, let's head to Davenport, Iowa, to catch up with Robb Ewoldt, who's the president of the Iowa Soybean Association. Ewoldt fills us in how the prestigious roll is allowing him to make an impact, not just in Iowa, but all over the globe. His family started planting cover crops in the late '90s. They did so mainly to produce feed for cows, but his approach changed in 2005 when he saw how covers help boost yields during a drought year. He also tells us which crops give him the most bang for his buck and which one was an absolute, quote-unquote, disaster at his farm. Robb and his wife, Jennifer, recently won the Advocate for Agricultural Award, big time honor for their efforts in the community, which includes an open farm day event they host every year that gives the public a chance to learn all about their operation. A teacher at heart, Robb also has some advice for farmers who are thinking about planting cover crops for the first time.
Noah Newman:
Hi, Rob. Well, it was snowing here in Wisconsin today. I don't know what it's like over there in Davenport, Iowa, but have you been able to get anything done planting wise recently?
Robb Ewoldt:
We haven't. Yeah, I've worked on them, that's about all I've done. I've worked in the shop. We haven't been able to do anything, it's been either raining or just cold. I think our soil temperatures are somewhere around 39 or 40 right now, and it does it doesn't look good for the next week to be honest with you. I'm trying to be patient, I'm trying to not make mistakes and push it so...
Noah Newman:
Well, hopefully the weather turns around here soon, but for people who are familiar, give us your background in terms of your farm. Have you been there your entire life, and when did you take over there?
Robb Ewoldt:
Born and raised on this farm. My family bought it in 1970 when it was just bare ground, and they built the house and everything here. I took over. My wife and I bought and took over the farm from my parents in '04, so we've been at it for, I guess, 18 years now. So we're a row crop operation, we also grow some alfalfa hay, we have a cow, half operation, and we also have a hog operation. We aim to finish where we feed for another family farm. So we supply the labor and the buildings and we get the manure and they get the pork.
Noah Newman:
And you're the president of the Iowa Soybean Association. Tell us about your role. How long have you been doing that for?
Robb Ewoldt:
That I am. I was privileged to be elected to that position. I've been on the board for seven years now. So this is a one year commitment to be president of the Soybean Association, which will be enough because they keep you moving quite a bit. First, the first 12 weeks of this year, I was gone 10 of them, so it's been a-
Noah Newman:
Wow.
Robb Ewoldt:
It's been... Yes, thankfully, I married very well and my wife is very patient and a great mother to my children while I'm gone because I've been gone a lot. It has been a quite an honor. We've taken some pretty high level meetings with Secretary... I've traveled with the Secretary of Ag for the State of Iowa, Mike Naig, to Mexico on trade mission trips, we met with some great people down there, some customers. And I've been able to tour Brazil to kind of try to see what our competition's up to. So I spent two weeks down there in the Monterosso region, also up on the Amazon to see how they export through the river and been down in the Southern part of Brazil also.
Robb Ewoldt:
So there's been a great opportunities. In years past, we've taken some trips to visit over in China before there were issues with trade and stuff. We toured over there to meet with some of our buyers and... So amazing opportunities. I've been able to testify in front of the House of Representatives in DC. I've been able to testify in front of the EPA on some issues with renewable fuels, It can be very stressful. You think you're been through a lot of things and you think you can communicate with a lot of people, but when you get put on that stage, it's kind of game on. And I was very intimidated.
Noah Newman:
I was reading you were presented with the ISA Advocate for Agriculture Award. What did that mean to, you and how were you able to win that?
Robb Ewoldt:
Pretty cool, because we had to be nominated by your peers. And I think that's the greatest form of flattery, is when your peers recognize some of the things that you're doing. And my wife and I, we were nominated as a family. My wife writes an article in the local paper every two weeks, talks about what's happening on our farm, because we live right outside the Quad Cities. So we have a metropolitan area of about 200, 250,000 people that really aren't connected to agriculture. Even though John Deere Corporate Headquarters are here.
Robb Ewoldt:
So she does that, and then we also do every year, we open up our farm to everybody in the Quad Cities to come out and climb on the equipment. And we engage the parents when the kids are climbing on the equipment we give them a hay rack ride. And if we get sponsors, sometimes we give them a free meal for... And we call it Picnic in the Pasture. And that's how we just educate the population around here and try to tell them what we're doing and the good things that we're doing as far as conservation goes. That's our big thing, that there's a lot of misinformation out there on what's happening. We want to educate those people, and we want to engage them, and we want to make sure that they know that they can trust us when it comes to who supplies their food.
Noah Newman:
Yeah. I thought that was a pretty cool thing you guys did. It's called you call it the Ewoldt Open Farm Day, and you do this every year. How many people usually show up to that? Do you get a good turn out?
Robb Ewoldt:
Well, depends on the weather, but our best was like 300, 400.
Noah Newman:
Wow.
Robb Ewoldt:
So it makes it worthwhile. It really is. We engage in some really cool conversations and topics when these people come out. Some of them might be absentee land owners, who really don't understand what's happening on on their farms. Their farms are two or three hours away, they inherited them, they really don't know what's going on.
Noah Newman:
I'll let you educate our listeners right now. We are called the Cover Crop Strategies Podcast, so how long have you been using cover crops for, and what co cover crops do you use?
Robb Ewoldt:
Well, I think we started using cover crops kind of in the selfish reason, to make some cheap feed for some cows. And we would chop silage in the fall, and we'd plant cereal rye, because that's what everybody does around here. And we probably started that in '96, I suppose, '97, somewhere in there. And then in '05 we had a drought year, and we were still just using it strictly selfish reasons. And we planted beans into some cereal rye, and that cereal rye... It was a drought year in '05, and where we had cereal rye in half of the field, it grew... The whole field averaged 24 bushel to the acre, which wasn't great. And we have a yield map on it too, which is really cool, and I use that in presentations. But it showed field average 24 bushel the acre on the beans, and where we had planted cereal rye, we grew 36 bushel beans. And where we had just bear corn stocks, where we planted the beans into, it did 12.
Robb Ewoldt:
So that told me that there was something going on with cover crops, and we needed to explore this a little bit more. And when we started getting a little bit of money from the state and from the county to try to do some experimenting on cover crops and try to see, and I started... I went to a different fertilizer company and they put on some great science classes, which was something better than I had ever had in any college. I will give a little nod to Ag Spectrum, a company based on science. And they had some great educational tools to use. And I think I started understanding a little bit more about how we can get soil health and... But I still keep in the back of my mind that we are here for production ag. We need to grow a lot of food for a lot of people in this world. But I want to do it in the most conservation friendly way I can.
Robb Ewoldt:
And we are seeing improvements throughout the years of using cover crops in our soil health in some of these fields. There's some farms, to be honest, that are further away and stuff that we really don't get to cover crop like we want to, but those that are around that we've spent the time on that we own, we are seeing a great improvement in yield. And I want to attribute it to the soil health and the cover crop and the organic matter that we're building into the soils.
Robb Ewoldt:
But to go back to your other question, we tried a lot of different stuff around here. We'll use some oats too, especially if we're going to have corn come in. That way, we don't have to kill it off in the spring. But I like things greening up in the spring. We've used some clover, didn't see a lot of... In our area, it's really not fixed in the nitrogen. Before we needed to terminate when we have corn coming up. So I didn't see a big benefit there. We've tried perennial rye grass thinking that the small seed would be easier to fly on with a plane. You could carry more seeds. That was a complete disaster. The seeds were too light, they didn't fly very far, and it was very hard to kill the next year. So we decided we better stay away from that.
Robb Ewoldt:
So there's a lot of things that we've learned. We've done the tillage radish, which were good, but we can freeze off pretty quick. And if we don't get a corn crop harvested really early, they just don't seem to do very well for us in particular. I know other people that have chopped silage in August and then seed them, and then they had great luck with tillage radish. We just haven't, so we stick with... And winter wheat also. So we really like winter wheat, cereal rye or oats, something that's sourced locally, I don't have to go looking very far.
Robb Ewoldt:
This year, we have 20 acres of our own that we're going to take to seed and put up another bin and try to just grow our own so we don't have to go looking for it, because it's getting harder and hard to find as more and more people start cover cropping, which is great. That's a great problem to have.
Noah Newman:
We'll get back to the podcast in a moment, but I want to take some time once again to thank our sponsor. Solving the soil health puzzle, La Crosse Seed has you covered. Cover crops are an important piece to future profit, but it takes work and is puzzling at times. La Crosse Seed delivers quality Soil First cover crop products, plus training and tools to help you succeed. Whether you're looking to grow your cover crop seed business, get product tips or find a local Soil First dealer, La Crosse seed is ready to help. Learn more at Soil1st.com. That's soil1st.com or call (800) 365-SEED. And now, back to the podcast.
Noah Newman:
Sounds like there was a lot of trial and error when you first started using cover crops. And it seems like what works for some people might not work for others. What kind of advice would you give to people who are thinking about starting to plant cover crops?
Robb Ewoldt:
Well, yeah, we've tried different applications. We've tried and failed miserably on some. We had a helicopter and we found out that the helicopter guy didn't really know what he was doing.
Noah Newman:
Oh no.
Robb Ewoldt:
That was with that perennial rye. And we had a 30 foot strip that was just dark green as could be, it looked like a golf course fairway. And then we had another 30 feet that was blank. And then we had another 30 feet that was deep green and then all the way across the field. So you learn what works, what doesn't work. But yeah, everybody... The thing is, try it on a small scale, for those people that are a little bit intimidated by it, try it on a 20 acre field. If you got a neighbor that's got a certain applicator that you want to try, then have them come in and just try 20, 30 acres. And I'm the same way. I have an air seeder that I use on a vertical till.
Robb Ewoldt:
And if somebody wants to try it out, I'm all in on this cover crop thing, I don't do as many acres as what I probably could, we just run out of time and weather, but if somebody wants help and they want to try it, then we'll come in and we'll do 20, 30 acres for them. Because we want to see it succeed for those people. And if it's working in our neighborhood, it's probably going to work right down the road for somebody. But what I'm talking about here may be completely different from somebody up in the northern tier of counties in Iowa or the southern. They can do a lot of different things. And this is just what I found works, and found the easier, the better. We don't need to make this that difficult. We're not trying to reinvent the wheel here. We know how to grow crops, so if we grow corn, we can grow cover crop. It's not too tough.
Robb Ewoldt:
But yeah, I've had people go out there with a dry fertilizer buggy and just spin on cereal rye, and they get a great cover. It works. That rye and that winter wheat, pretty forgiving. You can do a lot of things and still have it come up in the spring, so...
Noah Newman:
Well, can you recall a moment, maybe a... So maybe an aha moment where it all clicked, where you realized that the cover crops were having a certain positive impact in your soil health? Or can you recall any moment?
Robb Ewoldt:
Well, I mean, the one time when I said, "We need to stop doing this for the cattle and start doing it for the crop, for the soil health," was in '05, in that drought year, and that yield map. And that's why I keep that yield map, and I show it at presentations. And I say, "Man, this is..." You could see right to where our 15 foot grain drill ran out of rye. I mean, that's how it impacted that soybean crop. And that I realized, well, there's different stuff, we need to start thinking different.
Robb Ewoldt:
And I always was in the trying to figure out, there's got to be a better way to grow crops instead of just keep throwing this fertilizer at it. Because our crop yields weren't really going up at that time, lm '04, '05, and I talked to a lot of other people that said the same thing. Everybody keeps talking about the trendline going up, but they weren't. And so that's when I said, "We got to find a different way."
Robb Ewoldt:
And that's when I started working with that Ag Spectrum, that they had a different way of thinking about it, a different way of fertilizing it, a different way of looking at things. They were actually looking at it through science and how each mineral or... How that fertility was going to affect the reproductive part of the plant. And I thought, "Why didn't they teach me this at Iowa State?" And I realized I wasn't that good of a student. And I will admit that. I had a lot of fun when I was at Iowa State, and I made a lot of good friends when I was at Iowa State and my dancing really improved, but I did take some classes. But none of them were like what I experienced when I went to these classes afterwards, that were put on by a company.
Robb Ewoldt:
And I think when you combined that year of '05 of the drought year in our area, and then you combine it with that new knowledge that I was gaining, I mean, that's when we started clicking. And that's when we started no-tilling corn into corn, which I didn't think you could do. And then cover crops on top. And then we did switch, and we went into a strip till. And so that's what we do now for our corn, is we strip till our corn, and we no-till our beans. So I get no-till, we no-till our beans into a lot of cover crop. I don't particularly like to air seed into bean stubble just because I think it loosens up the ground too much and a lot of times we can't get enough growth of the cover crop in the fall to offset that disturbance of that top soil. So I try to leave my bean stubble alone, unless we're going to fly something on, but I haven't flown anything on in several years just because it's tough to... I'm not a fan of aerial application.
Noah Newman:
After having that helicopter-
Robb Ewoldt:
That helicopter really burned me.
Noah Newman:
Yeah. He probably scared you off from doing that again.
Robb Ewoldt:
He did. He did.
Noah Newman:
Do you ever think that some people get too crazy with the cover crops and plant too many? Is that possible, to go overboard, do you think in your opinion?
Robb Ewoldt:
I think it is. I guess it all depends on what market you want to go to. I mean, if you want to go that far and you to go organic, and you want to try to capture all your nutrients and not have to put a commercial fertilizer down, and you can get the premium for that product, then fine. But I don't have that market around here. And I think where I live, in the Upper Midwest, we've been blessed with great fertile soils. And this population in this world is growing, and we have to do our best to try to feed this world. And I really do.
Robb Ewoldt:
And as years go on, and as we see what's happening in Europe right now in Ukraine and what's going to happen to food over there, we really have to step up our game because it could get pretty ugly in the near future when it comes to famine over there. I really believe there's a lot more suffering that's going to happen because of it, and we need to produce as many calories as we can per acre, but do it in the responsible manner. So there's a little bit of a trade off, but not... I don't know, I'd hate to get too philosophical on a nice little conversation about cover crop and...
Noah Newman:
Oh, hey, by all means. The platform is yours. No, but it sounds like you are making a big impact up in your region where you are, just educating people with the Open Farm Day and your role as the president of Iowa Soybean Association. What excites you for the upcoming year? Any new challenges coming your way or anything new you're doing at your farm, or is it just business as usual?
Robb Ewoldt:
We've went through some growing pains. We picked up quite a bit of ground, and we went through some growing pains with some equipment and changing. It's pretty much going to be status quo from last year because we picked up some equipment last year, mainly looking at a high clearance sprayer. And so we've taken our fertilizer with lye drops into our corn. And so we're trying to get more timely in that, and we're trying to put on the right product, the right time, the right placement. And we think that we're right there.
Robb Ewoldt:
We're just trying to still produce stuff and keep our soil in good shape. And we're excited for the year. We think it's going to be challenging this year because we haven't had a spring like this in quite a while, we've been pretty spoiled in our area the last couple of years. We've had ideal plant conditions and been able to plant starting the 15th of April and had really good, dry soil to plant into. And this year it's wet and cold, and we're going to be lucky if we do anything by the 27th.
Robb Ewoldt:
But I still think every year, farmers are always the optimists. And we're like, "We can do better than we did last year." Last year was a tremendous year for us, record breaking crops, both on the corn and soybean and, I'm up for the challenge, I want to do it again. I think my soil's healthier now than it was last year. I think every year our soils are getting healthier through our practices. And I think, why can't we? There might be some people out there that are already at that 300 bushel for an average field, I'm not, but what we're growing, we're getting close, and I'm excited for that day. I can still remember back to the first day when we grew 60 bushel beans, and now we're disappointed if it's less than 68 average.
Robb Ewoldt:
And so I'm just really excited. I'm excited for... I have two boys that are 13 and 15 that are very involved in the farm, and they are so much further along in this whole journey with cover crops, with no-till, with strip till, with conservation farming than I ever was when I was 20 years old, and they're already there. And they know what good farming is, and they know what bad farming is already. And so they're learning, and watching them develop and take over some of this stuff, even at 15, it's kind of cool. So that's what I'm looking forward to now.
Noah Newman:
That's awesome. You've got to be a proud dad. Well-
Robb Ewoldt:
Yeah.
Noah Newman:
Hey, this has been a great conversation. I really appreciate it. We're about up on our time limit, and I know you've got some family visiting, so I'll let you go, but hey, Rob, maybe we'll have to check back in about a year from now and see how you're doing.
Robb Ewoldt:
You bet. You just give a call, or if you're in the neighborhood, stop on by.
Noah Newman:
Big thanks to the jovial Robb Ewoldt for joining us on this week's edition of the Cover Crop Strategies Podcast. And once again, let's thank our sponsor. Solving the soil health puzzle, La Crosse Seed has you covered. Cover crops are an important piece to future profit, but it takes work, and it's puzzling at times. La Crosse Seed delivers quality Soil First cover crop products, plus training and tools to help you succeed. Whether you're looking to grow your cover crop seed business, get product tips or find a local Soil First dealer, La Crosse Seed is ready to help. Learn more at Soil1st.com. That's Soil1st.com. Or call (800) 356-SEED. And for more information about all things cover crops, visit us online at Covercropstrategies.com.
Post a comment
Report Abusive Comment