No-Till Farmer Podcast

Dennis Michelsen and Michael Musselman, hosts of the podcast Innovations in Your Fields -- powered by NewFields Ag -- interview No-Till Farmer editor Frank Lessiter and Lessiter Media President Mike Lessiter about the evolution of no-till, the founding days of No-Till Farmer, and trends and technologies that helped no-till practices grow across the U.S. They also discuss the vision behind Frank’s first book about no-till, “From Maverick to Mainstream: A History of No-Till Farming.”

We’re back this week with another conversation with No-Till Living Legend and 2024 Conservation Ag Operator Fellow Ray McCormick — this time from the cab of his truck as he’s out scouting after a heavy rainstorm in Vincennes, Ind.

Today’s episode was recorded in mid-May, a day after the Vincennes area received 5 inches of rain in less than 24 hours. Let’s listen in as Ray scouts fields with No-Till Farmer contributing writer Michaela Paukner.

Dover, Minn., no-tillers Dan and Abby Fohrman raised a no-till yield of 298.95 bushels in 2023, securing them a first-place win in the National Corn Growers Association’s Minnesota no-till non-irrigated category last year.

In today’s episode of the podcast, brought to you by The Andersons’ Over Pass Lineup, contributing writer Laura Barrera talks with Dan Fohrman about his contest-winning corn yield and his approach to raising high-yield no-till corn.

The problem with traditional tissue testing for crops is the lack of information about how much of a nutrient is needed to correct a problem, according to Hickory, N.C., no-tiller Russell Hedrick. In today’s episode of the podcast, brought to you by The Andersons’ Over Pass Lineup, Hedrick and Sarah Martello, CEO and co-founder of Transparency Wise Technologies, talk about Foliar Scripts and the benefits it brings for farmers.

When Muncie, Ind., farmer Joe Hamilton decided to switch from conventional tillage to no-till, everyone told him he’d be crazy to make the transition on 1,000 acres during his first year. In today’s episode of the podcast, brought to you by The Andersons’ Over Pass Lineup, Hamilton shares the lessons he learned in year 1 and beyond.

No-tillers stand to benefit from updates to the U.S. Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) tax credit. The U.S. Department of the Treasury and IRS released a notice April 30 that details an updated version of the Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions and Energy Use in Transportation (GREET) model, which is used to determine CI scores of SAF feedstocks.

More than 91% of no-tillers who responded to the 2024 No-Till Operational Practices Survey use precision technologies on their farms, and many experts see no-tillers on the cutting edge of new agriculture technology like autonomy.

In this episode of the podcast, brought to you by The Andersons, no-tiller Nick Guetterman of Bucyrus, Kan.; John Fulton, Ohio State University Extension ag engineer; no-tiller Joe Hamilton of Muncie, Ind.; and no-tiller Tim Norris of the “No-Till Capital of the World” Knox County, Ohio, discuss their outlook on autonomy in agriculture and the most valuable precision technologies in use on their farms.

No-Till Living Legend Ray McCormick has improved and restored thousands of acres of farmland, woodlands and wetlands in the Vincennes, Ind., area and beyond. In this episode of the podcast, brought to you by The Andersons, McCormick takes us on a tour of some of the farm and wetland projects he’s completed around Vincennes.

No-Till Living Legend Ray McCormick from Vincennes, Ind., is No-Till Farmer’s 2024 Conservation Ag Operator Fellow. The annual fellowship spotlights the real-time decision-making McCormick uses to make no-till — or never till as he calls it — work on his farm.

In this episode of the No-Till Farmer podcast, brought to you by Yetter Farm Equipment, McCormick talks about how he first got involved with restoring farmland into wetlands, seeding cover crops with the combine, his planting philosophies and more.

For this latest episode in this series of Influencers & Innovators podcasts, brought to you by Source by Sound Agriculture, Roy Pfaltzgraff of Haxtum, Colorado, talks about his 30-year assessment of the costs of tillage, no-tillage with fallow and no-till with a soil health focus. Cropping 2,200 dryland acres in an area that receives less than 14 inches of average rainfall yearly, Roy shares his insights from a presentation at the thirty-second annual National No-Tillage Conference on how he’s changed the operation’s focus over the past 8 years while raising 12 or more different crops each year in this extremely dry aera of northeastern Colorado.