No-Till Farmer Podcast

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.

Micronutrients and humates are critical to soil fertility and plant nutrition, but their effects aren’t widely understood. That’s where independent soil health specialist Jim Hoorman comes in.

For this episode of the No-Till Farmer Influencers & Innovators podcast, brought to you by The Andersons, we’re revisiting a presentation by no-till stalwart presenter Dwayne Beck. If you don’t know, Beck headed up the Dakota Lakes Research Station, retiring in February. He’s been a repeat presenter at the National No-Till Conference. If you don’t know, you’ll soon learn. Beck is a straight talker and a captivating speaker. He’s also fond of the odd off-color joke.

For this episode of the No-Till Farmer Podcast, we’re headed to Cajun Country for a talk with fourth-generation farmer Justin Fusilier. Corn and soybean operations dominate most of our readership here at No-Till Farmer, according to our benchmark survey, but Justin stumbled onto something he thinks holds promise in Lousiana, where crops like rice and sugarcane are far more common.

For this episode of the No-Till Farmer Influencers & Innovators podcast, brought to you by The Andersons, we’re heading underground. We’re going deep under the soil surface to concentrate on one of the major benefits of no-tilling when it comes to improving soil health. Today’s agenda is worms: Earthworms, red worms, nightcrawlers, and other kinds of worms and the impact the have on no-tilled soils.

For this episode of the No-Till Farmer podcast, brought to you by Bio Till Cover Crop Seed, Aaron Locker, Vice President of sales for HELM Agro joins us to discuss what farmers can do if they can’t get the glyphosate supply they’re used to.

For this episode of the No-Till Farmer Influencers & Innovators podcast, brought to you by The Andersons, editor Frank Lessiter talks with entomologist Dr. Jonathan Lundgren about his motivations for making this move and how he hopes to remove barriers to the adoption of regenerative agriculture.

For this episode of the No-Till Farmer podcast, brought to you by Yetter Farm Equipment, fifth-generation Arkansas farmer Adam Chappell, joins us to talk about how he got into no-till, what methods he employs, what he sees for the future, and more.

In this episode of the No-Till Farmer Influencers Innovators Podcast, brought to you by NewLeaf Symbiotics, we dug through our archives to find the speech Frank Lessiter presented during his 1973 testimonial before the House Agriculture Committee on the important role no-tillage was playing in American agriculture.

For this episode of the No-Till Farmer podcast, brought to you by Yetter Farm Equipment, Himanshu Gupta, CEO and founder of Climate Ai, joins us to talk about how his company measures heat risk and drought risk and turns those into what he calls the planting risk index, a metric that can help growers make better operational decisions for their farms.

"Where I grew up, we have real narrow roads, and if you’re going to have wider than 60 foot and 80-foot equipment, they’re going to have to change the infrastructure, not only just because of width but also because of the loads on the roads and and bridges and things like that. I think autonomous vehicles will come into their own.” Keith Wendte In this episode of the No-Till Farmer Influencers & Innovators Podcast, brought to you by NewLeaf Symbiotics, Frank Lessiter talks with farmer, data guru and long-time CNH engineer Keith Wendte. During his tenure (the company was known as International Harvester when he started), Wendte worked to design implements for no-till farming and had designed a spring-based down-pressure adjustment system before electronics innovations beat his system to the market. Wendte is retired from the implement design industry, but still works actively at the family farm near Effingham, Ill. He’s bullish on wheat prices this year, and encourages the use of wheat as a cover crop. In this week’s podcast, Gruver and Wendte talk about the roots in the family farm, his work at CNH, alternatives to ever-increasing tractor size, and more.

For this episode of the No-Till Farmer podcast, brought to you by Yetter Farm Equipment, Contributing Editor Dan Crummett speaks with plant biologist Lee DeHaan of The Land Institute where the breeding of Kernza and other perennial crops has been underway since 2003. Listen in as Dan and Lee discuss the characteristics of Kernza, how to grow it, the potential of the developing markets and more.

In this week’s podcast, Gruver and Lessiter talk about the prospects for biological farming supplements, the perils and opportunities that arise from combining no-till and organic methods, hands-on learning at WIU, and more.

For this episode of the No-Till Farmer podcast, brought to you by Yetter Farm Equipment, we talk with Russell Hedrick and Liz Haney of Soil Regen, the consulting company behind a trio of new labels — “Regeneratively Grown” “Regenerative Certified” and “Regenerative Verified.” Join us to hear what’s behind the new labelling and how farmers who qualify to use them can get paid premiums for the products they grow.

Today’s episode of the No-Till Innovators and Influencers is a rebroadcast of a 2020 conversation agronomist Betsy Bower had with No-Till Farmer’s Executive Editor Julia Gerlach. In it, Bower discusses leveraging technology to improve yields, the potential for biological farming improvements, cover crops, and more.

Jimmy Emmons and Loran Steinlage have built dynamic, profitable no-till operations, but the challenges they face are very different. Jimmy no-tills cash crops and raises livestock in hot, dry western Oklahoma, while Loran uses a variety of creative planting systems to no-till several different crops in a veritable stew of soil types in eastern Iowa. For this No-Till Farmer podcast, sponsored by Yetter Farm Equipment, Jimmy and Loran were joined by moderator Rick Clark at the 2022 National No-Tillage Conference in Louisville, Ky., to share the management tactics they’ve relied on to achieve no-till success in such differing climates, including how they’ve incorporated cover crops, managed water infiltration issues and how they’re preparing their operations for the future.

Adapting No-Till In the Palouse With Russ Zenner by No-Till Farmer

Barry Fisher, Soil Health, and the Future of Carbon by No-Till Farmer

Back in 2019, Frank and Mike Lessiter sat down to discuss 25 legends of the no-till movement who are still alive today. This episode of the No-Till Farmer Influencers & Innovators podcast, brought to you by Terrasym, we revisit that conversation in celebration of these three anniversaries and the ongoing no-till movement.

For this No-Till Farmer podcast, associate editor Sarah Hill caught up with John Wallace, Penn State University assistant professor of weed science, to discuss his thoughts on how best to get covers established in row crops. He explains how available equipment, herbicide programs and fertility management affect interseeding decisions.