 Thank you, Jason. I'm like Ray. The word no-till does not on my slide. I start with the word residue first. It's residue that protects the soil. It's residues help them feed the soil system. It's residue is what I want to keep out there. Now, Dwane's talking after me, so I'm not sure what all he's going to cover, but I had the benefit of watching these three guys in front of me know what they're talked about, and I actually had two different presentations loaded for today. And the one was a more in-depth on cover crops, how-to, and what all it can do for you. The other was more for them the residue and soil structure. Well, when the original program came out, Jim Herman was going to talk more about cover crops. What did he do? He switched more to soil biology, or soil compaction. So I'm like, all right, which presentation? This is a blend. It's called Adjust on the Go. The beauty of PowerPoint and computer. So anyway, when it comes down to it, I'm gonna make a statement of point blank. Jim talked about soil compaction. Statement of point blank is tillage has never built soil structure. Tillage destroys the existing soil structure. Now, if you got a bad structure like compaction, and you can reach it with your tillage implement, and you break up the soil structure, the bad compaction, that's good, right? But what if you have a good structure? Or what if you have the compaction, and you break that up, you broke up all the structures there, the next pass in the field can create more compaction. It's a vicious circle when it comes to tillage. Well, when I look at tillage, and I start thinking about water management. Years ago, there's some researchers say, starting the soil, they said, you know, the average silt loam soil holds two inches of water per foot. You'd till it six inches deep. That's one inch of water affected. About half of it goes away. That's how these kind of numbers show up. Now, half inch in an average year before planting, who cares? Maybe I have irrigation. Maybe I've got another spring rain coming. Maybe the soil is too wet anyway, and you've got to till it to dry it out. You've all heard that. Never do that, by the way. But when you start thinking about it, what if we did, in the olden days, there was three, four tillage passes, half inch per trip. We dried out two inches of water. Remember, two inches per foot. The olden days, everybody had fur openers on their planters trying to push away the dry soil, and clods trying to find moisture to plant into. That's the expensive half inch per trip. Now, very few of us do four trips anymore pre-plant. You know, some guys are down on one trip. Some guys are one in the fall, one in the spring, whatever. But when I start looking at that, where's my residue? Where's my soil biological life? Think about what else is going on out there. Without residue there, keep the wind off the soil surface. We have wind erosion problems. Without residue there, absorb rain drop impact. That energy detaches those soil particles, then they start washing on us. You see, I've got a triple whammy here. We've got the yellow, unproductive soil up there, because all the good stuff washed away. We've got the gullies there where it washed out crop, cut some gullies, hell on the sprayer going across them. Down at the bottom, sealed it in some crop. That's all because of lack of residue, the absorb rain drop impact, and a lack of soil structure to let the water soak in where it lands. And again, tillage erases all that. So we want to go away from the tillage. Now even if you don't have slopes and erosion problems, there's still an infiltration problem. You know, I, growing up many, many years ago in Northeast Nebraska, I thought it was great to have a crust in the soil. Dad put me out on the tractor and said, you can do a drive of 10 miles an hour. The rotary hoe trying to break that up. Wait a minute, that's not great. When you look at that, you know, this farmer is digging a screwdriver, and if you know where to look, you can almost see corn plants trying to come through there. I look at the other way. Crop can't get up. More importantly, the water can't get in. If the water can't get in, it's going to run off. So again, I want to build structure. Now, I say this is many years ago. We've got farmers now that cut way back on tillage. They're leaving residue out there. We had to. The 85 Farm Bill said, residue cover. It's going to solve our erosion problems. And it didn't quite. It helped. But when it comes down to it, we're still not doing ourselves a favor when it comes to soil structure. 1981, I received a grant for three years to study different tillage systems. I actually started working with a no-till in 1978 with my master's thesis. In 1981, I established a set of plots south-east of Nebraska, about 10 miles east of Lincoln, facility clay loam soil, and dry land. At that time, grain sorghum soybeans were popular crops for dry land Nebraska. Corn varieties weren't quite there yet for that location in the state. So I did grain sorghum soybean rotation for a number of years. This picture was taken about the mid-90s. I loved no-till. I loved the residue. Now remember, I started no-tilling back before we had cheap glyphos. You know, at that time, roundup was only about $100 a gallon. I learned a no-till without that. Now, to be truthful, today I do love roundup-ready beans. I had such a hate roundup-ready corn with my crop rotation. I don't want to use roundup in the corn year. We don't. And I don't because we put down our early pre-plant, get it rained in and activated. And that's what we learned back in the 80s when we didn't have all the post-emerge products. Our pre-emerge products rained in a couple weeks ahead of planting. When I plant, all my moisture, all my nutrients are there for my crop. Weeds haven't been using them. The other thing is I love the residue. Every bean is up and growing because the soil moisture was protected. It's not going to crust. It's not going to wash out. It's not going to dry out. In the tilled side, there's some beans under a crust or some beans in dry soil. Some beans are never going to grow. But when it really comes to soil health, take a look at the average elevation of this soil surface compared to this over here. There's about a four-inch step there. That many years of tillage compared to that many years of not tilling. Jim talked about it, sand, silt, and clays and organic materials. Those are our solids in the soil. The air space, the pore space is air and water. It should be about half pore space, half solids. As I come through doing tillage, I break up the soil structure. The solids are not compressed. What happens is the pores are squeezed out of the soil particles between them. And what happens is they reappear on top. I lack a soil structure. This soil is denser than this. This soil has less pore space. Those less pores fill up with water quicker. The soil gets saturated quicker. And worse than that, it dries out quicker because you don't have the storage there. And so a lot of guys in tillage say, well, my soils are too wet. Well, they're too wet for a couple of days and they're too dry in the next couple of days. No, mine is a lot more buffered. And that's what I like about soil structure. And again, a lot of guys say, well, no-till. It has to be continuous no-till to get the soil health. It has to be a continuously fed soil system to get the soil health. You know, the year he planted this corn, no-till in the bean residue, yes, he saved trips, not doing tillage. He saved some fuel, saved some labor. But that's still a tilled soil when it comes to crusting, when it comes to runoff, when it comes to lack of infiltration, when it comes to lack of soil biological life. So it's continuous no-till it does it. And here's an example of about 12 years continuous no-till here. We can see some good peds and aggregates like Ray talked about. We can see where water can soak in. We can see where roots can penetrate. Walked across the fence. This is the same soil type, continuous tillage. You can imagine heavy rain. You can see why we get runoff or flat soils. You can see why we get ponding. Again, I want to build that soil structure to get that healthy soil out there. Again, the tillage destroys it rapidly. The disc is one of the worst offenders. That was developed as a compaction tool to build roads, to break up existing soil structure and create a subgrade compaction layer to build a road. I don't know why we thought we could use it in farming systems. But when you start thinking about it, again, I showed this for compaction. Jim talked about compaction. The full-width tillage compaction you hardly ever see. I saw it because I had no-till next to it. Jim said, compare it to your fence row. You can see how it's been beat down. Yes, it looks like it's been fluffed up, but that weight of that disc is carried underneath. And on wet soils, the wet soil particles are lubricated. They compact more easily. Again, earlier I said you may have heard it say I got to till that wet soil to dry it out. That's exactly the worst time to till it when it comes to soil health because it does destroy soil structure. Some people say I'm going to till shallower. I'm going to get one of these new colder tillage tools. That's exactly the worst layer to till. That's the one with your soil biological life to build. Why destroy that and then pack below it where you're trying to put the seed? The other form of compaction is shown back here, wheel traffic compaction. Typically, wheel tracks are as deep as you till because, again, tillage erase soil structure is nothing there to support you. So again, it's a vicious circle here. Now, wheel traffic compaction, larger tires, reduced PSI, more footprint on the ground, more axles to carry the load. That's how I reduce those and build soil structure. I reduce those. But even if the soil is dry, you're not doing yourself a favor doing tillage. Yes, I'm breaking up clods. Why? We created them with the previous tillage pass. Now, this is going to be an extreme example. This is a wheat fellow producer out in western Nebraska. He is an organic wheat fellow producer. So every time he's got to flush the weeds, he doesn't know the tillage strip. Earlier I said tillage doesn't build soil structure. I'm wrong. Tillage actually built a soil structure that we call massive. It has taken every pore space out of that soil. Now, the soil surface is right above this, and the residue is just sort of hanging down into this hole that we dug. Below this, he's been disking on his first pass, and then he switches over to sweeps and blades. And we found layers in there. You can actually pick that out, and you can find the smear mark from the blade, the sweep, or whatever that ran in there. Now, it depended upon the year he had anything between 13 to about 18, 19 trips for tillage on a wheat fellow rotation because remember he has about 14 months he's doing tillage. Look below that layer, though. Some beautiful soil structure that frees soil out of your drying builds. But you know what, if my roots can't get there and my water can't get there, this down here doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any difference. Don't do the tillage on top. Organic wheat fellow. Ray Ward and I walked out there, and Ray, we should have paid attention. We should have made a crisper footprint. But take a look at that footprint. It's a biological life. Does it look much different than that? Neil Armstrong. We all know there's no life in the moon. I'm not sure there's much more life in that soil, is there? Again, we've done some dumb things at tillage. You know, this is the native soil structure out there. The grass. That was built by having a living root in that soil system that was actually growing there. 10, 11, 12 months a year depended where you're at and what the winter is like. Having a living root putting carbon down in there, that's the darker soil we see. As we lose everything on top, and as we roll that away, we get down to this. Again, to rebuild that, we need to get carbon back down in there. That's the roots. That's going to be our cover crops, our cash crops. It's going to be perennial crops to rebuild the fastest because perennial crops have set the roots down deeper. That's what built this to start with was perennial grasses or a mixture of trees, grasses, forbs, whatever out there. Again, let's go back a little bit in history about some of the dumb things we've done. You know, the more word plow. Everyone says, I've got to plow that soil to make a seedbed. You can still go to the Farm Progress Show and see plows being demonstrated. Yes, they're still being sold. But we start thinking about what we're doing. We're breaking up all the existing soil structure. We're coming in there taking that non-uniform seedbed and we're going in there and doing disking, field cultivation or whatever. And this is a real bad example here. This is at Auburn, Alabama National Soil Tilt Lab, the compaction layer of the plow pan where the plow packed below that. And then you can see some secondary pans from the discs and field cultivators. You see no soil structure up here in the root zone. Look down below, though. Beautiful soil structure. But again, if the water roots can't get to it, we're in trouble. I've had ag engineer by training. Ag engineers figured out long time ago, you know, you take a stick out here or a shank and put it down below this layer and as you drag it through there, it's going to fracture at about a 45-degree angle. Put it 50% deep and put another shank over here. Fracture that. I can fracture. I can break up the bad soil structure. Compaction, right? The chisel plow was born. 12-inch shank, spaced in 12 inches deep. You go through there and you break up the bad soil structure of the compaction of the plow layer. And you come back and you smooth it out, pack it back down. After a few years, you took a... Alright, which one of you two were the plower and chiseler? These two are laughing. You took a plow pan from 8 inches and you make a chisel pan at 12. Is that enough of a root zone to graze a crop in? Here's a photograph from someone's sales literature where they're selling your ripper. And I love this. When I was out there doing his last tillage operation, I think he got stuck here. And I don't know how he got out, but you can tell he had that big, wide disc or field color. When he came and he drove around here he didn't have to till it to dry it out. He turned plenty wide so he wouldn't get stuck and came back and dried out the rest of it, right? Every time you do that, you now pack it tighter that next time it'll stay wet longer because the water can't soak in. I gave this presentation one time in Ohio and I had a guy come up to me and he says, I run a tile business. There's guys who had this problem that hired me to cut in a random tile line to drain that wet spot. He says, when I do that, I usually cut the pattern tile already installed and it's because they created a compaction layer above the pattern tile. And again, I've seen it here in South Dakota. People are putting in tile to get rid of water. I'm going like, no, save the water, use the water. That's not to get rid of it. Well, you saw the tire tracks there. Maybe I switched to tracks. Less compaction, right? Tracks work because of a couple things. One, it is lower PSI on the soil surface. I can do that with inflated tires as well. We've also got more axles. That's sort of axle one, axle two. These two together probably carry the weight of axle three. These are axle four. And again, think about trucks. When we go to the field or go to the road to carry more weight without destroying the road, we add more axles on a truck. Let's do that in our fields as well. I love tow carts. I love things that put more axles out there to carry the load because it's a lower weight per axle then. But again, you're not doing yourself a favor if you're doing tailage. He's got three years. He's got a compaction layer down there about chiseling depth. Harvest time. He's got riced tires on his combine. Some people call them logger tires. You're not familiar with them. They're a real tall lug to cut down through. Anybody's ever put riced lug tires in their combine and admits two things. One, they admit they have no soil structure. They need that deep lug to cut through the mush. To cut down to number two, they admit they have a compaction layer and that's where they're going to get their traction. Now, anybody brave enough to raise your hand? Do you have riced lug tires in your combine? We've done some dumb things with tailage, guys, because we're destroying our soil structure. Okay. Paw-pan at 8 inches, a chisel-pan at 12, 50% deeper, shank-spacing equals operating depth. The V-rippers are born. 18 to 20 inches deep, 18 to 20 inch shank-spacing and you got to like your fuel man and buy that big tractor and we come along and we smooth it all out so we can plant. Destroy the soil structure, now we pack it down. You see what's coming. We've done some dumb things, haven't we? 18 to 20 inches is enough of a red zone. That's me and my younger day. This is at Husker Harvest Days. DMI was showing off their new deep ripper, 30 inch shank-spacing that run 30 inches deep. Remember, you got to go 50% deep and then 20 inch layer. Fortunately, we've not seen a lot of those in Nebraska. You probably haven't seen too many in South Dakota because we haven't tilled the soils when they're that wet like they do back east. Again, never till a wet soil. You're going to create compaction. Simple as that. It's 30 inch enough for it's own. Look close under here. This is in Farm Journal Magazine on a contest I had said I built the best. Mike Pieper. Compaction doesn't have a chance and Mike Pieper deep rips with this rig he designed and built. 13 foot light implement takes 320 horsepower to pull. Earlier I said you got to like your fuelman. Mike's fuelman likes Mike. We've done some dumb things, guys. Let's go to no till. Dwayne's going to talk about let mother do it. Mother nature, freestyle, wetting and drying, roots. Build soil structure and leave residue out there. It's the residue that's going to make that system work. Again, a lot of you guys say well do I need to go out and rip that up? Do I need to do strip till? To me, strip till is a temporary tool to get rid of a compaction that may have been caused from years of tillage. To open it up to get the crop planted and then next year you can go no till. Rent the tool. You don't need it every year. Once you get rid of the pan, if you don't reform it. That's how strip till works. You get rid of the pan on the first trip. Don't reform it. Do some digging. Spend some time on the spade. Look what you've got there. Now if you're digging and your roots look something like this there's no root restricting layer. The pan doesn't necessarily mean you got to do tillage. A root restricting layer does. A water restricting layer does. Break that up. Iron can do it. Roots can do it. I prefer roots because they'll build soil structure. This is interesting. At Living History Farm in Des Moines years ago there was a display there. That's my finger point. The roots went all the way to the floor. Those roots went down and actually spread out below the tillage layer. With no residue up here there's no soil moisture up there. There's no roots up there. There's a quarter inch rain that blows through on a summer thunderstorm. Soak in about an inch. No roots to pick that up. It dries out. I'm a no-tiller. I've got residue up here. I've got roots up here. That same rain means a lot to me. It meant nothing to my tilled neighbor. Think about the root system. Look and see what you've got in the soil. Leave residue out there. This is one of our fields already planted. Residue everywhere. That's what we want to see. We're at planting time? Yes, a little bit. But it's definitely going to keep it cooler and wetter the rest of the growing season. That's what makes the money. This past year there was a lot of shortages of feed. I can't fault someone that has to keep their livestock alive. Maybe this is a cheap form of feed for them. But you know what? It's a double whammy when it looks at what happens to the soil system as we take it away. For the guys who got green air selling their residue I think of every one of those bales in about a thousand pounds of residue they're going to put on at least 20 pounds of extra nutrients to pay for that which you just hauled away. But think about what happens to the soil itself. I'm hauling away carbon that I can't even buy at the elevator. As we look at a lot of people say that's already got half covered. NRCS will tell you half cover is good for erosion control, but when it comes to moisture reducing evaporation. Norm Clocky is an irrigation specialist measuring evaporation from residue-covered soil surfaces. With Bear, he's measuring about eight-tenths of an inch or eight-hundredths of an inch per day. You'll say, well that's not much. I'm going to apply a hundred-day growing season. That's eight inches of water lost to evaporation. As he left cover out there, seven-tenths, seven-tenths, a hundred percent cover was five-tenths. That's three hundredths times a hundred days is three inches of water difference. He says, wait a minute. Conservation Tilly says 30 percent cover cuts erosion at half. 50 percent, even 75 percent cover didn't cut water loss much. Why? Norm explains to me this way. He says, you know you build the best house you can build. You've got R19 insulation in the walls and R30 insulation in the ceilings and these triple-paying windows. The kids go out the door and leave the door open and all the heat gets out. Water does the same thing with this path resistance preferential flow and the water gets out of the soil, the water vapor. He says you want at least 80 percent, 100 percent is better. Leave the soil covered. You can't afford to sell it because you just lost three inches of water in this case. Also leave it upright standing. Catch the snow. That is moisture. I don't want that to blow away. And I want to catch it uniformly. Too often I hear from producers that hilltop doesn't produce much, but if they did something like this and they lost all this moisture and they tilled it and lost even more moisture but down in the valleys where all their water ran off where all the snow accumulated, that's why there's differences. This is a no-tiller. Left his residue standing. He's got about the same snow catch everywhere. That's going to be more uniform soil temperature and more uniform soil moisture for planting next spring compared to this one. So again, leave the residue, leave it standing upright. Upright anchored attached. I'm going to set it compared to flattened. Since it's attached when I'm going through it, the soil holds it so I can pass across it. I love my residue. I want to leave it there. Here's an example from our research farm, corn. Our corn residue we cut pretty high. It's rubbing the paint off of our front axle, the tractor off of the planter toolbar. These are two visitors from the United Kingdom. They couldn't believe it and they had to take pictures. I had to take a picture of them taking pictures. But again, you can see how tall the residue is. A lot of people say, well, all that residue holds the soil cold and wet. Well, if you knock it down early and you make a mat, you don't get any air movement down on the soil surface. I leave it standing as long as I can so I get air movement on the soil surface so I get in there to plant earlier. I knock it down at planting time. Notice there's not a whole bunch of root balls rolled out. We're planting down the old row. The soil biological life in long-term no-till is that the root ball rots out from underneath. It doesn't roll over when you're going to hit it with a planter. In fact, the soil biological activity is once I get the residue in contact with that soil biological life, my residue disappears in a hurry. Hey, that's okay. It's breaking down now, releasing carbon dioxide into the canopy. It's releasing carbon into the soil and releasing nutrients into the soil when my next crop is growing. Compared to my neighbor who did tillage this fall, it's releasing all that stuff now and his next crop won't be growing for another six months. So again, I want the residue to break down when the next crop is there. Now, I plant down the old row for crops in rotation. For corn on corn, we actually go beside the old row. Beside the old row for more uniform depth control, more uniform seed placement. If you really want to wear out your tractor tires real fast, plant it exactly between the old rows and you'll worry about because you're driving on the old row. So again, I leave the residue in place. I love rotation. I love wheat. Wheat gives me a cool season grass to go along with my warm season grass of corn. My warm season broad life is soybeans. As I go to the soybeans into wheat stubble in this case. Southeast Nebraska, a lot of guys say you can't plant soybeans until after May 5th in conventional utilities because the soil is not warm enough yet. May 5th, I already had them up and growing because I planted them in April 15th into the 87 bushel wheat straw. The soil structure is such that the excess water soaked away. Cold wet soil temperatures is because you can't soak away the water. Build the structure, soak it down deeper and no tilting into the heavy wheat straw is not a problem. Now, let's go back to this. I started earlier. I had a research branch. It doesn't sound like much. I've been doing a lot of work in my early days. I had research grants with Rainfall Simulator to measure the effects of the residue and reduce the erosion. And that 30% level in conservation compliance came from research like this across the nation. We started doing demos for extension type meetings where we put out 100% cover, no cover. On the other side, we had 30%. Maybe we had 50%. We had these different things. Every time we ran the research, residue reduced erosion. Every time we did that and looked at the runoff, we said, boy, the residue didn't change the runoff much. You know, at the time the storm is occurring, it doesn't change it much. But when you look at what happens when the residue is gone and when you build soil structure, there are big differences. Big differences, let's come back to the evapotranspiration. The measurements, typically about 1 fourth of our water that comes from Rainfall has evaporated off from the soil surface off a wet crop canopy, off a wet residue, lost to evaporation. Quickly close the canopy, the less this will be. Now, the rest of the water goes through the soil system into the roots and it's transpired by the crop to keep the crop cool and to grow more crop. Now, some people say take all the E out of ET where you can cut it in half, roughly, because it's still going to come off a wet surface, wet residue. But the more I can get into the soil, the more goes through the crop, the more yield I get. I throw this up, these are Nebraska numbers, just to give you a quick reference in your mind. Western Nebraska ET is lower than eastern Nebraska. Wait a minute, isn't it hotter and drier out west? The reason it's less out there is that you use shorter season crops. If you get a 90-day corn versus a 120-day corn, that's the difference in water use. It's growing longer, it uses more water. And look this direction. Alfalfa grows only about 8 months a year compared to corn and beans only about 5 months a year. Wheat grows in the cool of the winter, it uses less water. So there's all sorts of things that affect ET. But think about those when you're using water. A cover crop in the off season of corn and soybeans is in this cooler season it's going to use less water simply because it has less water intensive time of year. Something grows year-round, uses more water. Again, if you've got excess water, grow something to use the water. So that's why I just throw these up for ET. Well, when Aaron Clocky was at Nebraska, he was measuring ET and he separated what was off the evaporation, what was transpiration, and what was amazing sort of is 16.8 was transpiration. I can show you producers in Nebraska that pump 20 to 30 inches of water a year. Which means they're wasting irrigation water and that means they aren't even using the rainfall. Again, evaporation, let's cut that in half if we can. Normally, I'm out there and he took just 5,000 pounds per acre equivalent of wheat straw, spread it out there. Two different years of data here. Just by taking a bare soil and covering it, he cut evaporation roughly in half. Growing a crop, he also cut it in half because he cut the wind and sun off the soil surface, and residue in a crop cut it even more yet. Grow something, protect the soil. Keep the sun and wind off the soil surface. A lot of people say, well, I never have this condition over here. Sure you do. If you don't have a cover crop, you've done tillage, you've got that. If you leave the residue there, it's worth a lot more. If I do residue and a cover crop, it's worth a lot more to save water. Norm since moved to Garden City, Kansas. Here's corn residue, wheat residue, straight no-telling in, soybeans and corn. This is simply this difference now. So he did the math for you. He finds 2 to 4 to almost 5 inches of water saved by reducing that evaporation. So let's put this on here. Let me start running total here, by the way. Here's a crop, sunflowers. Sunflowers are supposed to be drought resistant because they root down deeper, right? 2005 was a drought here in Southeast and the rest of the sunflowers burned up because of a lack of residue. If you don't have residue there and an evaporation, I just lost 5 inches. That was my crop. 2005, there were some neighbors there and it says, you know, I have to chop silage to harvest what I can to feed my livestock. True. Now, the next spring when they went in and planted their corn it was a dry year that corn burned up. It was not near there. On part of the field they left to run the combine through just so you get his insurance payment, had to run a grain yield had residue there the corn is still green and it's forming an ear. The residue you took away that year cost him the next year the little bit he left was a plus. Now the guys are starting to argue, well, you get the drought here and you've got that short corn out there, what do you do? There's a lot of guys who run their combine through it just to spread the residue and process the residue. They're not taking it away because they know the value of the residue. So a researcher out that way West Central Research Center at North Platte, Nebraska he went in a strange soybean residue and ranked away some and left the other there. Now he did a nutrient testing, he made sure nutrients weren't limiting factor, this is simply the residue mulch. He irrigated the rest of the field based upon the residue level. This was under irrigated because of the evaporation and you can see how much yield he lost. Some guys say it would just irrigate more to make up for this. Wait, that costs money, don't do that. Or you're the dry lander. Here was wheat after harvest. Left the straw in place and part of the field he bailed the straw because he needed some straw bales. Gave up 20 bushels. This guy figured out he buys his bales from the neighbor because the neighbor hasn't figured it out yet. He leaves his residue in the field. The next year, Steve Melvin at our Curtis Research Farm is a good rainfall year. His driving yields weren't that much reduced. Yeah, there's some. Look, they were reduced both though when he removed residue. We got guys down there in southeast Nebraska that don't even allow silage to be chopped in their farms because the yield they give up when that residue disappears. And one of those farms is our University of Nebraska Research Farm. The agronomy group already figured this out and the animal science group is mad because they got to buy the silage from the neighbors. The neighbors haven't figured it out yet. Again, that residue is what drives this soil system. I can't afford to give it up. Here's back to my tillage plots in 2005. First week of June, we had five days in a row over 100 degree heat. Now, it cooled off and it rained. Where there was no residue in the till, that sorghum basically went dormant. You can see all the plants are still there, but look how healthy that growth is. When the rain came, this took off and we didn't expect too much yield difference when the combine rolled its 35-bushel difference. 2000 was the year that during the growing season we got 11 inches of rain. County average of soybeans that year was 25-bushel per acre. My till soybeans were 23 on 11 inches of rain. My no-till was 47. I can't give up that residue. Earlier, I said rainfall simulator. We said not much difference in runoff. Big difference in erosion. We had one site where we were doing all this research that when we stood there, and on the tilled side we got runoff after about 20 minutes of water applied. That's an inch of water in 20 minutes. And all the farmers standing there said see, tilling it, you open it up and the water can soak in. On the other side, the residue was standing. We stood there for an hour and a half. Three and three-quarter inches of water applied before we saw any runoff. And we said, boy, this site's not like the other 21 sites that we just done. This one's wrong. I'm sorry to say this was the right site. Charlie Fenster had a no-till as a chem fallow versus tillage fallow. What this plot was. He'd been there for 13 years already. 13 years of no-till built it such that three and three-quarter inches of water soaked in before we saw the first runoff compared to this one one inch of water. That single storm is two and three-quarter inch of water difference because the soil structure is long-term no-till. Again, long-term no-till, this is from my tillage plots. Tile is made full of soil. You can see the good peds and aggregates. You can see where water can soak in compared to the tail where it's denser. You can't see the water soak in. Now, before taking this picture, I should have lined this up four inches lower than that because the soil surface is four inches lower. I didn't have the picture. Now, some interesting work coming out of France. See that good soil structure? The heat from the earth rises up through the same holes and they are measuring in no-till fields in March being about five to ten degrees warmer than tilled fields in March. That's because this tillage making it more dense and no pore space there, the heat can't rise. I started paying attention to that on our usage farm. We started measuring soil temperatures. Our no-till where the water can soak in and heat can come up as the same soil temperatures are tilled. In fact, with the soil structure, we can plant our no-till before our tilled neighbors can plant theirs. And again, remember I said I had soybeans into heavy wheat straw, 15th of April and convinced until neighbors aren't planting soybeans until May 5th because it's too cold? No-till soil structure solves a lot of the problems when you get air exchange, gas exchange, water movement. We've done some measurements on infiltration. I used controlled wheel traffic as well. Jim mentioned that in his final slide there. Tilled, two-tenths inch per hour can soak in. Four-tenths in the soft row where we haven't driven, and this has hadn't been driven on it for more than 25 years. But the tillage makes that top layer so it doesn't take in water very fast. We pulled out the NRCS soil survey and it said that the intake rate should be between two-tenths and six-tenths because of the clay content of the silty clay loam soil. Now what's interesting though, this is saturated for more than 24 hours before you took this measurement. This is not just initial intake. This is actually what's moving through the soil. Go to the no-till. There's six-tenths. That's the high side of the two to six. That's over four inches per hour there. Any of you who visits Dakota Lakes, Dwayne will show you this on his long-term no-till where that water can just disappear. It soaks in when you build that structure. Southeast Nebraska, it's the typical spring thunderstorm blew through and actually late spring. Six-inch rain came overnight from June 12 to 13. We're out there walking around taking pictures and as we're taking pictures of this field, it's got a crust on it. Terraces over top. Terraces washed out. The farmer drove up. He's just shaking his head. He said, worthless rain. Just like anybody else. I said, how much did you get? He says, six inches. Worthless rain. Crusted the soil, washed out the terraces. Whenever I'm going to get in there, one's going to be dry enough for me to replant rain sorghum. Worthless rain. His neighbor crossed the fence. Long-term no-tiller. Sorghum's already up. Soil structure's there. He took a soil moisture probe, had a full soil moisture profile to six feet deep. And sorghum, June 13, six foot of moisture. He says, beautiful rain. The difference of soil structure, guys. All right. I put a question mark on the six. You don't always get that kind of thunderstorm. It's impressive, yes. We've easily measured two extra inches of water because of better infiltration, less runoff. And again, going back to that 11-inch rainfall year. 61 with tillage to the line. No-till, 121. That's what we see when you get that infiltration and residue and soil structure. And remember, I'm adding. This is working together. Area of view of that research farm, 10 miles east of Lincoln, it's a terraced farm. Terraces are put in back in the 50s and 60s. We said, we've got to control runoff. You know what, with controlled wheel traffic and long-term no-till and a nice broad crop rotation, we have next to no runoff. Very seldom do these terraces see water. Right here is a repair and buffer strip. This terrace basically defines the only runoff that comes through that buffer strip is off of this field. That buffer strip was put in in 1998 because everyone says we're going to put in buffers to fill everything coming out of the runoff. Was it right? I think you said it. Buffers were band-aid. This field was no-tilled about 10 years already by then. In 1998, they put in the buffer. In 1999, they put in eight runoff samplers in front of the buffer and four behind. So you can compare the water in and water out and see how effective the buffer was. About five years ago, they quit putting the runoff samplers out there in the spring because they'd never measured runoff into that buffer. It all stays in that field. It doesn't run off. This 250-bushel corn dry land down here dropping populations in dry land at 33,000 and our neighbors are raising 142 as the county average and they're dropping about 25,000. I'm treating it like eargate because we're using our water. Now, again, our neighbors, they're using their terraces. We're keeping our water. All right. You've seen the running total. Five to 12. I easily get the five extra. I was there for three days and it rained five inches. They get 50 inches of rain there. They had land levelers trying to get the land level to get rid of the water. Then you looked in the background and they had pivots. I'm going 50 inches of water and you got pivots. Yeah, when the rain stops in June, it stops till September. We need irrigation. I go 50 inches of rain. They have a still soil that's not letting the water soak in. It's all running off. They need irrigation. We go to Minnesota. We switch to no-till. We go to Iowa, Illinois, wherever we switch to no-till. We used to be corn soybeans with tillage. We had runoff. We had evaporation and we had 30 inches of rain. 40 inches of rain, whatever they get. And they save 5 to 12. Remember corn on the U16.8? They save 5 to 12. What's the first thing to do? They complain about cold wet soil. They say, I'm going to get rid of that by doing strip-till. Low off that spring soil moisture. They also set themselves up. Again, this is a normal clock you leave in the door open. Soil moisture leaves them all season long. Not just that time of year. All year long. So again, some people till the water out and they continue to lose the water all year. For me, it's up to you what you do with the extra water that no-till saves. You know, a drought year, that's your crop. And a non-drought year, that's an opportunity to do something else. You know, they're irrigators. In Nebraska, the average percent of irrigation is about $15 an acre inch. Saving 5 inches at the low end is 75 bucks an acre more profit. You're the dry lander. The low end again. Remember I said 5 to 12. Corn responds about 12 bushels per acre inch. 5 to 12 is 60 extra bushels of corn. We are running at the Rogers Moreau Farm. Past five years, we are more than 60 bushels above county average on a no-till corn. We're running over 200 bushels of corn where the county average is 140. That's where my extra water is. Beans, 3 and a half times 5 is 17 and a half. Again, that's extra profit if you use your water. It comes down to can you use your water? Can you store your water? Out West used to be wheat fallow because they didn't think they had enough water to grow crop every year. They're using no-till, using residue, and they're raising the crop every year. They're using their extra water, no-till gives them. Down south, Oklahoma and Kansas used to be a lot of wheat fallow. They learned they can raise continuous crops. They went to no-till and they actually learned they can use double crop because they're growing wheat that uses less water in the off season. They go beans, uses the water when the water is available. It comes down to timing when your water is available. Producer I know in Pennsylvania he says, you know, we got wet springs. I grow alfalfa because it's a high water use crop that starts using water clear back in March. I take first cutting and by then it's already used 8 to 10 inches of water. He says, I wait for regrowth. For the corn, I spray out the alfalfa and I raise good corn. He gets 40 inches of rain. 10, 15 went to the alfalfa, the rest went to the corn. He says, I got conventional till neighbors who plow up their alfalfa to kill it, set themselves for erosion and runoff. They plant their corn and the erosion and runoff and no water getting into the soil profile and the corn droughts out. He says, I'm on no-till and I got two crops and they got zero. They're using the extra water. When you skip rows, you plant your soybeans that when you combine your wheat, your soybeans are already there. They're using the extra water. Now, I say extreme case in Nebraska, this is the dry land corner on a pivot. The beans got up this high and died because the wheat already used all the water. Now, back east in Illinois, Indiana, Ontario, they love it and they call it relay cropping. They got their living root there almost a year around. With irrigation, we got that living root and they're raising good wheat and good corn or good soybeans using that extra water. And they keep track of irrigation. They're only putting on six extra inches of water because the no-till and the rainfall, they only need 60 extra for two crops in a year. So, again, think about using the water. And, again, I look at how much water can you store. We have some potential losses. If we have a soil profile that's already full, we get extra water. In Nebraska, we have trouble with deep percolation taking nitrogen down to our drinking water. If we use some of that water growing a cover crop, we can reduce the nitrate leaching. Dwayne's going to talk more about catch and release nutrients. We have a crusted soil or saturated soil. Again, we lose water, build structure, protect it. Or if it's unprotected soil, we got evaporation, we lose water, leave residue out there. And, again, once you're full, it's wasted. Now, in normal spring in Nebraska, we hope to have our soil moisture profile refilled by March. We don't plant until maybe April or May. I got an opportunity for some cover crop to use water. If it's going to be a dry year, maybe I'll look at a fall cover crop to empty out water in the fall such that I can save water in the spring. You go, huh? Think about it, if it's got a wet fall and it fills up right away, everything in the winter is wasted. Sometimes you make the cover crop decision on the fly. And the main thing is I'm going to grow the water rather than lose it because I'm going to be growing a root and growing soil structure. So, quickly, about cover crops here for my last... I'm going to get 17 minutes. That's not bad, then. Ralph Durp's friend of mine, he's a crop consultant, learned no-till back at least 40 years ago, and he's been sort of the leader in getting no-till started in South America. He's living in Paraguay now, and he started with the German government. He's gone into areas that have never been tilled and never been far before, and they're planting no-till. And I say that because they're not used to not investing in the horsepower for tillage. They've never seen the soil bear. They think it's logical to have it covered. We've seen it bear thanks to grandpa, thanks to dad. We're not used to seeing the residue near as much. But they're out there planting, and what they're doing is they're using cover crops to provide extra carbon biomass to the soil system to use some water to protect the soil, to build the soil, and to them, cover crops is a no-brainer. Now, the interesting thing, when you start thinking about it, and we saw this on the slide earlier, but you think about when is the crop using water? When's the water available? Are summer-planted crops, and you could substitute, just move the axes over and call this winter crops if you're doing wheat. But think about it, they take off growing in the spring. Corn, sometime in May they're actively growing. They reach a peak in July. They taper off that in September they're done using water. That's when we produce the biomass. But from an interest study where they took this, they said we missed some opportunities to produce I love their big words, resource and simulation driving out of production. I say they're basically, they're losing the opportunity to use some water and some carbon dioxide and also sunlight. Now, think about it, sunlight we don't store, at least not in the crop field, carbon dioxide we don't use in the off season. Now, when a crop is growing, there is. So that's what the cover crop is for. Now water we can store. And some people argue, well, this water it's not really lost if I can store it and use it for next year's crop. But too often I see where the soil might be already full and this is now deep leaching or it's deep percolation or it's evaporation of an unprotected surface. In the spring, with heavy spring rains, it is again. Again, by planting a cover crop I can use some water and more importantly, get some roots in that soil and use some of that carbon dioxide and sunlight rather than wasting it. Use some water that I have to manage the water and that's why I show the break off here. If it is a wet spring, you let that cover crop go longer, use some water because you've got plenty of water and that break off might even occur out here. Or if it's dry spring, it might break off here or if it's always dry in your area plant a cover crop that winter kills and there's nothing that even appears here. Again, the water management is up to you a little bit on your risk and a little bit on what you're trying to accomplish. Now, when I say what are you trying to accomplish? Again, here's down in South America. When they first started raising soybeans down there, a lot of people said, well, it's beans on beans every acre, every year and that's what kills our soybean market in the U.S. I had an opportunity to go down to Brazil and Ray Ord was along in that trip last year and we saw a lot of acres beans on beans every year. But you know what? After soybean harvest, they had enough growing season carbon dioxide and water, they grew a cover crop. This is black oats in this case, rolled down. Or it could have been a short season forage because they had livestock or it could have been corn or cotton and they grew those through the winter months. Again, using a crop growing when the water's available is what they're doing. Now, when it comes to pest management, beans on beans, when that first rainstorm comes and hits that black oats residue, how much bean disease is going to splash on that new beans crop? Yeah. A cover crop can be a pest management tool. Reducing splash in this case. The thing I encircled here is this tree in the background. That's the same tree a few weeks later and you look at that and say the beans don't look bad and you look at that and you go, where did the rest of that residue go? The biological life is digesting it, putting it in the system and like I said that's when I want it to happen when the next crop is growing. I thought it was pretty neat. When you grow crop, cover crop and using the sunlight and carbon dioxide when it's available using the water to grow the soil by having that living root in there. It's feeding the soil system. So what do you grow? I've got the seed box in my pickup right now. There's some different cover crops I've planted in different plots. People always ask me, what are you planting? I go, what are you trying to do? The laundry list that I borrowed from our Nebraska NRCS and their cover crop plan they put erosion control on top. That's what the name actually come from is the soil erosion. If I want erosion control, I want to quit growing something like a grass to get it up there and absorb brain-dive impact. What if I'm doing nutrient capture, nutrient cycling? I want something that takes up a lot of nutrients and then releases it slowly next year and again, doing things that don't talk, catch the release of nutrients. Improve soil health, any living root will do that. Water management, the two-edged sword. Use the water if you have it or better yet, grow some residue to keep the sun and wind off the soil surface to conserve the water that you don't have. It can work both ways. Increase biodiversity by simply getting a cool season versus a warm season, a broadly versus a grass to just change the biodiversity to change that soil biological life. Balance carbon-nitrogen ratio. If you want residue to hang around a long time, you want a high carbon out there. Corn stalks, wheat straw hang around a long time compared to peas or soybeans will break down in a hurry because it's got a low carbon-higher nitrogen ratio. Again, if I want to decay my residue and I've got a lot of corn stalks and wheat stubble there, put a legume out there and you decay your residue in a hurry. Or if I'm like me, I've got a lot of soil biological life and I don't want to decay as fast, I'm going to put more high carbon stuff out there, more grass, more rye to get the residue to hang around longer. Nitrogen fixation, that's what the early days, most people looked at cover crops to grow nitrogen because we were organic producers before they invented fertilizer. Well, we got organic producers or we got others who are cutting their nitrogen because they're growing their own. This is a two-edged compaction, it's a two-edged sword there as well. The one is, yes, it can when you've got a good vigorous root growing. But the more important thing is the good vigorous root actually provides some soil structure and stability to reduce the compaction from next trips on the field getting that root out there. Weed suppression, the right-selected cover crop can suppress the next weeds. You just want to make sure you select the right cover crop, it doesn't suppress your next crop. And again, that's why I can't tell you what you need to plant because I don't know forage or grazing. I do that for the soil system, but again, some years, drought conditions, maybe I need that for my four-legged livestock to eat T-bones out of. And so again, we got to think about it. Like I said, a lot of cover crop tours out there, you go out there and look at them a lot. Usually they're planted in a single species just so you can see the individual crop. You get benefits of mixing them in a cocktail. The benefits build and it really helps you out that way. But this is a set of legumes then, for this case, into wheat stubble. Cover crop used a sorghum shidan. Grows in the heat in the summer, doesn't use a lot of water. But the good news is it's up and growing that when his pastures and range land need a rest, he can put the livestock over here and they get feed. Recovery time on pasture and range land is worth big bucks. That'll pay for your cover crop because you get the cattle off of there. So again, we got to think about how we manage the system. Again, we're selecting a cover crop. First question, what do you want to do with it? Go on a planet because it's the hottest topic out there. That's not the reason to do it. That's why so many lemmings go over the cliff. They've never asked why. They're just, everyone else is doing it. No. Why do you want to do it? Again, what do you select then? Can you grow it? It doesn't matter if it's something that really works great in South America and they can't grow here. It's about 170 days to mature it. Now for a cover crop, I don't need 170 days because it doesn't need to mature. Can you manage it? Can you kill it? Can you plant it? Can you grow? Again, you select something you can't. What will affect the next crop? One of my favorite examples is at harvest time when you're hauling wheat to the elevator and they refuse it because of scab. And someone walks up to you and say, I'll buy that wheat from you because I'm going to use it as a cover crop seed. You'd be glad just to sell it, right? Well, I plant that scab wheat as a cover crop and it comes up and I spray it up before it makes a head and it never gets head scab. Who cares? I'm planting my next crop of soybeans. Who cares? I plant my next crop of corn. Fusarium head scab and Fusarium stock crop is the same Fusarium, guys. You just shot yourself in the foot when it came to raising corn. If you use wheat as a cover crop in front and a head Fusarium. What's next crop? I see the same thing with sunflowers and white mold. Things like that, so be careful. What would the seed cost? My cheapest cover crop seed has been floor sweepings. Well, my next cheapest has been bin run grain sorghum. Milo is not worth much. Milo is planted at 5 pounds per acre. Bushel Milo is 56 pounds. It'll plant 10 acres for about 3 bucks, 4 bucks, 5 bucks, depending upon the price. Milo is a warm season grass and that's a cool season grass. So again, how does it fit? Well, the seed cost, the best is what is left in your seed shed when you're done seeding. Dump it all together and plant it. Because you know you can grow it all. Will it help the soil system? I sure hope so. That's why I'm doing it. And again, some cover crops won't help so much. Again, different species out there. There's flax. Flax I used to not think too much about a 2 inch hail for 20 minutes with 2 inches of rain with 80 mile an hour winds. Everything in the area was destroyed except for my flax cover crop. This isn't it. This is a different plot. The flax cover crop is such a small spindly thing. It sprang back up and the day after the hail started we were walking out there to go, how come it missed that strip? It didn't. That plant was that resilient. Now, I contrast that to this one sunhemp. It's a lagoon, fixes nitrogen. Sunhemp, as the name implies, is a rope. I would spray that out sooner than this producer did. Because, you know, as a rope, any residue mover on your planter wraps up so tight that you need a torch to get it out. This producer says, don't run residue movers, you're just planting right through it. I go, that works. This is great. It works. So again, what are you after? Grasses will provide that fastest. If you're after nitrogen, it has to be a lagoon and you have to inoculate it with the proper inoculant for that species. Just because you've planted soybeans before doesn't mean the rhizobia there is going to help you out on peas or vetch or even alfalfa. They're all different. You use the right one. Brassica, a lot of people look at them for getting rid of the compaction because the Brassica family includes the oil seed raddish and the turnips, those big roots. But they're also notorious for residue cycling because they will break down the residue underneath them. Others, the others category I already showed you flax. That's not any of these. Sunflowers is the other. Biodiversity is what I'm after. Cool season versus warm season, it's pretty obvious to really get the good growth. You plant the opposite of what your cash crop is. Following wheat harvest and cool season crop I do a warm season because in the heat of July in August, you want a warm season sorghum, Sudan or soybeans or cow peas that are growing out there. Going the other way, after a warm season crop like corn or soybeans, I'm going to do a cool season, mustard, winter peas, even a spring pea, oats, all my cool season crops. Grass versus broadleaf versus cocktail. Again, that's the balance of the carbon-nitrogen ratio. Cocktail gets you the balance of everything. And it gives you some risk management as well. What if it is too hot and dry and the cool season legume you planted burned up while my warm season grass might be so growing? So again, it gives you some management. If you need to learn more about cover crops, air est out of Mandan put together this periodic table just like the one you hated in chemistry. It is sorted by down the column, they're related. Again, grasses down the ends. Simpler things on top, more complex than the bottom. Then it's grouped also within column by legumes here, broadleafs here or warm season, cool season. Little footnote things in the corners here on their life cycle their water use and how they grow. Again, you say, huh? If I'm in an area of wind erosion, I want an upright. If I'm in an area of water erosion, I want something that lays flat. Again, just think about differences what you need out there. But then you're saying, okay, what in the world is a lupin? You click on that and if you run it online and it goes straight to the file or you can download it to your computer, it's a PDF file it's available again on that website. You click on lupin and it comes up saying, here's what it looks like, here's what it is. Cool season broadleaf, legume goes down low water use, acid soil if you're going to feed it, it's got some protein if you want the bonus points of your CSP plan and attracts the pollinators. But you know what? It doesn't form my mycorrhiza associations. Again, we'll build soil. This one not as fast because it's not going to help the fungi in here as much. Or you click on serial rye one of my favorites because I don't raise a lot of wheat in our area. Cool season grass. Following corn and soybeans, it's great. And you'll upright, upright catches more snow for me. High water use, well that's why I be careful when I kill it in the spring. I kill it later or early, it's in a wet or dry spring. Going down here we'll form mycorrhiza association. Very good at scavenging nitrogen. Again, once you've decided why you need a cover crop you can go to a table like this and help you decide which cover crop do you need. Again, the cocktails are nice. Here's after wheat harvest. A cocktail had a cool season legume, warm season legume brassicas, warm season grass, cool season grass. This is after the first frost. The warm season grass of the sorghum sedent frosted off. The cool season grass is underneath, they're still growing. In fact, they'll really take off now that the weather cooled down. Likewise, the brassicas are still growing down here. They'll take cooler temperatures. Again, when you start thinking about managing the cover crop can you kill it? Can you manage it? A cover crop roller. Rollers work great on a single species because you know exactly when to roll it. You're supposed to roll it at about the time it's starting to do reproduction. Now you've got this cocktail mix here. When do you roll that? I'm not exactly sure. Wait a minute, if this is already frost killed and the rest of this is going to frost kill maybe I don't even need to worry about a roller. So again, how you're going to terminate depends on what you're growing. The cover crop rollers they love them in South America. Here's again from Ralph Dirps. This is a black oats crop rolled down with no herbicide. Those black oats are expressing all the weeds raising that corn. So again, weed control there. Some guys say, I can use tillage to terminate the cover crop. Remember, they told us for years you apply under that green manure crop when it comes to soil biological life is exactly the worst thing to do. Yes, I put that residue into the soil but I destroyed a lot of other stuff as well. We got a grad student in Nebraska working on PhD in organic weed control cover crops. He had two, four, six and eight species cover crops. He found that once you got to six or eight species he could suppress weeds. When you're down at two or four you actually almost increased weeds. He found that when you terminate him with a disc you increased weeds because you applied every weed seed and you got rid of the benefit. When he used a blade undercutter and left the residue on top then the eight species cover crop paid for the organic production. So again, we got to think about what's going on out there. Don't use tillage to kill it guys. Use the herbicide, use the roller or you plant into it. Wait, before I can tell you to do that check with your RMA, check with your insurance check with your FSA. In Nebraska I can guarantee if you do this your crop is not insurable. If you plant into a cover crop or worse yet if your cover crop even heads or buds your next crop is not insurable. We have to kill our cover crop early in Nebraska if you want crop insurance. But you know what? Terry Taylor in Illinois he's growing the excess water out and he's got beautiful mulch there. That planter actually was his cover crop roller who really knocked it back for him and his one post-emerge herbicide took care of the rest of it. He didn't have pre-plant, didn't have a bunch of other stuff out there. Again, we start thinking about it. Think about growing it, terminate it but why are you growing it? It's going to increase that soil biological life. If you have a soil surface that has water in it, use a little bit of water to grow the cover and it reduces evaporation. Throw up some data. You mentioned the group up at Marlin Richter up at North Dakota. Bismarck, he had about 15 inches of annual rain. After pea harvest he had very little residue. He planted a cover crop. It all frost killed. The next spring he had beautiful residue and over here he had no residue and over here he had weeds where he had the residue he had less weeds so he saved a herbicide application. He had a residue there that saved water and they took these measurements the day of corn planting in May. Going down to 4 foot basically no difference. What's interesting is look on top where there was no cover the soil was exposed and it dried out. Where he had cover he actually saved water near the soil surface to plant into. So the numbers I got from Duane he only went to 3 feet and this is 20 inch rainfall area wheat stubble again with the cover crop that frost killed. This is spring planting time. He had more moisture near the surface because he kept the sun and wind off the soil surface and not only then all the way until the crop canopy took over. So it saves even more water going into the next season the cover crop does. Again, here's on our Rogers Memorial Farm. It's two in her bushel corn the day after harvest I'm planting a cover crop. Austrian winter peas. A lot of people say you got too much residue there. The soil microbes this is long-term no-till. Next spring March 1 this is the same field. Where's all my residue? Soil microbes are digested and the cover crop is starting to grow. That's Austrian winter peas March 15th. By the time it came time to plant about April 20th, those Austrian winter peas fixed about 90 pounds of nitrogen. That paid for the cover crop. It cycled my residue. I'm getting excited about cover crops. Here's Keith Glullin Extension Educator planting some 20 inch corn in this demonstration plot. This is irrigated corn on corn with the cereal rye cover crop. We had corn, rye cover crop, corn, rye cover crop, rye corn cover crop. This is the fourth year corn. We took a conventional tilled field and with seven crops, remember four corn, three cover crops, we stepped up biology activity such that here's the rye sprayed out, we're planting the corn. Here's a few weeks later where's all the rye residue? Where's all the irrigated corn residue? Breaking down because of this biology activity. Fly it on. It could be an option. In soybeans, we're getting good luck in Nebraska because in soybeans, we do it right before leaf drop. The seed falls down to the ground. The leaves cover it up. It's the mulch, the soybean mulch allows the cover crop to grow. In corn, you'll fly it on. There's a lot up here in the leaves. Never make it to the soil until the combine runs. And you don't make the mulch like the dropping leaves do. In corn, in fact, L'Orealcor and NRD will pay the cost of the flying to put it on because they want the erosion control. Helicopter. They're using that. The fun thing about a helicopter doesn't have to return to the airport. They put the totes out the day before. Each tote held enough seed for 40 acres. Helicopter just dropped the tote, slid to the side, dumped the tote in. They did 1,300 acres in one afternoon. And it looks like this then at harvest time. This is a sandy soil. This is a dry fertilizer. This cover crop is already growing when you combine the beans, protection is there. Keeping the sun and wind off the soil surface, this producer reported the cover crop corn did about 20 bushels per acre better than where he had sandy soils without a cover crop because he kept the sun and wind off the soil surface. Other guys, spread it with dry fertilizer. Guys in Iowa do a lot of that. Mix their 1152 oil with some cover crop seed. When they get out there and spin it, they get enough rain, they get the fertilizer on, some guys use the drill. They're putting on the fertilizer for the next crop. They're putting on a cover crop for this crop. Again, different ways of getting it out there. Some put it with the manure. Now dry feedlot manure is a little hard, but a lot of Michigan work and Pennsylvania work makes it a little slurry, and when they spread the slurry, it gets incorporated. Or they spread it with a dry spreader and then they do a manure application across the top like with an airway or something that they incorporated. Or in this case, feedlot manure is spread, herald to smooth it out. They put up the rest of the residue and this is actually great to reduce nutrient runoff loss from surface applied manure. Because a lot of those nutrients are now tied up in a biological form. They'll be released later. In corn, I say we don't fly it on. If you've got hybrid seed corn production, there's not much canopy there. They do fly it on in hybrid seed corn production. Or they do it when they destroy the mail row. Here's the cover crop already starting to come up. Here's a few weeks later when the corn was harvested. I like that. Hybrid seed corn production over fertilized and over water. The cover crop's an excellent scavenger. We already saw a couple of these. I'm going to repeat them. Here's a seed corn producer who's got a detasler. He says, I detastle my hybrid seed corn but you know what? The tassel's not needed in regular corn efforts pollinated. He goes out there and detastles the regular corn and he's blowing cover crop seed underneath. We already saw this one. A lot of guys say we can't cover much ground. You know what? We can cover. Build a bigger spreader. This is 90 feet wide. You can cover some ground. This has got some ground clearance. Again, they're doing that to get the cover crop seeded in that growing corn. But again, talk to your insurance man in Illinois. They can do that. In Nebraska, if I see that cover crop in growing corn, they're going to say there's new crops growing and your previous crop is no longer insured. Again, summary. After a low residue crop, let's grow some residue. After corn sightage or wheat because there, I've got a longer growing season to do that. And again, there's the one that catches a lot of people by surprise. If you've got a sandy soil that can't store all your off-season preset, maybe cover crop something to consider. Use the water when it's available rather than lose it. Dig in the soil. Black is the roots. Get more roots out there. Perennial crops, cover crops, drilled crops, winter crops, you're going to build that soil. Carlos Cravedo about a 40-year no-teller down in South America. Grading belongs to the farmer. Residue belongs to the soil. I believe in that. Again, quick commercial for our crop production crop scouting newsletter in Nebraska. With that, I bumped the pause button here so it didn't vibrate on me. It says I got five minutes left, but I'm sorry I went into your break. I'll be around to answer questions during the break because I don't want to start you visiting our exhibitors because they help pay for this.