No-Till Farmer Podcast

No-Till Legend Dave Brandt of Carroll, Ohio, showed the farming community the tremendous value of cover crops and regenerative practices in improving soil health. Brandt passed away unexpectedly in late May of 2023, leaving behind a legacy of challenging status quo farming methods and providing mentorship to countless farmers. Today’s episode of the podcast, brought to you by The Andersons, features audio from a presentation Brandt gave at the National No-Tillage Conference, teaching no-tillers how to find success with interseeding cover crops.

In this episode of the No-Till Farmer Influencers & Innovators podcast, brought to you by Crop Vitality and Thio-Sul, listen back to a popular episode of the No-Till Farmer podcast from our archives featuring Ohio State University Extension ag engineer John Fulton.

In today’s episode of the podcast, brought to you by The Andersons, Ryan Schroeter with National Land Realty talks about 2023 farmland value trends and what needs to happen for no-till and other conservation practices to influence land valuation.

This episode of the No-Till Farmer Influencers & Innovators podcast, brought to you by Crop Vitality and Thio-Sul, is a departure from normal no-till history, but no less important. This episode details how a single no-tiller by the name of Percy Schmeiser fought an army of lawyers as agribusiness giant Monsanto accused the farmer of stealing its Roundup-Ready canola seed. Perhaps you’ve seen one of the movies on the subject, including the recent Percy vs. Goliath major motion picture that was released in 2020 and starred academy-award winner Christopher Walken.

Gregg Sauder has been at the forefront of no-till planter technology for decades — first as the founder of Precision Planting, which he later sold to Monsanto, and now as the founder of 360 Yield Center. In today’s episode of the podcast, brought to you by The Andersons, Gregg reviews the evolution of planter technology over his career and the important no-till planter lessons — and life lessons — he’s learned in the years since.

In this episode of the No-Till Farmer Influencers & Innovators podcast, brought to you by Crop Vitality and Thio-Sul, listen back to one of the most popular episodes of the No-Till Farmer podcast from our archives featuring no-till innovator Marion Calmer.

Federal and state incentive programs for cover cropping can be hard to find and difficult to navigate. That’s why Maria Teresa Tancredi and Michaela Lubbers, researchers at the University of Georgia, created an online cover crop incentive tool to organize information about the programs and make it easier for no-tillers to be rewarded for adopting cover crops.

In this episode of the No-Till Farmer Influencers & Innovators podcast, brought to you by Crop Vitality and Thio-Sul, North Dakota State University Extension soil specialist Dave Franzen shares his unconventional trajectory into the world of agriculture and why he thinks no-till is so critical for improving soil health.

In this episode of the podcast, brought to you by Yetter Farm Equipment, contributing editor Dan Crummett talks with Mike Tweedy and Danielle Watts of Pattern Ag about the company’s soil testing process, predictions for the 2023 growing season and what ROI the company’s testing can provide for no-tillers.

In this episode of the No-Till Farmer Influencers & Innovators podcast, brought to you by Source by Sound Agriculture, No-Till Legend and former Ohio State Extension ag engineer Randall Reeder talks about his secondary career portraying the old pop culture icon Will Rogers.

In this episode of the podcast, brought to you by Yetter Farm Equipment, Jonathan Correa, owner of La Cosecha Tortilla Company in Madison, Wis., and No-Till Legend Dave Brandt from Carroll, Ohio, join Steinlage to talk about how they’ve built a mutually beneficial partnership that benefits the health of their communities in a variety of ways.

In this episode of the No-Till Farmer Influencers & Innovators podcast, brought to you by Source by Sound Agriculture, listen to part 2 of Howard G. Buffett’s presentation on feeding the world with no-till from a previous National No-Tillage Conference.

No-Till Farmer’s 2023 Conservation Ag Operator Fellow Loran Steinlage of West Union, Iowa, and No-Till Legend Dave Brandt from Carroll, Ohio, have been thinking beyond yield for decades — focusing on soil health, doing more with less, and lately, producing high nutrient density crops that could be used as medicine in the future.

Under the guidance of 2022 No-Till Innovator Dan Forgey, Cronin Farms in Gettysburg, S.D., vastly diversified its rotation to include nearly a dozen crops — all with the goal of improving soil health. Cronin Farms is a 10,000-acre operation with 640 irrigated acres and over 8,000 acres of native prairie along the Missouri River. In 1993, Forgey and the Cronins transitioned the farm to no-till and established a rotational grazing system for their 850 head cow/calf operation. In this episode of the No-Till Farmer podcast, brought to you by Yetter Farm Equipment, managing editor Michaela Paukner talks with Forgey about the 10,000-acre South Dakota operation he manages, why crop diversification is so important and why he has a passion for soil.

In this episode of the No-Till Farmer Influencers & Innovators podcast, brought to you by Source By Sound Agriculture, listen back to a presentation on feeding the world with no-till farming by Howard G. Buffett from the 2010 National No-Tillage Conference. A champion of no-till farming, Buffett manages a 1,500-acre family farm in central Illinois and operates a 400-acre farm in Nebraska. He also oversees multiple research farms in Arizona, Illinois and Nebraska totaling 9,500 acres.

In this episode of the podcast, brought to you by Yetter Farm Equipment, hear from Loran Steinlage and Rolan, his son, about the crisis that became a pivotal day in Loran’s career and the reason why connection and mentorship are so important to his operation.

Greenfield Robotics’ vision for the future of weed control is a fleet of 10 robots, weighing 350 pounds each, that use spinning blades to chop weeds growing among broadacre row crops. In this episode of the No-Till Farmer podcast, brought to you by Yetter Farm Equipment, contributing editor Dan Crummett talks with Clint Brauer, the CEO of Greenfield Robotics, about Greenfield’s weeder robots, how the company plans to expand the robots’ capabilities beyond weeding and why Brauer wants to take the chemicals out of no-tilling.

In this episode of the No-Till Farmer Influencers & Innovators podcast, brought to you by Source By Sound Agriculture, Frank Lessiter sits down with long-time southeastern Wisconsin no-tiller Bob Wildermuth and his wife, Anita.

In this episode of the No-Till Farmer Influencers & Innovators podcast, brought to you by Source By Sound Agriculture, Frank Lessiter sits down with Fall Line Capital Director of Agronomy and no-tiller in Manitoba, Canada, Scott Day about no-tilling in the extreme climate of Canada’s prairies and why choosing a diverse crop program has been so successful on his no-till farm.

For this episode of the No-Till Farmer Influencers & Innovators podcast, brought to you by Source by Sound Agriculture, we’re replaying the very first episode of the “No-Till Farmer Influencers & Innovators” podcast that was posted on January 18 of 2019. In this episode, brought to you by SOURCE by Sound Agriculture, Lessiter Media President Mike Lessiter interviews his dad, Frank Lessiter, on the roots of no-till and conservation tillage farming.

As 2022 comes to a close, we’re revisiting some of the most-played episodes of the No-Till Farmer podcast, brought to you by Yetter Farm Equipment. Listen in as we count down the top five most-played episodes of 2022. 5. Finding No-Till Success in the Face of Adversity 4. Adapting No-Till In the Palouse With Russ Zenner 3. Barry Fisher, Soil Health, and the Future of Carbon 2. Soil Scientist and Educator Joel Gruver 1. Boosting Your Bottom Line with Humates & Mineral Nutrition

For this episode of the No-Till Farmer Influencers & Innovators podcast, brought to you by SOURCE®️ by Sound Agriculture, No-Till Farmer Editor Frank Lassiter talks with Kelly Cheesewright about his 37 years of successful no-tilling and how it has now led to moving to organic no-till on nearly half of the over 2,000-acre operation that he farms with his son Keaton.

For this episode of the No-Till Farmer podcast, brought to you by Yetter Farm Equipment, contributing editor Dan Crummett talks with Cully about Susterre’s system and what it means for the future of no-till.

No-Till Farmer editor Frank Lessiter talks with Moeller about the particulars of planting equipment, why high-speed might not be in the cards for no-till planters, what right-to-repair means for no-till and more. This week’s episode of the No-Till Farmers: Influencers & Innovators podcast is brought to you by Source by Sound Agriculture.

On this week’s episode of the No-Till Farmer Podcast, brought to you by Yetter Farm Equipment, Associate Editor Noah Newman talks to Jared Kenney of Amherste, Neb. Kenney finished second in the National Corn Growers’ Association Annual Yield Contest for Irrigated No-Till in Nebraska.

For this episode of the No-Till Farmer Influencers & Innovators podcast, brought to you by SOURCE®️ by Sound Agriculture, No-Till Farmer editor Frank Lessiter talks with Moeller about the particulars of planting equipment, why high-speed might not be in the cards for no-till planters, what right-to-repair means for no-till and more.

For this episode of the No-Till Farmer podcast, brought to you by Yetter Farm Equipment, we're joined by Kyle Schomers. Schomers picked his best 10 acres and hit it with maximum nutrients in order to prep the ground for entry into the National Corn Growers Assn. (NCGA) Annual Yield Contest.

For this episode of the No-Till Farmer Influencers & Innovators podcast, brought to you by SOURCE®️ by Sound Agriculture, No-Till Farmer editor Frank Lessiter talks with Nuffield scholar and Merlin, Ont., no-tiller Blake Vince about his heavy use of cover crops, dealing with suboptimal precipitation, and more.

Ron Ohlde farms more than 1,000 acres of no-till land near Palmer, Kan. He started working smarter, not harder with the advent of precision farming in the 1980s, and handheld GPS units. Today, he’s a champion, riding a 289.7 bushel per acre yield to first place for Kansas in the National Corn Growers’ Association’s Annual Yield Competition.

For this episode of the No-Till Farmer Influencers & Innovators podcast, brought to you by SOURCE®️ by Sound Agriculture, Ag consultant Joe Nester says phosphorus (P) is leaving soil. In this presentation from the National No-Tillage Conference, Nester covers how to measure and recover P, as well as the issues that arise when too much P shows up in the wrong place.

For this episode of the No-Till Farmer podcast, brought to you by Yetter Farm Equipment, we're joined by Karl Dirks who farms about 1,000 acres of Pennsylvania ground near Mount Joy, Pa. He faced better-than-usual precipitation conditions and higher pest pressure to accomplish no-till success.

Randall Reeder and Frank Lessiter discuss ridge-tilling on this week’s episode of the “No-Till Influencers and Innovators” podcast. The method pushed weed seeds near the crops into valleys between the ridges, along with residue, where it would be quickly canopied over by the growing crops – usually corn – and help retain water.

For this episode of the No-Till Farmer podcast, brought to you by SOURCE by Sound Agriculture, we're joined by Steve Wilkens who farms about 1,000 acres of Wisconsin ground that his family has worked since the 1850’s. In 2021, Wilkens recorded a yield of 315.4 bushels per acre, enough to claim second place in the Wisconsin No-Till Non-Irrigated category for the National Corn Grower’s Association Corn Yield Contest.

For this episode of the No-Till Farmer Influencers & Innovators podcast, brought to you by Verdesian Life Sciences, features two members of commercial no-till’s founding family: John and Alex Young. Their presentation to the 2017 National No-Tillage Conference touches on just about everything, from the origins and rise of no-till farming to climate change, cover crops, and residue management.

For this episode of the No-Till Farmer podcast, brought to you by SOURCE by Sound Agriculture, we're joined by Rod Rejesus, who studies economics, land values and crop insurance for North Carolina State University. He and collaborators from other academic institutions authored and published a paper earlier this year showing increased land values corresponding with a 1% increase in no-till adoption at the county level.

For this episode of the No-Till Farmer Influencers & Innovators podcast, brought to you by Verdesian Life Sciences, features Missouri-based fertility expert Neal Kinsey. Kinsey’s discussion examines the findings of seven soil samples from various geographic regions, soil types and crop rotations.

For this episode of the No-Till Farmer podcast, brought to you by SOURCE by Sound Agriculture, Brad and Joel Reddick joined Cover Crop Strategies podcast host and editor Noah Newman to cover the basics of their operation, how they came to add on additional practices to no-tilling.

In this week’s “No-Till Influencers and Innovators” podcast, Frank Lessiter speaks with early strip-till adapter Dean Fehl about how he got started strip tilling, and his current role as a retiree helping his sons work the family farm, and more.

For this episode of the No-Till Farmer podcast, brought to you by SOURCE by Sound Agriculture, we caught up with Jim Leverich of Sparta, Wis., to ask him about some of the things he’s learned about no-till since he was first introduced to the practice back in the 1980s.

For this episode of the No-Till Farmer Influencers & Innovators podcast, brought to you by Verdesian Life Sciences, we take another look back at the early days of no-till in western Kentucky. However, this episode is different than most of the podcasts in this series as it features a former John Deere dealer and his memories of the rapid growth of no-till in the western Kentucky area.

For this episode of the No-Till Farmer podcast, brought to you by SOURCE by Sound Agriculture, we caught up with Steve Savage to chat with him about a couple of his recent articles. Stay tuned to hear him discuss the history of no-till farming, why the practice has been so important, and how it will play a role in the future of conservation. He’ll also share why he says using the term “synthetic nitrogen” is misleading, the inconvenient truth about the greenhouse gases associated with making compost, how small-scale, local Haber-Bosch nitrogen production could help reduce the reliance on foreign inputs and more.

This week’s edition of the No-Till Farmer: Influencers & Innovators podcast, we all thrill to no-till. Or maybe we’re all no-till tigers. Whatever you do, remember to farm ugly. These are a few of the slogans and gimmicks used by this week’s guest, Dick Foell during the early days of no-till farming in the early 1970s. Foell worked at Chevron to promote and develop a then little-known chemical by the name of paraquat, a herbicide that helped move no-tilling from a loose collection of bottom-line minded innovators to a national soil health movement.

For this installment of the No-Till Farmer podcast, brought to you by SOURCE by Sound Agriculture, we visited Dakota Lakes and chatted with Sam Ireland about his plans for the operation, including long-term crop rotation trials, experiments the farm is conducting on dealing with seed weevil pressure in sunflowers, innovations in livestock feeding, closing the loop on the energy cycle and more.

For this episode of the No-Till Farmer Influencers & Innovators podcast, brought to you by Verdesian Life Sciences, we're joined by Blake Brown, director of the AgResearch and Education Center at Milan. The center, one of ten in Tennesee, shares a significant anniversary in the annals of No-Till history.

Parker Cohn works on more than just golf courses. The young soil services entrepreneur and operator of Performance Resources Management is an example of a company offering bespoke — that is, customized to individual fields and operations — fertility recommendations for agricultural and horticultural operations in California. Parker’s customer base and operations are out on the coast, where water pressure on the agriculture sector is tightening amid persistently drier conditions. If you’re a grower in Illinois or Iowa, plane fare is part of what you’d pay for to get Parker’s professional opinion.

This week’s edition of the No-Till Farmer: Influencers & Innovators podcast discusses the intersection of no-till and technology in Saskatchewan, Canada. The need for autonomy arose in Saskatchewan because of the shortage of available labor, says Norbert Beaujot. Farms — like his 3,000-acre no-till mixed crop and testing operation — were getting larger, but labor remained scarce. He formed Dot Technologies Corp, featuring remote controlled power units with variable attachments for seeding, spraying, rolling, or moving grain carts.

For this episode of the No-Till Farmer podcast, brought to you by Bio-Till Cover Crops, we followed up with the recently-retired manager of Dakota Lakes Research Farm, Dwayne Beck about his time at Dakota Lakes and how he came to develop some of his controversial beliefs.

This week’s edition of the No-Till Farmer: Influencers & Innovators podcast focuses on the early days of no-till in the keystone state. Joel Meyers is nearing retirement now, but for 20 years as the NRCS State Agronomist for Pennsylvania, he helped to advocate no-tillage for the gently rolling hills and steeper slopes in Northern Appalachia.

In this episode of the No-Till Farmer podcast, brought to you by Bio-till Cover Crop Seed, Robert Paarlberg, associate at the sustainability science program at the Harvard Kennedy School, talks about the research that went into his book, his advice to commercial farmers and farm organizations about advocating for sustainability, what those groups need to do to combat the myths surrounding sustainable agriculture and more.

This week’s edition of the No-Till Farmer: Influencers & Innovators podcast is a continuation of the previous Influencers & Innovators podcast featuring NNTC presenter Dwayne Beck. Beck discusses the particulars of the discussion he started with the last episode: the particulars of crop rotation and using rotations to fight pests. Beck recently retired as the director of the Dakota Lakes Research Station in South Dakota.