[SUBSCRIBE TO THIS PODCAST]

---

Brought to you by:

“We're doing everything that we possibly can on all fronts for soil health in the regenerative agriculture movement.”

— Monte Bottens, Illinois No-Tiller & CEO of Ag Solutions Network

In this episode of the No-Till Farmer Influencers & Innovators podcast, brought to you by Crop Vitality and Thio-Sul, editor Frank Lessiter sits down with Monte Bottens, a northwest Illinois no-tiller and the current CEO of Ag Solutions Network. Bottens talks about all things soil health and regenerative agriculture, including cover crops, ideal row widths, biologicals and his cattle operation.

Plus, learn about how Bottens helped bring the no-till movement and regenerative agriculture out west to California while he was living there during the early to mid 2000s.

If you are interested in more no-till history, you’ll find great stories like these and many more in the newly released 448-page second edition of From Maverick to Mainstream: A History of No-Till Farming that includes 32 more pages than the first edition. Order your copy here.

Watch the VIDEO REPLAY of this podcast.

No-Till Influencers & Innovators podcast series is brought to you by Crop Vitality and Thio-Sul, the original thiosulfate liquid fertilizer.

More from this series

Keep your nitrogen where it is most effective, in the soil, and available for plant uptake with liquid thiosulfate fertilizers by Crop Vitality. Recent studies have shown, Thio-Sul and KTS inhibit nitrogen losses to the atmosphere and waterways while providing essential nutrients including sulfur so your crops have what they need when they need it most. Visit Crop Vitality dot com for a deeper dive into nitrification inhibition and the benefits of all Crop Vitality's fertilizers.

Full Transcript 

Welcome to the No-Till Farmer Influencers & Innovators podcast, brought to you by Crop Vitality and Thio-Sul, the original thiosulfate liquid fertilizer. I'm Mackane Vogel, assistant editor of No-Till Farmer. For this episode, editor Frank Lessiter sits down with Monte Bottens, a northwest Illinois no-tiller, and the current CEO of Ag Solutions Network. Bottens talks about all things soil health and regenerative agriculture, including cover crops, ideal row widths, biologicals, and his cattle operation. Plus, learn about how Bottens helped bring the no-till movement out west to California while he was living there during the early to mid 2000s.

Let's get started. Let's start with some history, Monte. Thank you for being here this morning. Tell me a little about your history and your dad's history and the history of the farm and where you're located.

All right, Frank. Thanks for having me here. I appreciate it. We're located in northwest Illinois, in Henry County. Not very far away from one your dear friends, Mr. Marion Calmer. About 15 miles northeast of him, where he's at. My dad moved to the area, my wife's originally from the area, in 1974, so he's just a newbie. He's a transplant there. He started with just 80 acres on their home farm and was IH partsman and later became a salesman at a local IH dealership. And eventually the owner with a group of farmers of one that grew into three dealerships. And then in the late '90s when a lot of turmoil was going on, we sold those dealerships. I worked at the dealership at the time out of college and that was what I was going to do for an entire career. So, when that changed, started farming a little more and eventually went to work at a Case IH dealership in California.

Fell in love with California agriculture and the diversity, really good people there. And saw this amazing amount of tillage going on out there. And I just could not believe it because we'd been no-tilling on the farm since '96 or so. And thought, boy, is there a way we can help these California farmers reduce tillage? And that's what I did after that Case IH dealership was sold to another one. I didn't have to be told a third time that maybe this wasn't the right business to be in. So, we started a crop consulting business there in California and selling specialty fertilizer products and biologicals before biologicals were cool. That was back in the snake oil days. And we worked with some farmers there and really started integrating cover crops, minimum tillage, drip irrigation, those kinds of things, and grew into a company called California Ag Solutions. And then worked with growers out there and we kept expanding the farm.

And about 10 years ago now, where my wife and I started transitioning back to Illinois to be with family, and at that time we were a little behind the cover crop trend. So, you'll have to forgive me Frank, but I wasn't here to do it. But when I got back, we started doing cover crops and then later on we started doing integrated livestock. So, now we have a direct to consumer livestock company and we've expanded the farm and cover cropping efforts. And we're doing everything that we possibly can on all fronts for soil health in the regenerative agriculture movement.

So, how many acres are you farming now?

About 2,500. And we've got 200 to pasture.

Okay. Mainly corn and soybeans?

The cash crops, corn and soybeans. We do have some wheat, rye for seed. We'll do some hay. Occasionally we'll have ground that we set out for grazing. So, there's a little bit, but primarily corn and bean though. We'd like to transition to more diversity.

So, you've been no-till since 1995 or 1996. How did your dad and you get into no-till?

Well, it basically started because of time, Frank. When dad was working full-time at the dealership, it came out with a 955 or 950 15 inch row planter with coulter bar on it. Which was made by Blu-Jet, painted red. And a coulter for every row. And we saw that and it was like good grief, the seedbeds are no different than any sort of tillage. So, we did that and did nutrition on the plant at the same time. We did banded nitrogen and on seed at the time. And didn't see any yield bumps, sold the anhydrous bar and never looked back.

And then at the same time we went right from 36 inch row corn to 15 inch row corn at the time. And my dad and Marion were really good friends and we ran one of the very prototype 15 inch row corn heads of Marion's. And eventually we went to 20 inch rows just because of equipment size. We went to a 24,20. Then we went to 24,30. So, we've kind of gone backwards in that regard, but a lot of it has to do with the horsepower requirement of a 60-foot bar with 15 inch rows.

So, any problems getting into no-till the first couple of years?

I would say because we started right away with 40 units of nitrogen and we've grown that over time on the planter. And with on seed starter, just by pure dumb luck and coincidence, we had no transition challenges. And that's really been the basis of what we do at California Ag Solutions and at Ag Solutions Network, when you address that nutritional change, when you go from tillage to no-till. You don't see that yield lag that guys talk about, well, it takes you three years and nobody wants a three year wait. But we're just trying to make that no-till transition quicker, easier.

So, with farmers in your area and in California, when they bring up the yield drop, what do you tell?

Well, in California it's a little bit different because of the specialty crops. They're mainly concerned about operational issues and or residue for food safety and various things. So, we address those issues. In the Midwest and Great Plains it's just sometimes we've taken planters to other people's farms because they don't have the planting equipment to make it happen. And sometimes just show them the science behind it and relayed other people's experiences to see. Because in the '80s, I don't know if you heard this Frank, I'm sure you did over and over, but locally it got to be known as no-till is no yield.

They made a problem, they took a standard planter, they slapped a wavy coulter on the front, and if you had perfect planting conditions, it would work. And we had a few years where it did, then we had a few years where it didn't, it was too wet. We had sidewall smearing or too dry, it wouldn't go on the ground. And we lost a generation of no-tillers there. And so, we try to get it right because if you don't get it right now, it would be another generation until the next generation is in charge of decision making for it to happen.

You just brought up an interesting point that some people have told me recently that the people who really started with no-till, the pioneers, are getting old these days. And the question is, is the new generation as excited about no-till as the other one was? Are we losing some no-till interest these days or is it the same or growing?

So, I can only give you my opinion. I don't know the-

That's why we're talking to you, for your opinion.

Well, there's no science to back this up. There's young farmers today who have never farmed without GMO crops. They don't know how to put a chemistry program together other than Roundup and Dicamba. They just aren't familiar with it. There's an art that's been lost. I think if you look at the motivations for getting into no-till, was a lot of cost driven. Your customer base, hardcore people are cost, cost, cost. And then the other thing is, is the time savings. That's why we did it, because dad had a full-time job and I had a full-time job. We didn't have time to run the tillage equipment ahead of the planter. It just had to go.

Today, I think there's a lot of comfortable tractors that ride really nice and high speed planters and high speed jokers and tillage equipment that makes it cool to go out there and till and stir up stuff. And I think we've kind of lost, and honestly, the margins in farming now compared to the '80s and the '90s are really good. So, when you got money, farmers like to spend it and they like shiny iron and shiny iron poles, tillage equipment. So, I see more tillage than I'd like to. The trend is not increasing in the no-till arena in my opinion, but we've got tools and technologies with all the planter stuff that we have today and the sensor arrays from multiple companies, not just Precision Planting. We have all kinds of opportunities to do no-till right, and a lot more fertility options and everything.

But if you look at the variety of tools and technologies that we have today, but the adoption rate of no-till is not exploding at that same rate. So, it's a concern. And another concern I wanted to bring up while we were together today too is on the consumer side. And I've learned a lot having that direct to consumer business. And you and I understand the soil health benefits of not tilling. Lack of erosion, better water infiltration, more biology, earthworms, yada, yada. But our primary tool in chemical control, weeds, is glyphosate. It's in the news all the time. Our secondary control is paraquat. It's now in the news all the time. And without herbicides I can, on our farm, we've eliminated insecticides, eliminated fungicides. And you can do that pretty well by paying attention to what you're doing.

Herbicides, tough to eliminate. And I think with the consumer trends, and there's a lot of votes, despite where you fall on the science, I think there's more to be scared about with glyphosate than what the average farmer thinks. But I think there's less to be scared about with glyphosate than what the average consumer thinks. So, farmers, we need to be a little more aware, consumers maybe need to be a little less anxious. And every chemical makes a change. And my dad has always said this. He says, just because you quit using glyphosate, how do you know what you use in its place isn't worse?

And that's very wise words, it's just that we've studied the glyphosate so much because it's such a worldwide popular and cheap product. But I'm concerned about the future of no-till in regards to weed control. So, we have to fast-forward and that's why I interview a lot of people on our podcast about robotic weed killers, whether it's mowing, lasers, spraying zinc, or spraying nitrogen on a plant at a high dose but just right on the plant, electrolysis, all flaming all these other options because I really think in the near future, 10 years, chemistries are going to largely be off the table, especially the ones we need in no-till.

You mentioned paraquat. Are you using paraquat in your operation?

I have, yes.

Oh, tell us how it fits in your no-till program. For years, paraquat, before glyphosate came along, paraquat was what everybody used with no-till. And then we moved, when we got glyphosate, a lot of people moved away from paraquat. So, I'd be curious to know how you're using paraquat?

Well, first off, there's safety aspects to both. I have sayings, paraquat will kill you today, glyphosate will kill you tomorrow. So, both of them have to be handled with extraordinary care. And also same thing with environmental impacts. Paraquat, when we've used that, we have used third party applicators just for safety and labor constraints that we have at the time of planting. Paraquat makes for an interesting story when planting green. So, you can have a high biomass crop that you plant and it can be a day from being up, you spray it with paraquat and it's crispy. And you don't have that green light or the near infrared light interference that you would with a plant that's been killed with glyphosate that's kind of thinking about dying for two weeks.

Now, this year, the hot dry weather, it dries a lot quicker, but typically, you got 10 days or two weeks of some greenness out there waiting for a plant to kill with glyphosate. So, I think it allows us to grow out our cover crops to bigger biomass prior to emergence and terminate it quick and roll it down nice and crispy. So, there's a different management strategy there. I think you don't go through the fungal changes within the soil and the anaerobic species stimulation that comes from glyphosate translocation. So, you don't have the phytophthora fusarium spike issues that you do with glyphosate. But again, both of them, too many lawyer commercials on TV.

Exactly.

Both of them probably have a limited timeframe. And I still think 2,4-D is another key component in all these issues too. And it's just a matter of time before we see the lawyer commercials on that one.

Well, it's interesting when you look back at no-till, we followed it for 50 years and early on when the chemicals that were used for weed control were atrazine, paraquat and princep and some dicamba at that point. But all of a sudden some of these that we've written off have been back in the picture in recent years.

And I think it's good to have a rotation of chemicals, just like you have a rotation of crops. So, we've had two years of paraquat in the rotation. This year we elected to go back to terminating ourselves and being in control of our weed program because we're 100% non GMO corn and beans. Now, non GMO corn weed control, pretty easy. Non GMO beans, I got a lot to figure out yet. So, we're working on that. So, just because of the timing aspects we went back to glyphosate, but I think that interruption there also helps us just changing mode of actions of chemistries. That helps too. We haven't built up glyphosate resistance.

So, you're using glyphosate, but you're non GMO. Let's talk about that, why you got into that market and what it's meant for you?

Well, the non GMO market, half of our corn goes to food grade corn. So, it's milled for polenta in Italy. And the other half of it goes, non GMO, when I can catch a barge on the Illinois River. And that depends, some years it's enough to pay for the extra trucking to Illinois River, sometimes it's not and it goes to ethanol. So, really haven't seen any yield related issues. Weed control options in corn, no problem. Work with Prairie Hybrids out of Tampa Co. So, they're close by to us and perform well. So, been pretty happy with that. On the beans, we can pick up some substantial premiums on non GMO beans and we're going to the river anyway. The only thing is that we have to deliver within a two-day timeframe instead of any day of the week.

So, it does require hiring some trucks when they got a barge call. But the premium's definitely worth it. We'll be, traditionally in older bean prices, we are a buck forty, buck fifty. Now, we're able to get up to $2.40 a bushel. There's some specialty bean markets. Buyer beware to the listeners, always check it out. I've had some bad experiences with one company. If you want to know what that is, you can reach out to me, I'll tell you. I'm in the process of another company right now that we're working with that has a $5 premium, and they pick it up on the farm. So, that's a rather interesting thing. So, I think verdict's out to see if that yields as well and it pays, but I think you have to have the market for that on non GMO beans to make it pay. So, now to answer the other part of your question, Frank, is why in the world are you a nut case and do stuff a little harder like this?

I think in exploring some of the research papers that don't get a lot of press is that there's a thing called... The way that nature works is nature doesn't like to spend more energy than it wants to accomplish something. And we were always taught that when we make DNA, we make it from proteins and we break every protein down into individual amino acids and those individual amino acids are reconstituted to make DNA. Well, about 10 or 15 years ago, they're like, no, that isn't the way it works. It's broken into bits. And in those chains, as long as the ends of those proteins are the same as what the body's looking for, they just grab the whole chain and put it together, less energy required. Then recently we started to identify that certain GMO things that we're doing in our crops that get consumed directly, not through a high temperature processing component, but more direct consumption, is that some of those marker genes are assimilating into genome. And I don't mind roundup ready plants, but I really don't want to be roundup ready myself. Or I don't want to be Enlist or dicamba resistant.

So, I think it's behooves us as farmers once we're made aware of something, it's really tough for a farmer to choose to do something that isn't right. It may take a while to get off the habit, but I don't think farmers intentionally ever do something that they knowingly know is causing harm or making a change in some way. And when I became aware of that, I'm like, it just really ate at me and I thought, you know what, I can do this without GMO. And then I don't have any risk of gene transfer into insects, into livestock or into worst case, humans. And so, that's why we've done that. And I think there's a plethora of things coming down the road with CRISPR, mRNA and those kinds of things that genetic transfer and genetic moving around is going to be an issue. So, we're trying to stay as close to nature as possible and we'll see what happens. I'm sure several people will let us know on the other things and that's their choice and that's fine. But our consumers tell us they don't want that. And I agree with them.

Let's talk about your corn program for a while. What kind of yields you looking for, what kind of fertilizer are you using, et cetera?

So, I think looking at pure yield is always a slippery slope because a lot of people trade dollars for bushels at the incremental end. We hover around a $2.25, $2.40 range, APH, is where we're at on corn. We typically do that with 150 to 175 total units of nitrogen, about 25 units of phosphorus to 30. 25 to 30 units potassium, and about 30 to 35 units of sulfur. We have found that we have needed minimal lime additions since reducing our nitrogen rates and cover crops help with pH balancing of the soil. So, that's what we're doing there. And we have no nutrition that goes on the field ahead of the planter. So, the planter pass is putting on basically 80, let's say 80,30,15,15 and then that's an on seed. We put a NPK package in the wings of the furrow jet. So, that's mixed too, along with micros and biologicals. And then we put our N, K and S solution through conceal.

So, we basically have three mixes on the planter placed in five locations, all controlled with vApplyHD. So, it is variable rate capable. I'm currently not doing variable rate because I'm not smart enough to know what correlates to variable rate. I don't know if anyone is, but would love to if we could figure out what the correlation is. I think a lot has to do with water for the plant available capacity and being able to quantify that. We don't have sand and muck. So, we have some flat ground, some hill, more hill, a lot of hill. So, the base material is about the same. It's just the eroded factor from the years of plowing prior to no-till. And then followed up with Y-DROP was where we do the balance of the N, K and S. So, on Y-DROP do another 80, roughly 80,15,15. 80,0,15,15. And then we will do a foliar with brown silk potassium foliar from one of our products and a biological to reduce stress at that time and no fungicides. So, that's the summary of the corn program.

So, tell me what planter you're running and what attachments you got on it.

All right. So, currently we're running a Harvest International. And Harvest International is basically they sell you the iron and then you put all the Precision Planting components on it. We've got Martin row cleaners on the front with CleanSweep, Conceals. I have vSet Select, so I can do two hybrid if I want. Then FurrowJet and FurrowForce. So, Conceal, FurrowJet, FurrowForce and then the vApplyHD for each one of those three mixes. We do one per row. That's too much, we don't need that much in the future. And I pull a tank. So, I have two tanks on the planter frame. I pull a two tank trailer. Next year I just ordered a HORSCH planter. So, the HORSCH has a lot of onboard capacity without having to pull a tank. So, if you've pulled a tank, you'll appreciate not pulling a tank.

So, will you run both planters next year or just the HORSCH?

Just the HORSCH.

Okay.

And the HORSCH will be, we got two 730 gallon compartments, that'll be nitrogen and then we'll have tanks on either side 250 each, so 500 total. And that'll likely be my FurrowJet wing solution. And then we'll put a 300 or so on the tractor for the on seed solution.

So, your horse planter, 30 inch rows, how many rows?

24,30.

Okay.

Yeah. I wanted to go to 15 inch, but then you lose the tank capacity just in their configuration. So, if I want 15 inch beans, I'll probably double back on those fields.

You mentioned soybeans. Let's talk about soybeans, your program, your yield goal, your fertilization.

Yeah. Soybeans, we're looking at, we've struggled with non GMO and the weed issue. Prior to that we were in the mid-sixties. We have fallen off into the upper fifties because that. We're adamantly looking at getting back up to there, mid-sixties again. I think we've got some things in place to address that. Pretty simple, on seed we do. And we also do some potassium sulfate in the wings on the Conceal at the same time, three gallons of each. And then we were 30 inch. But because of the weed control, I did do some doubling back this year to look at improved weed control doing 15 inch. I'd like to have a 15 inch planter too, but there's only one of me. So, we don't have enough acres to have two operators and two planters running at the same time. It'd be nice, but at the moment we don't. Foliar at key stress times. But at R3 foliar is what we typically do there.

How often are you soil testing?

Well, there is a great question, Frank. I do a lot of soil testing and I appreciate soil testing. And I think soil testing is great when you get a new farm or if you're a consultant and you're working in a new area to get a baseline understanding of what's going on. And adjusting pH is an excellent thing to do based on a soil test. Everything else, when you're in a no-till situation and you're trying to apply phosphorus to the ground just because you show low soil test on there, what are you going to do? If you go out and spread phosphorus on the surface, it's going to stay on the surface.

I'm not going to be like my buddy Marion and get out the mouldboard plow and go after it. So, that's why we're doing the injection based with the planter. We're getting the phosphorus into the root zone next to the plant. We may increase that. But I soil test every four years, mainly for lime. I have applied 100 pounds of K farm wide in 25 years. I've done 100 pounds of K in some special areas once in 25 years. Haven't done any phosphorus in 25 years.

A good question to ask as a no-tiller who's been no-tilling for a few years, in his soil testing, should he do it different than he was doing with conventional tillage? What are you telling your people, your farmers you work with how to pull a soil sample off no-till ground?

Well, stratification we've all known for a long period of time is an issue. I think it's very wise to look at a sample in the Midwest, a six-inch core where you're not irrigating or you're not tilling, is adequate. And then you really need to look at dividing that core into sections. So, the top inch, one to two, and then likely two to six depending on what's going on. Or you can do zero to one, one to three, three to six. Reason for that is, we don't have, even though we have a high oxygen status, it's highly likely we will dry out and not have a lot of nutrient uptake out of that top inch. So, the roots are, even though they're in the presence of high nutrition, which is where it's going to be the highest if you've been doing broadcast dry fertilizers, you're likely not going to have root expansion at the very, very surface unless you have really heavy residue covers adjacent to the plant. So, we're typically using row cleaners. We typically have good biology breaking down our residues. So, the top inch is not a whole lot of roots.

Now, the next one to three, we have an explosion of roots that are active in consistently moist soil that's consistently below 85 degrees. It's much more a consistent zone. So, that's really where the plant's going to pull a lot of its oxygen heavy nutrients from. And then three to six is more of what's available for longer term. What's going to be up cycled through the plant, move from the roots and redeposited into that soil. You've had people at No-Till Conference talk about how nutrients move in the plant, how water is staged in the plant where you take it from depth and the plant brings it up and then redeposits it shallow overnight in order to use it first thing in the morning. There's some amazing things that plants do. But I think the stratification issue, that's a good way to look at it. And maybe this'll make Jack happy here, but strip till may have its place intermittently, or if you need dry fertilizer applied because you're in an environment, in your cultural context or your soil formation context, where you need a heavy load of dry fertilizers put in to improve your baseline.

I think dry fertilizers are designed to improve your baseline fertility needs. The planter fertilizers are for this crop and immediate needs. So, there are two different needs. And I think all too often we over fertilize with dry to meet the immediate, or we just supply the immediate and draw down the baseline because you can't export forever and expect things to stay there. You have to monitor those things, which I do. But I think when there's a need for intervention, it'd be great in a strip till pass to inject that and maybe take off the no-till cap for once every four years or once every eight years, something like that, versus just broadcast on the surface. And I think that's a much better option than Marion and his mouldboard. So, I'd rather see it injected that way and done. So, I feel bad, Marion is not here to defend himself, but you don't mind, do you Frank?

No, no. He's hassled us for years and he needs to get some work.

He well deserves it.

So, have you looked at strip till for your operation?

I have. And one of the things that happens because, and again, you have to look at the context. Because of our rolling topography, it's very difficult now with anything bigger than a four row planter to plant on contours because your rows need to go every which way to address the topography. So, we wind up going on side hills, but then we'll catch an up and a downhill. And when we've done some strip till work, it made me sick and it made my dad sick seeing the erosion on the hills.

So, in my scenario, an idea I've had is having a coulter injection like let's say a big maverick type injector for dry fertilizer in the row so you're indexing it and then the tillage would only occur on slopes that are A and B slopes. So, zero to 5% slopes only. So, it's almost as if you drive across the field on the flats, the tillage would be engaged and then on the C, D slopes it would raise, but the fertilizer is still going in. Piece of equipment like that doesn't exist. But I just cannot stand the in strip erosion associated with strip till. It just is disheartening.

Let's switch over to cover crops. Let's hear what you're doing on cover crops, the mixes, how you're figuring out what the nutrient value is to your corn and soybeans?

Well, first off, I remember when I came to the No-Till Conference, it had been a little while since I'd been there and I thought, wait a minute, Frank, Mike, you got to rename this thing. It's the cover crop conference, not the No-Till Conference. Holy smokes. Every presentation was cover crops, cover crops, cover crops.

Yeah. We've gotten a little flack for that too.

Oh, no. When I first arrived it was a little bit of a whiplash. But I understand. They are an amazing tool. So, we battle labor like anyone, so cover crops add another labor level at harvest. And harvest is your number one labor demand. So, we take something and make it worse in that regard. So, it's tough to execute. I have tried aerial seeding a few times. I call that Indian cover crops Frank. You know what that means, right?

No, you got to explain.

That means Apache here, Apache there.

Very good.

I haven't had luck with that. I've tried over seeding with a Hagie and the broadleaf corn that was covering all the ground, it was just no light to the ground. I thought, oh boy, that's not going to work. But boy, this upright one is going to work great. There's what you get for thinking. Of course, it was the opposite. The other thing I got going on too, Frank, is too many earthworms. And they go out there and they grab all the seed off the ground and they pull them into their middens. So, the funniest thing is that every midden, which is about 10 inches apart, had this little fur of rye here and there, but they took a lot of the rye down their hole. And I've just had no luck with that.

So, we go to John Deere, 1990 CCS is what we seed after corn. Cereal rye, because that really, we've tried barley, wheat, everything else. I would love to have more diversity. We've done Austrian pea, hairy vetch, just rye consistently works no matter what the date is. You can plant it with almost the ground froze and the stuff still grows. I do like the Elbon rye better than VNS rye. It has a different growth pattern. It's not as tall. It stools out a little more, lower seed rate because of smaller seeds per pound, all those things.

How many pounds per acre?

Well, I've run anywhere from 10 to 100. Typically, in my cover crop configuration I'm doing, I have seven and a half inch drill. Every fourth row is blocked off, leaving me a 15 inch corridor to plant my 30 inch row crop into. And I'll run that at 45 pounds. If we're on full seed, we'll run 55 to 60 typically. If I'm relay cropping, we'll run 10 to 15 pounds. That's where we're harvesting the rye off for seed. Followed into planting soybeans. If I am in an organic attempt or a experiment or really bad compaction where I'm trying to get some biomass out there, I'll go 100 pounds, 120 pounds. The thicker you can go, the higher the probability of roller crimp killing. So, that's what we do there. And most success ahead of the beans. Rye ahead of the corn has caused me heartaches and problems even with the good amount of dose of nitrogen that I have up front with my planter.

80 to 100 units and we still have issues. So, I really need to, this year I'm looking at ARG, annual ryegrass, ahead of corn and continue with the rye ahead of beans. I've tried wheat ahead of beans. Rye has yielded me seven bushels more. I've also tried, I have a roller too, because when we terminate when it's tall, we want to knock that down for shade competition. We've done a lot of replicated studies on that. Three to seven bushels just from rolling down the rye, prior to beans emerging. So, this isn't the roller effect of that some people are trying to damage the bean to get it to node more lower. That's just from sunlight effect. I would like to get more diversity on the winter crops. I just can't. And I think that's because I'm planting full season corns, full season beans. I'm not getting in there soon enough.

So, I need to take possibly yield hit, don't know for sure. But one would assume to plant a little earlier in order to get more cover crop and think more holistically that I might give up a few bushels this year to improve soil quality for yield in the future. I do plant earlier corn for the cattle grazing. So, my very first corn that went in this year was 104 day corn. We will relay or interplant that here first of next week at about V3, and that'll be for cattle grazing post harvest. We'll harvest that early, actually harvest a little wetter, and then let the cover crop come and graze the cattle. We also have cover crops 120, 160 acres a year that we do not plant to corner beans. And we'll put that into a high diversity summer grazing mix. So, all the warm season brassicas, warm season legumes and warm season grasses. So, a lot of BMR forage, sorghum-sudangrass. I have kale in there because we have a saying, our cows eat kale so you don't have to.

That's me.

Yeah. I'd rather have a steak than a kale. And we do that for grazing. And typically that's been a two-year rotation and we come back to corn beans this year. It's going to be a one-year just because we're putting some fields together in rotation. But that's always part of the plan too, is either a small grain or we just go straight into the summer forage for the grass fed cattle business.

We'll come back to the episode in a moment. But first I'd like to thank our sponsor, Crop Vitality and Thio-Sul for supporting today's podcast. It's as important as ever to ensure you're getting the most out of your fertilizer. Recent studies from Auburn University and Crop Vitality show when paired with UAN solution, thiosulfate fertilizers slow down the process that causes you to lose your nitrogen into the atmosphere and groundwater. Visit cropvitality.com to explore the studies on nitrification inhibition. Check out the e-book, Nitrogen & The Thiosulfate Factor. And learn more about Crop Vitality's thiosulfate fertilizers. That's cropvitality.com. Now, let's get back to the conversation.

So, I know some no-tillers in Pennsylvania who have gone to make maybe 95 day corn purposely so they could seed their cover crops earlier. You've done some of that, maybe not to that extreme?

That's the 104 day attempt I did last year and I'm doing again this year. Interesting story on that, Frank, I had a 240 acre field, half of it was the 104 day corn. The other half was 114 day corn planted later. Harvested the 104 early, planted right away in the end of September, 1st of October. I've had the cattle grazing that this spring and they grazed it last fall, just the 120. I didn't graze the southern 120 with the full season corn because it just wasn't up. It wasn't there to grow.

This spring I put them back on there and I've been able to double the stocking rate on the early planted cover crop and continue at double the stocking rate from April 7th until here, we're at May 23rd or something? 24th. I've done double the stocking rate that entire season. So, it shows you that the biomass and the establishment of that crop and being able to feed the soil, and in this case feed the four-legged critters on top, is doubled if we can get it in a month sooner. So, there's definitely something to that. Now, what that means for bushels, I don't know, but if you've got alternative revenue streams such as I do with the cattle, that's a big deal.

You mentioned intercropping and relay intercropping. Talk about this for a minute.

Oh, still learning Frank. First year, horrific problem because we clipped the tops of the beans. Second year worked pretty good. Third year was hit or miss. Second year we did it without any weed control. We thought, wow, this is awesome. Here's an organic transition tool. Third year, of course weeds came through. So, still trying to learn. And it is more profitable when you consider the costs of buying in seed for cover crop versus growing your own. So, you give up a little bit of soybean yield. I don't have the numbers off the top of my head, I can get them for you. But we did give up soybean yield to gain 20 bushels of rye. The rye tested at 94% germ, which blew my mind. You're not supposed to be able to do that in the Midwest.

And we had a wet season last year. Don't have that problem this year. And I think it works great. But the problem is, I only have so much rye that I need for my cover crops. So, if I do 100 acres, I'm great. So, I can't do all 1,100 acres of soybeans this way. And plus on my topography, keeping that head above the soybean canopy on hills, good luck. Because it's not like a platform. We decided we needed to design some bigger diameter wheels that would allow it to basically follow on the ground to stay above the top of the beans because you cannot clip the beans, you'll kill them. That growing point and you'll kill your yield by up to a third. So, we don't want 20 bushel beans, we want 60 bushel beans. And rye just won't work everywhere.

Plus the end rows take a beating turning and harvesting it. So, we typically create a flat spot within a field that's relatively minimal topography change, and we'll spray out the edges on the end rows and try to pick a zone to where we come right up and have the cart parked on the field edge and direct load into the cart and then just drive right back because you don't want to be driving back and forth trying to hit the cart or definitely not unloading on the go. The relay cropping you asked about, or no, the inner cropping. You need another book, Frank. Cover cropping terms. The history of cover cropping terms instead of the history of no-till. That's going to be your second book. The inner cropping, we've always planted it too late. We were scared, we were told you need to plant V4, V5. So, we plant V4, V5, V6. Amounts to nothing. Herbicides that we're using is hurting us.

So, this year we've got verdict out right now, we're going to hit it at V2 and see if we can make a go of it. It's been limited success. Even on 60 inch rows I've had limited success. I think when you grow bigger yielding corn with good canopy closure, you're struggling to do cover crops within canopy because it just can't get established and maintain. It's wonderful if we could do everything, but we have to realize that with our current technology, we have to have whole fields of something to harvest them. In the future, maybe robotics could let us do a three sisters approach and multiple harvests, multiple cultivation. It's basically replacing a person doing that. But mechanics today, we are just bigger and bigger and bigger because there's only one guy to put in the seed. So, that's why we have 600, 700 horsepower tractors and 16,18 row corn heads, is there's one butt. So, when we can have robots replace butts, we can really rethink our machinery, and then I think we'll get to better companion cropping scenarios.

You just made a comment that's going to lead into my next question. And we talked about row widths. Seven and a half, 15, 20 and 30. Now, tell me about your experience with 60 inch rows.

Well, Bob Recker, I bumped into him at Loran Steinlage, his field day, and I was part of the original project there. And I was really excited because he wasn't seeing a yield drag and we could do all these extra things. That's great. When we did that again, unfortunately in our context, we lost 16 to 20 bushels and all of a sudden the revenue gain that we can get out of the utilization of that 60 inch row is very tough to find a revenue gain to offset that 16, 20 bushel loss. In addition, we don't get even residue distribution post harvest. So, if we don't have good covers growing in the middle, which we didn't, and I think that's probably herbicide interaction related. So, not 60 inch row's fault. I think that we have to have the residue covering in the middle, because it gets pretty naked out there.

Let's switch gears a little and it's time to talk about your cattle operation, what you're doing with it and how you're marketing the beef, et cetera.

Well, when you think cattle operation, we are certainly not anything like Greeley Colorado or some of the big boys out West. So, this is direct to consumer. And so, we closed herd now. Everything we raise, we sell. We're antibiotic free, vaccine free, which is becoming a big issue with consumers. We get everything custom processed. We sell online, do home delivery, UPS and farmer's markets. So, we're processing about 60 to 80 head of cattle per year. We're also processing, depends on the year, sometimes 50 to 100 head hogs. We're doing about 5,000 birds, meat chickens. And we have about 500 laying hens. So, all of that at pasture based, homegrown feed for the non ruminants, 100% grass fed for the ruminants. We did have sheep at one time. They're great for land management, but we just don't have a local market that wants lamb.

So, that's more of a Mediterranean market. So, we've gotten out of sheep. But we have a home farm that they're on through the winter, otherwise they're on cover crops. So, seven months out of the year they're on fields. Five months out of the year they're on pasture. We have no barns, no feed wagons, no manure spreaders, none of that. So, we have poly wire and now we're transitioning to virtual fencing with a company out of Norway called Nofence. It's an amazing technology. I like to say it makes grazing so easy a corn farmer can do it. So, kind of a nod to the GEICO commercials. So, this corn farmer can figure out how to graze, that's pretty good because there's a reason why we got out of livestock. Everything went into buildings because it's really hard work. Obviously it's economics and all those things, but livestock guys, and I grew up in Henry County, the self-proclaimed hog capital of the world.

And I remember watching hogs on the ground and I know most of those farmers have passed now, but I know almost every one of them. And they've had way too many sows take out their knees out there in frozen conditions. It's really, really tough work. But if we can do some things that allow the animals to work more for themselves, and I think virtual fencing is going to be one of those that would allow us to. I spent my entire childhood tearing down barns and taking out fences and hydrants. We had one field, Frank, named fenceless. There was so many fences in this place that once we got done taking them all out on the yield monitor, that was the field name, fenceless. And now looking back at that, it's like, I wish I had those fences. But virtual fencing's going to let us just put up a temporary perimeter around the farm, very inexpensive, very quick to put up, probably two days to put up, day to take down.

And then we can paddock graze. So, we're moving them to a new area every day because in no-till, we don't have an opportunity to till out cattle tracking and do that. So, we're adamant about the no-till aspect of this, but when you move them to a new location every day, they don't trail. And for five years of just no-till straight into spring grazed cover crops. And it works wonderfully well. And I think we've seen, my dad just sent me an email this morning, he says, hey, I was looking at the field view maps and he says, do you really think that organic matter has gained that much on that one field? He says it's running one and a half percent higher than anything else you planted this year. And I know you've had cattle there three years, do you think that's doing it? So, he's all excited about that because he's pouring through the data right now.

And yes, that is why we do it. We've had side hills, 10% slopes that were mouldboard by my previous generations, have lost the topsoil. They have lost the subsoil and it's down to the chalky stuff. And we are having those areas instead of yielding 60 bushel, yield 180 to 200 after three years of cattle and cover crops. So, bottom line, that's why I'm doing it. I'm direct marketing it because the cost structure in doing it this way is ridiculous. So, we have to cover all of our costs and regain what the broker, the processor, the food distributor in the grocery store would've gained in order to afford to stay in our little cattle grazing business.

So I grew up on a centennial farm 40 miles north of Detroit in Michigan. Dairy herd for years. But then we got in the laying hen business, we had 3,000 laying hens.

Wow.

So, I don't quite understand, you got to go gather eggs from your laying hens in the cover crops or what?

Well, the laying hens right now because of the barn design stay at the home pasture farm. So, they have nest boxes inside of a mobile barn. A mobile barn is like a greenhouse, 20 by 40. There's eight nesting boxes with roll-outs in them. And we move that every day. We tow it forward with a tractor or a skid steer, 40 feet to 100 feet every day. And they have supplemental feed on board and water on board that barn. But then the doors open in the morning, close at night, have a guardian dog for coyote protection that's trained to stay with them. But there's zero fences.

So, they can range to Madison, Wisconsin if they want to. But I think this case, it just allows them to move across the pasture. The main reason we have laying hens is because that's our only fresh product. All of our meat products are frozen, so there's not a reorder incentive. It's kind of, I'll get to it when I need it. But we make awesome eggs with super dark colored yolks that are tall and fluffy and people rave about them. They order eggs and then in order to get free delivery, they add in more meat. And that's what-

Oh, there you go.

Eggs drive the meat sales. Chickens are not fun. If you had 3,000 of them, Frank, you know they're just not a lot of fun. But people eat eggs and they need eggs and we do that in order to help with the beef business.

Right. That's great. Tell me about your experience with biologicals.

Well, I've been working with them for a long period of time. Evaluated a lot of different things from AMF and powders, to spores and liquid, to live portions in liquid. Looked at multiple things in multiple ways. The thing that we've really settled on is an approach that one is, let's prosper the biology life that's in the soil. Everything is there and fairly ubiquitous across the earth. How can we create and support the ones that are most beneficial for us? So, we have certain foodstuffs within our biologicals that we're using or that we market through ASN and our dealers, and we have certain enzymes that cause certain chemical reactions so that beneficial aerobics will prosper more than pathogenic anaerobic or facultative type of microbes. And then the other thing that we do too is we provide certain key amino acids and building blocks that the plant needs. That is a high energy source that can easily be converted into plant growth hormones. But I haven't taken the approach of providing the plant hormone.

And I've seen a lot of research where two parts per trillion is awesome. One part per trillion had no effect, and three parts per trillion was yield limiting. And then the very next one you'll see it took five parts per trillion to make a difference and seven parts per trillion was detrimental and three was nothing. And I've decided I'm not that good to know when the right parts per trillion is the right amount. So, we give the plant the building blocks it needs, amino acids, different kelp extracts, enzymatics, surfactants to make products more available, sugars in alcohol forms, various types of carbon chain components. All of these things all together as a complete package. And we've been doing it for 20 some years. And like I said earlier on, that was in the days when it was fairy dust. There's another book, Frank, what have they all been called? Fairy dust, panther pee, squirrel...

Snake oil.

Snake oil. You come up with it. But it's neat to see today the interest in it. I think it can save a lot of conventional synthetic fertilizer inputs. And if we can reduce applied nitrogen, we'll typically be able to increase carbon in the soils, because for the most part we're over applying nitrogen. And excess nitrogen in the soil will balance out the carbon and essentially burn it out of the soil, which you've had guys talk about on the stage.

It's interesting in biologicals, Farm Journal some time ago did a survey on what percentage of farmers were interested in biologicals and it was about 20%. But when we survey our no-till people, over 50% are already using biologicals. And part of that reason is they've always been innovators. They're willing to try things.

I think the no-till farmer and your audience is more in tune with the soil. Think of it as soil instead of think of it as dirt. It's a living organism designed to help me and my family thrive for generations versus others think it's just a place to put a crop.

Right. So, let's talk regenerative ag for a few minutes. There's a lot of people interested in it. There's a lot of people who are interested in it but had torn their fences out and they don't want to mess with cattle or sheep or pork anymore. Can you be a regenerative farmer without livestock?

This is a big question, Frank. Okay, this is your fault. Or maybe it's Mike's fault. You had Gabe at the National No-Till Conference in 2016. And that was kind of his breaking out regenerative conference. He did a main about, here's what I do on my farm and then he did a follow-up thing, here's how we direct market what we do. And I saw the profit per acre. I'm like, wow, that's $1,000 per acre on chickens. Albeit you can't do many acres of them, it's still interesting. So then, because I'm a slow learner Frank, I went to no-till on the planes three weeks later.

And he was the main guy there and he gave the same presentations and I thought, okay, this is too good to be true and needs to be forgotten or I need to do it. So, for my wife's birthday, I said, honey, doesn't North Dakota sound like a great place to go? So, I took my wife on an amazing vacation to South Dakota, met with Dwayne Beck on his farm and drove around, had fun with him. Then went to Dan Forgey's place, went on up to Jay Fuhrer and ended with Gabe and Paul Brown. A wonderful time through the Dakotas as my wife I'm sure really appreciated.

Has she ever forgiven you?

Well, we're still married. So, this is good, Frank. She's actively involved in the direct marketing business. So, I think I've been forgiven, I just don't want to ask. But I saw it, it was true. His soils and what he said with that 11% chart, if you've ever seen 11% soil, it's amazing to behold and have in your hands. So, I knew I had to do it. And bottom line, if no-till gains you a tenth percent per year in organic matter, and if cover crops gain you a tenth percent per year on organic matter, add cattle on top of that, you get four tenths percent per year. It's double the effect of cover crops and no-till.

So, what you got to ask yourself is, how much organic matter do you want? And when you've answered that question, you want all that you want, want all that you can have. I think you'll get serious about considering the ruminant side. Now, the hogs and the chickens, that came about because we had 2,000 customers that wanted chicken and pork. So, again, we have the chicken and the pork to sell more beef. But the cattle impact is something. However, when you look at regenerative agriculture, the next term will probably be resilient. The next term after that, I don't know. But the five soil health principles that Jay and his team penned are the key. Whatever you can do at your farming operation today in a minimized disturbance, us no-tillers were doing that really well, but we need to look at the chemical inputs.

How can we reduce the chemical inputs? How can we reduce the fertilizer inputs? How can we reduce what we're doing? There's this need as a farmer, I have to do something. How can we sit back and let nature do it? Nature did it just fine in the prairie system and created these 8% organic matter soils before we did something and moved them down to 2%. How can we back off and let it do it? Keep the ground covered, keep something growing all the time. That's cover crops guys. Maximize diversity. We got to find something other than corn and beans, another rotation crop. Diverse cover crops is one way to get diversity in there, but I think diversity is the hardest thing we've got going with our markets.

The final thing is the livestock. If you can do the other four, do them, do more of them. The livestock, maybe you partner with a, there's several young people that want a farm lifestyle that want to live not in a glammed up palace in some suburb. They want to live a life out on the land, and maybe you can find somebody to partner with to do that if livestock's not your thing. But whatever it takes, we have the unintended consequences of decoupling livestock from the land has had amazing effects on soil quality. As in detrimental effects.

Let's shift gears a little bit. You're still running your California operation?

Out in California, Silas Rosso is a longtime employee, became partner with me out there. He's a managing partner. So, he's in charge of all the day-to-day operations there. Doing a great job. We continue to make an impact on tillage. The latest thing as we are integrating livestock, Frank, into pistachios and almonds and walnuts. We have high diversity cover crops and special cedars that we've basically built taking a Salford tank and John Deere drills and making a baby out of them and running them between almond orchard rows with a huge rental business. They're covering thousands of acres per year doing that. And we've got tomato growers that are now doing cover crops as a hay crop income. So, lots of things going on in that arena in addition to all the biological stuff that we've done for a long time. But it's fun to see goats and sheep inside of orchards. It's amazing the difference it makes in the plant health and the amount of pesticides we've reduced because of all the beneficial insects in the cover crops. We've gone from eight to maybe three insect applications because of cover crops. It's phenomenal.

Wow. One of the things that happened lately was we had this tragic accident in I-55 about May 1st in central Illinois. And with your experience in California, we've done a few stories over the years on legislation with dust particles. Are we going to see more of that or can you elaborate on what's been done in California?

So, in California there's a special group that's been created called the California Air Resources Board, several years ago. And they were looking at emissions of dust for human quality of life. Two particulate sizes. They're particularly interested in PM10, which is small enough to come into your lungs but never leave. And PM2.5, which is more diesel exhaust emission related, which is small enough to enter your lungs and enter your bloodstream. So, those are the particulate sizes they were looking at. Tillage was a part of that. And like you said, the stories that you did were focusing on if we can combine tillage passes to where we have one dusty mission event instead of eight dusty mission events, that helps. Or better yet, if we can do less intensity of tillage, we do less dust emission. Typically, we don't have the windy events except for in the early spring in the central valley of California, that stirs up a lot of dust.

There is a lot of dust emissions associated with almond harvest and sweeping of the almonds on the floor, and that's being highly targeted right now to where we do more of a catch type harvesting system. But the good news is that's a great fit for cover crops because now we don't have the problems of the cover crops residue interfering with harvests. So, that could be a potential good thing. As far as an I-55, that's a requirement in that part of Illinois, you have to till, if not, I think you're liable for jail time in that part of Illinois. Isn't that part of the rules down there?

Could be.

I'm just joking.

Well, we may find out that there's truth to this. We'll see.

Well, no-till can work anywhere and it's a social thing. And there's a lot of work done on sociology and peer pressure. It can work even on high value crops and high value farm ground. It can work. The biggest compaction layer is typically between our two ears. And if we can break that compaction and think differently, it's great because tillage does more than kill soil biology and unfortunately people lost their lives this time. And some will say, that's just because a weird event and all those things, but weird events are becoming more commonplace and we have to be ready for weird, whether it's intense rainfalls, whether it's wind events, drought events, that's our responsibility. It's our land. We can't be doing things that are going to harm others by what we do on our land.

Hey, this has been great, but I want to switch us around a little bit because we also have Farm Equipment magazine that goes to dealers. And so, I like to talk about a little experience you had in the dealer business, both you and your dad, and how you got started and then ask you a couple interesting questions at the end.

All right. My synchronizer, we're shifting gears so much here, Frank, my synchronizers are getting hot.

Oh, okay. Well, we'll get through the dealer thing and we'll wrap this up.

Oh, no problem. What do you want to know about the dealer thing?

Well, tell us how you and your dad got involved in the dealership operation. I assume your dad started as a diesel mechanic, right?

That's right. He started as a, went to college and after he got out of the army, as a diesel mechanic. He started in, I believe it was in Virginia, Illinois, at the IH dealership there as a diesel mechanic. Moved up into the parts department and then went to another dealership as a salesperson. Dealership had some struggles there in the late '80s, just couldn't get over the '80s hump. And some local farmers, seven of them and him all went together to purchase the single store and the group acquired two other Case Power & Equipment stores over time. Now, the dealers landscape is completely different. You wouldn't even recognize it today compared to back then. The capital involved is, and the organization of dealerships, is completely different. It's probably pretty rare today to have any single stores. That's been quite a transition and it kind of depends on who's in charge.

Sometimes they want lots of consolidation for a five to 10 year period and then they're like, well, let's hold off on this for a little period and then they're back. It's kind of this slinky effect with consolidation and territory reps and such. But it was a fun time. We really enjoyed it. Things that we're really proud of is our uptime service program that we created and Case patterned off of a lot. The combine related thing. Each one of our dealerships had a maintainer based truck, which in 1990s nobody had. That's standard now. We had just a lot of good things going on and service was really what we built it from. And one of our problems is we grew so fast in sales that we outgrew our working capital essentially and had too much used inventory and used inventory values changed. And when used inventory values change, your balance sheet changes real quick.

So, I see that today, when times have been good, the used inventory starts creeping up and you see a lot of used iron out there and used iron is a dealership killer. So, have to always be aware of that. And it was a problem selling that big equipment when the big equipment was a 2188 combine, Frank. Now, a 9250 or a five year old 9250 or a X9, class 10, who's the buyer? Who is the second buyer? Because the big farmers and that mid-size guy, it was disappearing in the '90s. Who is it? What person, my dad and I that were nighttime and weekend farmers when we were working at the dealership can afford an X9 combine?

How does that work out? So, keeping the used inventory moving, boy, that's the trick. But the good news is, I think the tractor zoom, tractor house, big iron, all these markets likely will continue to transition more and more to where the farmer is selling their own through some sort of an online listing service. And then the farmer can go to any dealer to buy the new, and he can choose the dealer based on the support he wants with that new equipment. And there's more options for the used sale, because the new dealer doesn't want that used equipment. So, that's the constant struggle is the used.

Well, that's what dealers are saying today. We no longer know who the second or third buyer is going to be.

I bet, Frank, if you look back through 20 years ago articles, I bet you'd have those same quotes in there. Don't know who that second and third buyer is going to be.

Well, the thing that amazes me today is if you're buying a big, big combine, spending half a million or much more than that, it seems to me the big problem is having enough grain carts and enough semis to keep that thing rolling because the capacity is so high. Do you have enough trucks to keep the combine rolling?

That and also your infrastructure at the bend site for drying and those kinds of things. That is a challenge. The other thing is too, we did two combines. So, we got twins. We were looking at trading to a new combine. They were only going to give us 60,000 for ours. It didn't have that many hours on it, I thought, wow, why do that? So, we went out and bought a twin to it for 60,000 and had two machines. One went down, you still had one, put one in corn and one in beans. So, if you had weather changes, you could do that. So, I think that third or fourth buyer may be a big farmer picking up a spare machine or a night and weekend machine for when the guy that works in town comes out and helps. So, there's some things there, but the logistics side is a problem.

And I'm sure you've heard skilled labor's a problem on technicians. I do think the diagnostic tools we have today help to be able to diagnose things where that mechanic intuition is less needed, because it doesn't exist like it used to. But there's also more complex things that didn't exist. So, that's definitely changing. And Mike Rose is doing what he can, but people don't like dirty jobs and there's nothing fun about being a service mechanic. I remember I was store manager, but in harvest time everybody was everything. So, I know I've been out inside of axial flow setting them and changing the concaves with bean dust everywhere. That's not fun. And I only did it for half a day and we're asking guys to do this all day every day for two months. And then we're asking to work on them all day every day in the shed, it's not fun jobs. So, finding people who want to do that hard work, it's a challenge because there's a lot of other things they can do today.

So, you've got the dealer background and you've got the farm background. What about the right to repair controversy?

Well, I haven't dove into that a whole lot to be honest with you, Frank. But I think that kind of got settled out a little bit here lately. But if I look at other things, I can't go in and repair my own software on my computer or on my phone or those kinds of things. We just accept that as normal. So, I don't know. I don't like it that you're plugged into only one place. I understand that. I think maybe it'd be less of an issue if we had more access to people able to repair. I think the issue is that we can't count on the OEM to do what we need done.

So, therefore we're hiring a local professional mechanic who is not part of a dealership system and that we know and trust, but now they can't repair our machinery when we want them to. So, maybe the OEMs need to say, we understand we have a problem. Our dealers can't do everything. And if you are a professional mechanic, not a shade tree mechanic, but if you're a professional mechanic and want access to our software, you can do that. And there has to be some sort of a standard that the OEMs have to provide. They have standards on parts fulfillment, order fulfillment and all that kind of stuff. They can have those same standards on technical fulfillment and quality feedback.

And if the dealer isn't making it happen, then the third party mechanic, there should be ability. If they're not going to let us do it ourselves, they should be able to license somebody else who can do it. So, just like Microsoft has licensed Microsoft software people, QuickBooks has licensed people to do things. So, if your dealer network can't pull it off Mr. OEM, you have to provide the solution. If you're not going to let the farmer work on it himself or herself, then you need to make it available for somebody to be able to do it because otherwise, why am I paying $900,000 for this thing that's going to sit dead in the water?

Well, it's interesting some dealers have told us with the independent mechanics in their area that 40% of their parts sales are going to these independent parts guys. So, it's an important part of their business. And some dealers say we couldn't handle it all if we had to.

Right. And you're not going to be able to hire those independent guys back. There's a reason they're independent, they want to be.

Right. So, we've missed having you at the No-Till Conference. And part of the problem is you've been running your California conference at the same time as our No-Till Conference. You got one coming up in January?

At the moment, we do not have one on the books this year. So, COVID changed everything. And being in California, the COVID capital of lockdowns really changed that. We went to a virtual format during our third year and then the last two years we've been doing an on-farm format here. So, more of a field experience type of thing. So, we're going to continue to do those kinds of things and be a little more... It's just tougher to get people to come to conferences as I'm sure you're well aware that YouTube is too easy. People like to watch something short in their jammies. And a topic that they need at the moment that they need it. And unfortunately that gets us out of the thinking realm.

How am I going to change my operation? It gets us out of that social dynamic because the magic of the No-Till Conference, even though when you talk Frank, it moves mountains and it's amazing. But the best part is the coffee breaks and the round tables and the small group discussions and just it's a reunion for [inaudible 01:23:50] to get to see everybody. That that's the value of the No-Till Conference is getting together. And virtual stuff just don't cut it, but it's getting harder and harder to get people to go to things. It's expensive, it takes time and you don't know what you're missing unless you've been.

Well, I have an interesting story about this because it was 10, 15 years ago and a no-tiller called me in late August, registered for the No-Tillage Conference, and somehow I took the call and so I registered him and I said, I feel guilty about this because we're running behind on the program. I don't have it all done yet. And he said to me, I don't care. I said, what do you mean you don't care? He says, well, I've been to the No-Till Conference. I know you'll have a good conference. I know you have great speakers, but I'm telling you right now, if I think you have a lousy program, I'm still coming because the networking in the halls will more than pay for the whole conference for me.

That's it for this episode of the No-Till Farmer Influencers & Innovators podcast. Thanks to Monte Bottens and Frank Lessiter for that great conversation. And thanks to our sponsor, Crop Vitality and Thio-Sul for helping to make this podcast possible. A transcript of this episode and our archive of previous podcast episodes are both available at no-tillfarmer.com. For our entire staff here at No-Till Farmer, I'm Mackane Vogel, thanks for listening. Keep on no-tilling and have a great day.