Nebraska

On our way back down to Nebraska we visited another farm that was into growing cover crops using no-till systems. Brothers Marlyn and Patrick Richter run a very diverse business of dairy, feedlot, cows and calves, agistment, some pigs, cropping and contracting. Now they grow cover crops whenever they can with up to 11 species in a mix. They are measuring production, soil health, moisture use and overall economic benefit of the system, which answered a lot of questions for me. Lots of people are advocating it be these guys were the first to put some numbers to it.

See the compaction layer in the soil and that is still after 8 years of no-till.

On our way we spotted this lonely bloke on the side of the road, so we picked him up. Turns out he was an organic farmer from Germany that milked 80 cows and grew organic crops. He was also able to give us a run down on using cover crops in their system. What are the chances? You spend 3 days talking about cover crops, pick up a bloke off the side of the road and

1. He is a farmer.
2. He grows cover crops.

Dont know what else he was into but when he threw his bag in the back I thought the tyres were going to pop. Talk about heavy.

We also saw some different crops apart from corn and soya beans. Sunflowers were sighted occasionally along with the odd crop of wheat.