“We (all) need to challenge ourselves and quit saying, ‘(No-till) won’t work here’ and we need to start saying to ourselves, ‘how do I make this work here?’” In the finale of our 7-part “Integrated Systems” series, Doug Sieck explains how all of our concerns regarding the transition to no-till can be overcome with the…
15 Trillion Laborers w/ Dr. Lehman – Division of Labor (2/3)
3:30 WATCH: If the soil health movement has taught us one thing it’s that healthy soils produce healthy crops. But when we say “healthy soils” what does that actually mean? Well… in short, it means THEY’RE ALIVE! In the second video of our three-part series with Dr. Mike Lehman, we dive head first into the…
15 Trillion Laborers (Microbes) w/ Dr. Lehman – Intro (1/3)
We met with Research Microbiologist Dr. Mike Lehman (ARS) on the research station in Brookings, South Dakota to talk soil microbes. Dr. Lehman isn’t just a well-respected scientist, it turns out that he’s also a great communicator. In this and the next two videos, Dr. Lehman takes a shovel full of soil and talks about…
South Dakota Soils And The Families That Call Them Home
This past week, we were blessed with another opportunity to visit the Mount Rushmore State and pick the brains of several leading farmers in East River. Unlike trips of the past, this go around we paid less attention to the isolated nuts and bolts of farming. These oft-discussed “nuts and bolts” include individual topics like…
What are SD No-Tiller saying About Soil Temperatures
In the previous three videos we have looked at and discussed some soil temperature data from the 2016 growing season in Vermillion, SD. In this video we speak to some long-term no-till farmers from Crooks in the east to Box Elder in the west of South Dakota and gauge their opinions. While all recognize that…
Soil Temperature Part 2: How do No-Till Temperatures Catch Up to Conventional Till?
In our previous video we saw that by the end of the season, there is no difference in the number of heat units and temperature as seen by a conventional versus a no-till soil. In fact any differences in cumulative heat units between the two systems disappears by the first week of July. In this…
Soil Temperature Part 1: Comparing Conventionally Tilled vs. No Tilled Temperatures
In this video, the USDA-NRCS’s (Brookings, SD) Eric Barsness and SDSU’s Anthony Bly discusses and experiment the NRCS conducted in Vermillion SD on a conventionally tilled and a long-term no-tilled field. Eric buried two temperature probes at 2” and the probes were able to record temperatures every 15 minutes over the entire growing season of…