“Cereal rye roots get down there 30-40 inches deep pretty consistently. It's pulling nutrients — phosphorus, potash and nitrogen — back to the surface and redepositing them in that 6-inch zone. It's an easy place to save some money, and we got to credit that cover crop for doing some of that.”
— Wayne Fredericks, Strip-Tiller, Osage, Iowa
As 2022 comes to a close, we’re revisiting some of the most-played episodes of the Cover Crop Strategies podcast, brought to you by SOURCE by Sound Agriculture.
Listen in as we count down the top three most-played episodes of 2022, starting with “Grazing Beef Cattle on Cover Crops Provides Economic Returns,” an interview with Dan Shike, associate professor of animal science at the University of Illinois.
“Making Dollars and Sense” out of cover crops is the title of the second most popular episode of 2022. Jim Hoorman, an independent soil health specialist from Ohio, talks about the costs of cover crops compared to the costs of tillage and soil compaction.
Finally, the number one most played episode of 2022 reflects one of farmers’ major concerns over the past year — high input prices. In the episode “Reducing Fertilizer Use with Cover Crops,” Iowa strip-tiller Wayne Fredericks discusses how he transitioned to cover crops on 100% of his acres and covers have helped him reduce fertilizer use.
Listen to the Full Episodes
- Reducing Fertilizer Use with Cover Crops
- Making Dollars & Sense Out of Cover Crops
- Grazing Beef Cattle on Cover Crops Provides Economic Returns
The Cover Crop Strategies podcast series is brought to you by SOURCE®️ by Sound Agriculture.
SOURCE®️ from Sound Agriculture is a soil activator that gives crops access to a more efficient source of nitrogen and phosphorus. A foliar application of SOURCE provides 25 pounds of nitrogen & phosphorus per acre and enhances micronutrient uptake by stimulating beneficial microbes, and its performance is supported by a cash-back guarantee. Learn more at www.sound.ag.
Full Transcript
Michaela Paukner:
Welcome to the Cover Crop Strategies Podcast, brought to you by SOURCE by Sound Agriculture. I'm Michaela Paukner, managing editor at Cover Crop Strategies. In today's episode of the podcast, we are revisiting the top three most played episodes of 2022. Starting with this interview with Dan Shike, Associate Professor of Animal Science at the University of Illinois. Here's Dan talking about the economic returns of grazing beef cattle on cover crops.
Sarah Hill:
What Kind of planning needs to be in place for a beef producer to maybe take that first step into cover crops and incorporating covers into their operation?
Dan Shike:
Yeah, so first of all, I think it's really important to kind of establish some goals. What are we trying to accomplish here? Are we interested in adding some grazing days in the fall? Are we wanting to have some grazing opportunities in the spring? Or are we looking at maybe putting in a cover crop to harvest and put up a stored feed to be fed at a later date? And I think once we first establish what our goal is there, then there's certainly some other questions that are really important to the planning process. What crop is the cover crop going to follow? What crop is going to come in after the cover crop? And then on the cattle side, some additional questions that need to be considered from a planning standpoint would be, what class or age of cattle are we wanting to utilize in this system? Do we have some weaned feeder calves and we're wanting just more for a stock or backgrounding operation? Or are we interested in running some cows or even cow-calf pairs out there?
And that will help us kind of identify what cover crop systems maybe would be the best fit and what we need to consider from planting and harvesting dates.
Sarah Hill:
What types of benefits can cover crops offer producers who traditionally have been more on the livestock end of things?
Dan Shike:
So from a livestock enterprise standpoint, and particularly in a beef cattle enterprise, our number one cost is feed costs. And really being able to control those stored feed costs or harvested feed costs, are the number one determinant of profitability in cow-calf operations. So anything we can do to extend the grazing season, is certainly going to reduce those stored feed costs. And if we do have to put up some stored or harvested forages, if we can have an additional crop like this that fits into rotation, that also is a good fit. Because sometimes those acres are just not available for growing an additional forage crop.
Sarah Hill:
So then, how can grazing cover crops affect soil health for livestock producers? And keeping in mind of course that maybe soil health isn't the number one goal of a livestock producer, of course.
Dan Shike:
Yeah. And here's really where the questions for the most part have come when it relates to integrating these systems. What are the trade-offs? We know that introducing cover crops has tremendous impact and benefits from a soil standpoint. Whether it's preventing erosion, if it's increasing organic matter, water holding capacity, obviously the benefits are pretty well documented on that side of things. The bigger questions come, what happens to these benefits when we now introduce cattle to graze these cover crops? And I'll be honest, I would say we're really kind of at the forefront of answering these questions in that there's been some studies conducted on this, but the amount of research really assessing the impacts of cattle grazing these cover crops is pretty limited. But in some of the work that has been done, and there's been some work done in Iowa, been some work done at University of Nebraska.
For the most part, it looks like that the impact of cattle grazing is pretty limited. In such that we still maintain a lot of the benefit or the majority of the benefit that we see from introducing those cover crops. Now there's several factors that can impact just how much influence grazing can have. If we're grazing in the fall or spring, can have an impact. And really it probably starts with where are we located in the country and what's the soil type and what is the annual rainfall that occurs. Here in central Illinois, if we're trying to graze in the spring and it's a wet spring, the cattle can cause some compaction. And honestly, that's probably one of the number one questions or concerns that we hear about is, surely cattle grazing out there is going to cause compaction, going to cause some soil roughness, and in reality it's pretty minimal.
And in fact, if we're talking about grazing in the fall, honestly there's really no noticeable differences in compaction or penetration resistance or bulk density, any of our measures of compaction. And that's partly because of it probably be a dryer when we do that. And then also we have the benefit, at least in the upper part of the Midwest and US here of that freezing and thawing throughout the winter. And that's going to help alleviate some of that compaction that maybe occurs in the very, very top shallow parts of the soil. Now again, if we are grazing out there in the spring and happens to be a very wet spring, there is the potential that we could cause a little more damage then, but that's why we need to have a plan for grazing. But then we also, if we do intend to graze these cover crops, we also need to have some backup plans or some emergency plans. If weather throws us a curveball, we need to be able to adapt and be able to remove those cattle from those fields before we do any kind of damage.
Michaela Paukner:
Before we get to the second most listened to episode of 2022, I'd like to take a moment to thank our sponsor, SOURCE by Sound Agriculture. SOURCE unlocks more of the nitrogen and phosphorus already in your field so you can rely less on expensive fertilizer. This foliar-applied chemistry has a low use rate and you can mix it right into your tank. Check out SOURCE. It's like caffeine for microbes. Making dollars and cents out of cover crops is the title of the second most popular podcast episode of 2022. Here's Jim Hoorman, an independent soil health specialist from Ohio talking about the cost of cover crops compared to the cost of tillage and soil compaction.
Sarah Hill:
What do you see being the cost of tillage, per acre?
Jim Hoorman:
Well, that kind of varies a little bit depending on what part of the country you're in and the price of fuel and the type of equipment and how many times you run across it. But on average, farmers are probably making several applications. And it can vary from probably $50 to $60 per acre. Now with the price of fuel going up at least a third and equipment, it can be a little bit more than that. So on average, we're probably spending at least 50 to 60 bucks an acre.
Sarah Hill:
Woo. And oil prices are definitely something that folks are concerned about right now. In addition to that, a lot of growers say that they use tillage to break up soil compaction. But when we look at the dollar values, what is the cost of soil compaction?
Jim Hoorman:
Soil compaction, first of all, is going to burn up your organic matter and it actually causes compaction, so it's not a long-term solution. It might take out a little bit of the compaction in that zone so you can get it planted, but then it's just going to make it worse. And soil compaction can last nine to 10 years, once you get it in the soil. Some of the research we have from Ohio State shows that it reduces your corn yields about 3% a year and maybe 10% on soybeans. So let's just use an example. If we have corn at say 200 bushel and we have a 3% reduction, that's about six bushel. And I'm just going to use round figures here. Let's say corn's $5 a bushel, that's about $30 an acre, but that can be $30 an acre over about nine years. So it is a significant cost.
It's going to hurt you more in a really dry year, or it can also hurt you when you have a lot of water and you have standing water and everything floods out. If you look at soybeans 50 bushel, let's say, a 10% loss on that, that's five bushel. Let's just use $10. That's almost $50 an acre that you're losing for quite a few years. The other thing you got to remember is, you're tying up a lot of nutrients or you're losing nutrients. We lose nitrogen with de-nitrification. Phosphorus, soluble reactive phosphorus is released when we have compacted soils. And we're also getting something called potassium induction, which you can apply potassium fertilizer, but it gets tied up in the soil structure when you have compaction. And then you're also tying up your micronutrients. One of the biggest things is we just have less water holding capacity due to all that poorer soil structure and hard pans due to that compaction. So there's a lot of hidden cost with soil compaction.
Sarah Hill:
Absolutely. When a grower is looking at maybe applying, let's say a legume cover crop species, what kind of cost per acre are they looking at?
Jim Hoorman:
Usually your legumes, the seed cost is just a little bit higher. But you got to remember, you're going to be getting some nitrogen out of that, and we're going to be using Rhizobium bacteria. So each species has its own Rhizobium that you need to be putting on there, and that's really critical that you do that. Most of the time we're finding out that these Rhizobium only lasts maybe 12 to 48 hours. So it's really helpful if you can do that at planting. But let's just use an example, something like a Balansa clover, that's kind of a new one out there. Seeding rates very low, four to five pounds per acre. Prices kind of vary, but it's probably going to go up this year. But like this last year, it was around $3 to $3.50 cents a pound. So you've got somewhere between $12 to maybe as much as $20 an acre in seed cost.
You have to apply it, so add a cost for that. 15 to 20 bucks. And then if you have to terminate it, you might have another $20 in it. But you got to remember, at least with Balansa, it has a real big leaf and you might get up to 200 pounds in nitrogen. If we say that nitrogen's about a dollar a pound, that's $200 that you might potentially bring in. And all that nitrogen should be available to that corn crop the next year.
So let's take another example, and that would be hairy vetch. Hairy vetch, you're going to plant that at maybe 15 to 20 pounds to the acre. The cost really kind of varies, but say $2 to $3 an acre, you might have 30 to $60 just in the cost for the seed, got an application cost and you're probably going to have to terminate that too. So add those costs in, you get a hundred to 200 pounds out of that hairy vetch and at a dollar a pound, why that's probably going to pay for it and maybe gain you a little bit more. So all these legumes this year are quite valuable for reducing fertilizer cost.
Sarah Hill:
Absolutely. So how then does a grass cover crop compare cost wise per acre?
Jim Hoorman:
Generally, the grasses are a little cheaper, at least in the seed cost, but the seeding rates are probably a little bit higher. So probably the most common one that we have is cereal rye. Generally, cereal rye's been kind of round $12 to $15 a bushel, and that's generally 50 to 60 pounds. There's about 60 pounds in a bushel, so you would put on maybe 50 to 60 pounds on depending on and where you're at and how late it is. So later it is usually we have to increase the seeding rate about 10% to 20%. That is one that does over winter, so you're going to have a cost to terminate it. Right now, Roundup is really, really expensive. So a lot of guys are looking at crimper rollers, and you can physically terminate that just by running the roller over it. But if you're going to be using Roundup, why that is going to be a little bit more expensive this next year. I usually figure the price of the cover crop planted and terminated about equals the cost of your tillage.
So the difference is with cover crops, you're building soil organic matter and you're making more nutrients plant available to that crop. You're also improving your water holding capacity, adding soil organic matter, improving the soil structure, and a big one is just keeping that soil in place. So those fibrous roots really reduce the amount of erosion. Usually you got a really good cover crop, you won't hardly have any erosion. We're talking pounds, not tons per acre. Average loss across the United States is probably well above four and a half to almost five tons per acre. So if you're saving that four to five tons of topsoil, and I'm just going to put a value on topsoil at $10 an acre, you're roughly saving about $40 to $50 just on the amount of soil that you're saving. Plus, if you look at how much nitrogen and phosphorous is in that soil, that could be another 100 to 150 bucks an acre. So it really does pay to have a good cover crop out there.
Sarah Hill:
Well, and it sounds like it adds up certainly over time and as you're doing it.
Jim Hoorman:
It does.
Sarah Hill:
Taking that a step further, can we put a dollar value on that soil organic matter as you're building it over time?
Jim Hoorman:
There is a way of doing that, and probably the quick answer is it's going to be worth a lot more than what we can put a value on it. However, if we just look at what organic matter is worth, just based on the price of fertilizer. So the amount of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and sulfur, and even some micronutrients that we can kind of estimate a value of what it's worth. Now again, it's worth at least two to three times this number. That probably isn't an easy way to put it on there, but it does give us a way to get an idea what organic matter might be worth. So every 1% soil organic matter has about a 1,000 pounds of nitrogen. And roughly, these are very rough numbers, a 100 pounds of phosphorus. It actually could be like about 105, but we're just going to use round numbers. About a 100 pounds of potassium and about a 100 pounds of sulfur.
So last couple of years I've been putting a value on this using fertilizer, what the cost of fertilizer was that year. And the value's been somewhere around $550 to $650 per acre. Well, don't have to tell you, that fertilizer costs have gone way up. So now the value of that soil organic matter just based on the fertilizer value, is well over a $1,000, close to $1,200 an acre. And again, it's probably worth at least two to three times that. So that's for every 1% soil organic matter you have in your soil.
Speaker 6:
For everything you need to know about no-till farming. You need to make plans now to attend the 31st annual National No-Tillage Conference being held at the Hyatt Regency St. Louis Arch Hotel. It's January the 10th through the 13th. All the experts, equipment, application, discussions, workshops, and networking you need to get your no-till operation off to a blazing start in 2023. Learn the secrets of some of the highest yielding farmers on the planet. Legendary no-tillers like Russell Hedrick, David Hula, Randy Dowdy, Ray Archuleta, and many more. Visit no-tillconference.com and use the promo code radio for a $100 registration discount. Or you can call them at (866) 839-8455 to sign up for the National No-Tillage Conference, January the 10th through the 13th being held right here in St. Louis. Once again, that website no-tillconference.com.
Michaela Paukner:
Stick around to the end of this episode for a bonus interview I did about the National No-Tillage Conference and the benefits farmers like you will get from attending. And finally, the number one most played podcast of 2022 reflects one of farmer's major concerns over the past year, high input prices. In the episode titled Reducing Fertilizer Use with Cover Crops, Iowa strip-tiller Wayne Fredericks discusses how he transitioned to cover crops on 100% of his acres. And how covers have helped him reduce fertilizer use. Here's Wayne.
Wayne Fredericks:
I started working with cover crops in the fall of '12. I was working with the Iowa Soybean Associations on Farm Network doing replicated strip trials in our farms. And so we were putting out strips just trying to see what would work, what would grow, how to plant it, how to terminate it, what effect it might have on yield, what species to plant. All the questions everybody had in that early timeframe of cover crops and especially here in Iowa. And so that's when we got started there. In '15, we went to where we... That fall, we seeded a 100% of our ground going to soy to cover crops. And so then we got moved into corn the following year on a 100%. So we've been a 100% cover crops in our operation now for quite a period of time.
Sarah Hill:
That's great. And so talk a little bit about what your goals are for using cover crops in your operation.
Wayne Fredericks:
I want to be able to successfully implement a cover crop system that enhances our soil, enhances the production capacity of the farms, is great for the environment and maintains our profitability. I think it's as simple as that. It's just trying to find a system that works. We understand that across this country there's extreme variations in soil and climate and crops. And it's not going to be the same everywhere. So these can be localized, and that's going to be the key to making it work, is finding what works best for you and your location.
Sarah Hill:
Wonderful. So talk a little bit more about how strip-tilling and cover crops in combination have helped you reduce fertilizer use. I know right now with fertilizer costs being sky-high, that's a question that a lot of growers are looking at is, how can we reduce our use of a very expensive input right now .
Wayne Fredericks:
We moved to grid sampling about the same time we moved into a 100% cover crops. And I work with a crop consultant out of southern Minnesota, utilizes a lot of University of Minnesota recommendations. And when we sit there and look at the fertilizer recommendations out of the U of M in a banded fertility program, which our strip-till would be, we try to put our P and K and some sulfur down about six, seven inches deep when we strip-till. And we put it there for two crops, the corn and the soy. We feel that, or University of Minnesota I should say, feels that 70% of a broadcast rate will give you equal performance. And so we're looking at what's being cost-effective. So that's basically a 30% reduction in the amount of P and K. Take that and add a cover crop to the system.
We know that with cereal rye's, that is a mainstay for our operation. That it gets down there roots 30, 40 inches deep pretty consistently. It's pulling nutrients, phosphorous and potash and nitrogen back up to the surface redeposit them in that six inch zone. And that six inch zone is what we always continue to measure usually when we're doing soil sampling. So there's nutrient value in that cover crop as it decomposes. And so we're kind of recycling some of those deep in the profile nutrients and bringing them back up to where they can be more readily available for crops. So I feel in the combination of the strip-till efficiency and then the cover crop there, that we've got our bases covered on nutrients. And it's an easy place to save some money and we got to credit that cover crop for doing some of that.
Sarah Hill:
Definitely. Something that I think our listeners will find really interesting is that, you've been collecting soil data since the 1980s. And over time and looking at all of that data, what have you learned about soil health on your farm?
Wayne Fredericks:
It was interesting because back in the early 80s there, I was working with crop consultants then as well. And they decided that we'd take organic matter samples on the farms that we were operating at that time, so we would know what herbicide rates to use. Other than that we would file them away and not worry about it anymore. And we did that and it was like 2.3 to 3.3 on three main farms that we had at that time. And very typical of what you see up here in this part of the country. And the next decade, we adopted no-till and strip-till. '91 no-till, 2001 strip-till. And it wasn't till like I think 2005 when we did another organic matter solicitation when we were doing our soil testing. Now we soil test all the time, that's a common practice, but at that time it wasn't common to ask for organic matter in that test. But we started to notice an uphill trend in the organic matter.
And then in 2007 and '11 and '15, we can [inaudible 00:23:25] saw our organic matter starting to go up. And in fact, when we sit back and look at the big picture, over that 25 year period of time that was covered in that, we saw our organic matter average go up about two and a half percent. Or roughly one 10th of a percent per year on average, we saw the organic matter go up. Now if you'd reach out and talk to Iowa State or University of Illinois or University of Minnesota, they'd all tell you the same thing, that you could simply do this by discontinuing your full width tillage. And that's what basically it was, because our cover cropping really didn't enter the picture until about 2015 to any great amount. So that was basically a tillage study and it just showed that organic matter is very fragile and tillage is very destructive of organic matter.
You can look across the country at other studies and see the same things. The moral plots in Kentucky and the plots in Missouri all show that tillage has been destructive, to the fact of there's 30 to 40% of the original parent organic matters all that's left in our soils. In a tillage system. So it's taken me 25 years to get half that loss back and we kind of call it regenerative in a way. And now that we know what we know cover crops, we could have cut that time dramatically by instituting a cover crop or living crop in there that could capture carbon for another four months of a year basically up in this climate. And that would've been huge in moving that organic matter up at a faster rate. Now, what is organic matter worth? That's always the question that comes out. And it was an interesting study that was done by the Iowa Division of NRCS back in, I think in 2012, 2013 was the date of that publication.
But they actually sat down and tried to put a numerical value on organic matter. And they come out and they said that it had a water or a crop production value, I should say. A water enhancement value of $18 per 1%. To dive in that little deeper, I always remember some of the presentations that Dr. Jerry Hatfield from USDA ARS and Ames always used to say, and that was that we lost 20% of our crop, 80% of the time. Or 20% of our potential yield, pardon me, 80% of the time because of lack of plant available water. And that's that timeframe in July and August here when the Midwest, when we're really packing the bushels on both corn and soybeans. And that's often a time when it's hot and gets dry. And so that's where that organic matter enters into the picture is that it predisposes soil to absorb more water, to hold more water. Less water runs off, it makes more water available for the crop.
And so that's that $18 value that comes from that enhanced water availability. And there's also a fertility value in that organic matter of about $11 for the NNP. Yeah, there's huge value to that as we start to talk about it. So building organic matter is something surely we want to do on our farms because it's the bank that we can pull from to raise a good crop.
Sarah Hill:
I really like that metaphor of calling them, like a bank. That's really great. Even after you added cover crops to the system in 2015, have your cash crops still remained competitive with yields?
Wayne Fredericks:
We done strip trials there in '12, '13, '14. Didn't see much difference, much change. And so it gave us confidence that we weren't kicking ourself in the shins for trying this. And then we basically moved into a 100% beans one year and the next year a 100% on corn. And we haven't had any untreated strips since, but we have sit here and calculated our yields against county yields ever since we went to no-till and strip-till. And so we've got that comparison over the years and as I go back and try to do a deep dive into that, "Okay, we started cover crops at this time, what happened to our yield differential?" And in corn it's actually looks like we've gained maybe three to four bushels versus the county yield on corn. Soybeans, we stayed right at steady with our differential in county yield.
And of course up in our county, we're seeing pretty rapid adoption of cover crops and no-till beans. And so my comparative components on the other side of it are doing a lot of the same thing I am. So I wouldn't expect there to be a huge differential there, but no yields of not taken a hit because of it. Where I have seen yield hits and not on my operation. But when I get involved working on a larger scale with Iowa Soybean and some of the studies and so forth that are going on, are the early adopters not doing things correctly, not maybe getting the right advice or not planning deep enough, not getting out and checking behind the planter, a lot of things. Cover crop can have an effect upon on a lot of those things.
And so it's a learning tool. And we've seen, we got a five-year study at Iowa Soybean that went into building their economic cover crop simulator and in there we saw first year participants in that trial, majority of them lost it. And by year five, majority of them are seeing enhanced yields. So as they have learned to work with cover crops, they've learned to make the right decisions to adopt and plant them right, and fertilize them right. And are making the system work successfully.
Michaela Paukner:
If you'd like to hear more from Wayne, Dan Shike, Jim Hoorman, or any of the other podcast guests who joined us in 2022, go to covercropstrategies.com/podcasts to listen to all the episodes in our archive. We'll be back in January with brand new episodes. Many thanks to SOURCE by Sound Agriculture and the National No-Tillage Conference for helping to make this cover crop podcast series possible. From all of us here at Cover Crop Strategies, I'm Michaela Paukner. Happy new year and thanks for listening.
Kyle Hill:
For regional radio, I'm Kyle Hill. This is Ag Insight. Today I'm visiting with Michaela Paukner of No-Till Farmer. She is the managing editor and she's helping organize the 31st annual National No-tillage Conference that will be taking place January 10th through the 13th at the Hyatt Regency St. Louis at The Arch in St. Louis. And well, first of all, Michaela, glad to have you on the program today.
Michaela Paukner:
Yeah. Thanks for having me, Kyle.
Kyle Hill:
Now we're looking at four days of well jam-packed learning about all things no-till. Well, tell us about for starters, how this conference has grown over the past three decades and that you're making a return trip to the Gateway City.
Michaela Paukner:
Yeah, so we've been doing this, like you said, it's 31 years. So it started out in the 90s and has grown since then as no-tills gained popularity in the acreage has expanded in the US and across the worlds. But I think what's unique about the National No-Tillage Conference is that the goal of it hasn't changed over those decades. We're really about connecting no-tillers with each other and with the information they need to make no-till successful on their farm wherever they happen to be farming.
Kyle Hill:
Now we're looking at a jam-packed four days here. What can participants expect to take part in and observe?
Michaela Paukner:
Yeah, so the conference kicks off with two special paid workshops on Tuesday, January 10th. We have four of the biggest names in farming, David Hula, Randy Dowdy, Russell Hedrick, and Lance Gunderson coming to talk about trimming fertilizer costs without reducing yields, and asking the right questions to boost your yield. So those two workshops are selling out fast. So when you're registering for the conference, make sure that you indicate that you want to join us, if you'll be coming to that. So at the end of the day on Tuesday, we'll also have some tech talks, talking about new products and then a welcome reception where people can catch up with old friends they see at the conference or make new connections and kind of scope out what they're going to do. So then the conference officially starts on Wednesday, January 11th with general sessions, classrooms, a brand new cutting edge technology review panel and our first set of dynamic round tables. So we continue this tried and true format with the general sessions, classrooms and round tables throughout Thursday and Friday for the rest of the conference, with a diverse set of session topics.
Kyle Hill:
Now how are the classrooms and the round tables scheduled? How difficult is it going to be for producers to figure out which of these sessions to take part in?
Michaela Paukner:
Well, it's super easy. Because the way we have it laid out, you'll get a program where you can see the description of what everybody's going to talk about. It's kind of like choose your own adventure, where you can pick whatever topic or maybe it's a problem that you're having on your operation. You can find that expert who will help you solve that. Or will give you the information you need to take whatever you're trying to do to the next level. So you can just go through the agenda and see what sparks your interest and head over to that. So it's very easy. We put a lot of time and effort into not only choosing the speakers, so we're representing a diverse mix of topics and regions of the US and even beyond. Especially this year we have someone from Australia coming to talk about how they're no-tilling in low moisture. But to also make this experience really easy for everybody attending with signage and we're always there to help too. So I would say it's very simple to pick what you want to do and find where you need to go to learn.
Kyle Hill:
Now you mentioned a speaker from Australia making the trip too at St. Louis. Are there any other topics of note that might really be of interest to produce? Something that might actually pique your interest perhaps?
Michaela Paukner:
Yeah, I would say one I want to mention is our silver anniversary lecture, which is sponsored by H&R Agri-Power. It features Gregg Sauder, who you may know as the founder of 360 Yield Center in Precision Planting. So Gregg's returning to the same St. Louis stage 25 years later to review the early days of planter machine learning and technology. And then he's also going to be sharing his perspective on the future of autonomy and irrigation. For me, that's one I'm really excited about. It's on Thursday right before lunch, because not only has Gregg had such a hand in a lot of the precision technology that producers are using now. But to talk about autonomy and where farming is going, especially for the larger operations, it's really exciting, and we're on the cusp of some big changes I think coming up.
Kyle Hill:
And important to point out as your conference has grown over the past three decades is that, you've got a good number of conference title sponsors helping make this possible.
Michaela Paukner:
Yes, we do. And we're so grateful for all of our sponsors. Like I mentioned, we have H&R Agri-Power sponsoring that lecture. We have Calmer Corn Heads sponsoring our No-Till Fellowship lecture, which features Jim Leverage. He's a Wisconsin No-Tiller who, we actually followed him throughout 2022 as he was planting, as he was harvesting, as he was doing all the other stuff on his farm. And he's going to kind of sum up what he learned over the past year. And that's really a unique thing that we're doing this year. It's something new and something we're really excited to share. Because you can learn directly from Jim's experience, you're almost learning alongside of him. And then he also has been no-tilling for so long that any new to no-till or people who are thinking about no-till, they'll be able to pick up on a lot of the things they shouldn't do if they're just getting started out and learn from those types of mistakes.
Kyle Hill:
Michaela Paukner visiting with us. Managing editor of No-Till former magazine, one of the organizers for the National No-Tillage Conference coming up January 10th through 13th in St. Louis. Michaela, how do Farmers register for this conference?
Michaela Paukner:
Yeah, it's super easy. You can go online and go to no-tillconference.com and we have the registration form there. You can also call us too, if you're interested. That number's available online as well.
Kyle Hill:
Michaela, anything additional that we'd like to pass along to our listeners today ahead of the 31st annual National No-Tillage Conference?
Michaela Paukner:
I think I just want to mention that, if you need CCA or pesticide credits, our sessions are accredited for that and we have all that information on-site with us. So that's an option to help you meet those requirements in 2023. And then we survey our attendees over the years to ask them how valuable is the national No-Tillage Conference? And our past attendees estimate that they gain close to $70,000 in new no-till ideas at just this one conference. So if you break that down into four days, how often can you make $17,500 in a day? I don't know how often you can do that. So we're always, like I said, trying to introduce new information to help people be more profitable as they're no-tilling. And continue their journey in learning and help people be successful.
Kyle Hill:
That is Michaela Paukner of No-Till Farmer magazine, one of the organizers for the National No-Tillage Conference coming up January 10th through 13th in St. Louis. Michaela, thank you very much for joining us on our Ag Insight program today.
Michaela Paukner:
Yeah, it's great to be talking with you.
Kyle Hill:
And for Regional Radio, I'm Kyle Hill.
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