Nebraska Cover Crop & Soil Health Conference - Jeff Steffen

University of Nebraska Eastern Nebraska Research and Extension Center Author

02/25/2019 Added

75 Plays

Description

The 2019 Nebraska Cover Crop and Soil Health Conference featured innovative speakers who have worked with cover crops extensively and shared what they have learned. There are many benefits to utilizing cover crops, such as improved soil heath and reduced erosion. It is the details of how and what to do that can present challenges. The focus of the conference was to provide information to growers who are in a corn/soybean rotation and to assist them in understanding the value of cover crops.

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[00:00:28.000]It's morning and as put it to use
[00:00:30.320]in our farming operation, Jeff Steffen is with us today
[00:00:34.710]he's a farmer up near Crofton Nebraska.
[00:00:37.700]Accompanying him is his wife Jolene
[00:00:40.160]and I'm sure she can answer questions too
[00:00:42.061]at the end of the day if you'd like to visit with her.
[00:00:45.920]But, Jeff tell us about your operation
[00:00:50.120]and how you've, what you've done to make
[00:00:53.200]the world better in terms of soils.
[00:00:55.700]Okay, well thank you Keith,
[00:01:00.080]it's an honor for me to be here today.
[00:01:04.778]Actually I still consider myself a beginner
[00:01:06.520]in the soil health movement.
[00:01:09.290]You know even though I've been no-tilling for 25 years
[00:01:11.750]and I've been working on cover crops
[00:01:14.320]for five years I still feel like I'm learning
[00:01:16.820]something new every year.
[00:01:19.290]This is our farm up by Crofton,
[00:01:22.970]we farm in the Bow Creek watershed, Northeast Nebraska
[00:01:25.830]it dumps right into the Missouri.
[00:01:27.950]We have about 600 acres of row crop,
[00:01:30.050]200 acres of pasture, we rent out pasture
[00:01:34.300]and we custom graze cow-calf pairs.
[00:01:37.690]Have a diverse rotation, Corn, Soybeans, Oat, Peas
[00:01:41.920]and actually whatever other spring crop
[00:01:44.310]I can come up with, I'm trying to get more in the rotation.
[00:01:47.780]So, I didn't get the memo today on the big red.
[00:01:52.790]I decided I would go basically
[00:01:55.790]by my Husker black shirt today so,
[00:01:58.760]but my wife Jolene here she's in red.
[00:02:02.960]We have children, actually our son Cole was flying
[00:02:06.280]the airplane when we took this picture.
[00:02:08.520]He's working his way through college
[00:02:10.060]in Rapid City and we have a daughter in Salt Lake City
[00:02:14.240]whose a physician.
[00:02:15.870]So we've kind of lost our labor pool,
[00:02:17.840]it's a ma and pa operation as of now,
[00:02:22.720]other than when we can get nieces and nephews to help.
[00:02:26.180]So, I got interested in soil health about five years ago
[00:02:33.010]and what I want to talk about today is the journey
[00:02:36.920]I've been on, the practices I've been using
[00:02:40.460]and how I'm making a living at it.
[00:02:49.280]I took this picture several years ago,
[00:02:52.520]actually this could be in a David Montgomery book
[00:02:55.380]if you think of it, there's a lot of history
[00:02:57.550]to this photo, this is on my farm.
[00:03:02.070]I've no-tilled this particular ground for 20 years
[00:03:06.580]and the soil on the right there,
[00:03:08.980]as far back as I can find out has never been tilled,
[00:03:12.570]before I started farming it, it was an upland meadow.
[00:03:16.820]The soil on the left there was intensively tilled
[00:03:19.650]for 80+ years, and there's never been a fence laying there
[00:03:27.530]at the top of the hill, so basically that's tillage erosion.
[00:03:32.430]Over the 80 something years, so 20 foot apart
[00:03:36.220]I took a soil sample, now I didn't collaborate
[00:03:39.260]with David Montgomery on this slide that you've seen
[00:03:42.270]earlier today, it looked really similar.
[00:03:44.440]But this is about the same time I took a soil sample,
[00:03:47.190]this is 20 feet apart.
[00:03:49.400]So look at that soil on the left, I've been no-tilling that
[00:03:52.630]for 20 years and it's still subsoil,
[00:03:56.550]it's still horizon B subsoil.
[00:04:00.070]The soil on the right, that's got twice the organic matter
[00:04:04.130]and I've been farming it the same for 20 years.
[00:04:07.740]So what's gotten me excited with soil health
[00:04:11.080]is now they're telling me that I could possibly
[00:04:13.120]make that soil on the left, look like the right.
[00:04:17.210]I could regenerate it, because the soil on the right
[00:04:19.740]that's our cash cow, that's where we can get more out
[00:04:24.220]than we put in, and that's how we make a living.
[00:04:28.040]So I had to come up with a game plan.
[00:04:31.530]Before Soybeans, I've been going with Rye,
[00:04:34.290]Triticale, been terminating as late as possible.
[00:04:37.620]This year I waited till the Soybeans were up,
[00:04:40.460]we had really late spring, before Corn,
[00:04:45.190]maybe some more legumes I've been working on a winter Pea
[00:04:47.730]hurry batch and some Oats some Brassicas with it,
[00:04:52.200]and then I have my, I still include a spring crop
[00:04:57.160]and I've always had a spring crop and I've tried to go
[00:05:00.140]to 30% spring crop, Oats, Peas, Wheat.
[00:05:04.570]Because that's where I have my chance to really
[00:05:07.150]get the jump on the biology.
[00:05:09.400]I can come in with a summer cover crop,
[00:05:13.610]after the spring crop,
[00:05:15.510]and to get as more biomass as possible,
[00:05:19.340]and then I've been bringing cattle on
[00:05:23.180]just to help with the establishment costs
[00:05:25.240]of the cover crops, we don't own any cattle ourselves.
[00:05:28.980]I have a brother in law with a large herd,
[00:05:31.200]and so far we've been mainly winter grazing.
[00:05:34.960]I know the next step I wanna make is to get
[00:05:37.870]into summer rotational.
[00:05:41.460]So in order to get started, I have a progression
[00:05:43.790]of five years of slides here, practices I've been doing.
[00:05:48.710]First we gotta think about feeding that cash cow,
[00:05:50.600]we gotta get a jump start on the biology.
[00:05:53.010]So, this is about five years ago, this field had been
[00:05:57.300]in Oats, baled up the straw and planted, this is my first
[00:06:03.230]attempt at a more complex mix.
[00:06:06.060]Oats, Peas, Radishes and Turnips,
[00:06:10.690]and this is late in the fall, we finally brought in
[00:06:13.250]some bred Heifers and you know around two head
[00:06:15.790]of bred Heifers per acre, actually I think we invested 100
[00:06:20.445]in that field before we put them in there.
[00:06:22.930]So it was winter grazed all winter,
[00:06:27.530]at first it looked like they tromped it all flat
[00:06:30.460]and we got snow on it, but it's just like putting
[00:06:33.610]your forage in a fridge, really good forage quality
[00:06:37.370]all winter, I always got a kick outta watching 'em.
[00:06:42.170]They'd start pulling up a peat mine and everything else
[00:06:45.300]would come up with it and your first concern is I'm gonna
[00:06:49.730]have way too much cover in the spring.
[00:06:54.450]They're not gonna get it all, well that's the next spring
[00:06:57.630]actually, I was like yikes they took too much off!
[00:07:01.640]I had bare soil there, and since then I've always made sure
[00:07:06.400]I have at least 100% ground cover.
[00:07:09.910]Corn did really well though and this is mid-summer.
[00:07:16.240]I thought I would challenge the biology
[00:07:18.630]in the cover crop I had on the year before,
[00:07:20.620]so up to this point this field had only had 30 units
[00:07:24.890]of nitrogen on it, this is an irrigated field.
[00:07:27.340]Still had really good cover on June 28th.
[00:07:30.660]So I just side-dressed 90 pounds more.
[00:07:33.780]So with 120 units of nitrogen I was gonna see
[00:07:38.270]what kind of yield I would get.
[00:07:40.750]In September we interseeded Rye, Triticale,
[00:07:44.330]Turnips we had real good moisture,
[00:07:47.510]good establishment, it just doesn't grow a whole lot
[00:07:51.500]until the leaves come down.
[00:07:56.000]The last could years that went to more drilling.
[00:07:59.130]Trying to get my Corn out earlier
[00:08:02.500]to drill it in but that fall,
[00:08:06.260]with the 120 units of nitrogen, really good Corn
[00:08:10.070]in this area here, this 240 plus.
[00:08:13.320]But you can see the heavy residue there,
[00:08:15.310]really buried the cover cop,
[00:08:18.077]you just see a little green along the Corn.
[00:08:22.510]Next spring it was there though, I like to get a little
[00:08:27.743]more biomass than this outta my rye,
[00:08:30.250]and this is one of the first years we're doing it
[00:08:33.610]and I had terminated it the day before I drilled.
[00:08:35.900]I'm drilling Soybeans, and that's my drill.
[00:08:39.870]A John Deer No-Till Drill, there's that field
[00:08:44.440]later that summer, actually I raised
[00:08:49.681]the conventional Soybeans for seed so this
[00:08:52.010]is a conventional Soybean test plot.
[00:08:54.960]So there was no Glyphosate put on these Soybeans
[00:08:57.120]after planting, actually that's a UNL variety right there.
[00:09:01.881]That went 78 bushels an acre.
[00:09:04.840]So I thought that was a really good response
[00:09:07.720]to the cover crop, there was some,
[00:09:12.130]this is the first I noticed getting weed escapes.
[00:09:18.180]With wherever I had holes in the rye, wherever there was
[00:09:22.650]thin stands I would get some weed escapes.
[00:09:25.712]I think you can see a Mare's Tail up there.
[00:09:27.750]I have Glyphosate resistant Mare's Tail,
[00:09:31.170]giant ragweed, and water hemp.
[00:09:37.500]So this is about the second year I was into this,
[00:09:42.350]this field had been in Oats the year before,
[00:09:45.750]cover crop, this year I thought I had a good enough cover
[00:09:49.750]in the spring when I planted the Corn.
[00:09:52.310]Here it is the middle of the summer,
[00:09:54.210]and where'd my residue go?
[00:09:58.290]So looking closer, you can see the biology's
[00:10:02.290]really taking off, everywhere I looked there was
[00:10:04.880]these worm middens and there's last year's residue.
[00:10:09.040]It's getting pulled underground.
[00:10:11.200]But look at the worm castings, this is in the middle
[00:10:14.980]of a dry spell, I think it had irrigation
[00:10:18.170]seven days before this.
[00:10:20.350]So about this time, I was talking with Dan Gillespy
[00:10:24.550]complaining you know, I've been no-tilling
[00:10:27.800]all these years and I started these cover crops
[00:10:29.657]and my organic matter really hadn't improved a whole lot.
[00:10:35.810]So he's like I think you need more carbon in the system
[00:10:38.960]and it's funny how you don't you know,
[00:10:41.110]when you have that answer and almost it hits you in the head
[00:10:44.480]and it's like yep, I need more carbon.
[00:10:48.310]So there's your 80 to one carbon.
[00:10:53.010]Finally got it out of my head that I didn't have
[00:10:55.630]to bale up all the straw, I raised Oats for Certified Seed.
[00:11:00.300]This was a really good Oats field,
[00:11:03.533]it's going well over 150 bushels right in this area.
[00:11:07.090]So I just clipped the heads off with the combine
[00:11:10.640]and went in and drilled a multi-species cover crop.
[00:11:17.130]The weather was dry but there was a good mulch there,
[00:11:21.380]all it took was a little shower to get it going
[00:11:24.090]end of August it started raining
[00:11:26.220]and it rained into September,
[00:11:27.560]and by late September tremendous growth.
[00:11:34.930]I always get a kick out of how different years,
[00:11:36.980]some species will do better than the others.
[00:11:39.350]That's a really good Pea growth, usually they don't
[00:11:42.570]get ahead of the Oats like that.
[00:11:46.330]So again we brought in some bred Heifers.
[00:11:52.090]You wanna see some animals swell up after they've
[00:11:54.810]been on depleted pasture in summer, this is December
[00:11:59.260]close to Christmas, and they're still doing really well.
[00:12:03.290]Notice the stubble that they're standing in,
[00:12:05.960]that is not the straw that I had drilled in.
[00:12:09.140]At this point it almost disintegrated,
[00:12:11.510]that's the basically the Oats that was in the cover crop.
[00:12:16.810]So same place, the following spring that's what
[00:12:20.390]I like to see, that kind of cover.
[00:12:24.110]Normally I woulda planted Corn in there but I just
[00:12:28.267]wanted to switch up my rotation a little bit.
[00:12:30.800]So here I'm drilling Soybeans on May fifth.
[00:12:35.410]And I couldn't find any weeds in this field,
[00:12:38.650]it has a Water Hemp population, Mare's Tail.
[00:12:41.660]I used no Glyphosate in the burn down.
[00:12:45.893]I think I used OpTill as a pre-emergent,
[00:12:49.650]and Clethodim and Ultra Blazer as a post.
[00:12:54.290]So it was really good weed control.
[00:12:58.320]Same spot August 21st, that's conventional Soybeans.
[00:13:03.730]No Glyphosate pre or post, and no insecticide,
[00:13:07.870]no fungicide and I think this works because
[00:13:16.280]of the fact that I have a small grain in the rotation.
[00:13:19.280]To break up that weed cycle and the bug cycle.
[00:13:23.700]There was a few Water Hemp escapes in this field
[00:13:26.370]and it was in places where basically the cattle
[00:13:30.160]congregated, if the ground was bare the Water Hemp
[00:13:33.170]got an early start.
[00:13:39.480]I'd been working on a winter Pea and this is looking
[00:13:42.240]for something to put in the Soybeans, after Soybeans.
[00:13:45.880]A cover crop to establish in the fall,
[00:13:49.390]University of Wyoming came out with a winter Pea
[00:13:52.820]and it's over-wintered on my farm for three years now.
[00:13:56.960]So these particular Peas, this is a picture of 'em
[00:13:59.330]in December, after a late Soybean harvest.
[00:14:03.690]They survived 22 below zero on January 21st that year.
[00:14:10.300]That's those Peas this spring.
[00:14:14.170]I'd seeded them kinda thin, the seed's really scarce yet.
[00:14:17.660]But trying to find a legume that I can put
[00:14:21.550]in a mix, you know eventually I'll wanna have that in a mix.
[00:14:25.740]Before Corn, trying to find a legume that I can put
[00:14:28.720]in a mix and get nitrogen fixation before Corn.
[00:14:32.320]So I planted Corn into these Peas this day
[00:14:34.730]and I didn't terminate 'em, until the Corn was up.
[00:14:39.920]So I had burned off the end rows ahead of time.
[00:14:42.990]There was some Poison Hemlock on the field borders anyhow.
[00:14:47.340]Interesting story of this field, is you know we're getting
[00:14:51.250]to the fourth year of these cover crops,
[00:14:54.360]so I'm like I wanna see what this legume's gonna do for me
[00:14:58.080]in the biology in the soil, so I left 18 rows
[00:15:01.010]in the middle of the field no fertilizer.
[00:15:04.550]The rest of the field I just side-dressed
[00:15:07.240]when it was knee high with nitrogen.
[00:15:14.285]So okay that's still on.
[00:15:15.760]Anyhow, we've been talking a lot lately about
[00:15:22.850]nutrient density in our food,
[00:15:24.980]and I'm sure a lot of you have heard about Brix readings?
[00:15:28.360]On plants, it's measuring the sugar content
[00:15:33.536]of our foodstuffs, so I thought it would really
[00:15:37.110]be interesting to know the Brix readings
[00:15:38.980]on the difference between the unfertilized
[00:15:41.530]and the fertilized Corn.
[00:15:43.100]So I really wanted to get a Brix meter.
[00:15:45.200]I was looking for one, actually I didn't realize
[00:15:48.020]I actually had a Brix meter.
[00:15:50.710](audience laughing)
[00:15:51.990]I had a couple hundred of 'em.
[00:15:55.922]We have a huge Raccoon population,
[00:15:59.713]right along our creek there or whatever,
[00:16:02.700]they totally wiped out all 18 rows, all 800 feet
[00:16:07.620]and they had 200 acres of corn to pick from.
[00:16:10.820]So this was to the row, 90 pound side-dressed.
[00:16:15.170]This was right before hardest, I think Jolene was running
[00:16:18.470]the combine that day, I think she said that that might have
[00:16:22.890]made 50, they didn't quite get it all,
[00:16:25.780]and it was hitting 200, this is dry land it was hitting
[00:16:29.180]200 on the areas right beside it.
[00:16:31.710]So I can't wait to try this test again next year.
[00:16:34.940]I'm gonna get a couple miles away from the creek
[00:16:38.044]and see if they'll go that far.
[00:16:43.440]So this summer this is some cover crop we established
[00:16:48.080]after Oats, just to try to get more carbon.
[00:16:52.930]I've been trying to work in more summer plants
[00:16:57.130]into the mix, I've got some grazing Corn
[00:16:59.470]and some Sunflower there.
[00:17:02.250]But it has to get in early, once I get into later August
[00:17:07.310]I think you have to stick mostly with the cool season crops.
[00:17:12.090]Otherwise there's Oats, I think African Cabbage
[00:17:15.200]and some forage collards in there.
[00:17:20.460]Do cover crops pay?
[00:17:25.120]That's what everybody always has to ask
[00:17:26.980]you know is this gonna work?
[00:17:29.660]Actually this is an attempt just to show my expenses
[00:17:33.610]and income with various practices,
[00:17:37.150]of just the cover crop itself
[00:17:39.630]and the fact that I'm only winter grazing
[00:17:42.940]there isn't as much income on the right side.
[00:17:45.670]So, I have my establishment costs on the left there,
[00:17:50.030]that's drilling and my seed costs.
[00:17:52.490]So average across all acres 32.30
[00:17:55.660]and this is the incomes I've been getting
[00:17:57.760]off of the grazing 24, so there's a loss there.
[00:18:00.920]7.64 an acre across the operation
[00:18:03.850]trying to incorporate cover crops in the whole operation
[00:18:06.890]to improve soil health, I can deal with that.
[00:18:11.590]Because this, the benefits come with the cost savings
[00:18:16.040]I've been seeing, gradually over the last five years
[00:18:20.350]I've been slowly backing off on my inputs.
[00:18:26.736]So for example this year on the nitrogen.
[00:18:28.730]I went into the records and I looked up how much
[00:18:31.160]nitrogen I bought, purchased this year
[00:18:33.840]and then looked at how much corn actually was produced.
[00:18:37.570]I was down to .59 pounds of applied nitrogen
[00:18:42.370]per bushel of corn produced this year.
[00:18:45.450]Irrigation, this was a wet year this year, so I averaged in
[00:18:49.460]the last three years, I'm under six inches applied now.
[00:18:55.050]Seed costs, with the rotation I'm in I'm using less traits
[00:19:01.910]on my Corn seed than ever, I've actually purchased
[00:19:04.410]quite a bit of conventional for the next year,
[00:19:07.540]and I'm all conventional Soybeans now,
[00:19:10.810]with no seed treatments.
[00:19:13.620]Herbicide, half of my corn I couldn't justify
[00:19:17.460]a post-treatment this year,
[00:19:19.730]and no Glyphosate on the Soybeans.
[00:19:23.170]I was kinda surprised on insecticide,
[00:19:25.150]I went back in the records and looked when the last time
[00:19:28.210]I had purchased insecticide, it was 2011.
[00:19:33.170]I might have applied some in the last year or two
[00:19:36.330]but it wouldn't have been anything I purchased.
[00:19:39.480]Fungicide, none, machinery operations,
[00:19:43.400]obviously you're saving money with the no tillage
[00:19:48.240]and I'm not getting the sprayer out of the shed
[00:19:49.800]for any insecticide or fungicide pass.
[00:19:54.420]Warning, I've done this over time.
[00:19:58.080]As far as cutting costs.
[00:20:02.350]So what I attempted to do here, is compared my cost
[00:20:06.230]with the UNL crop budgets, I don't know if how many
[00:20:08.830]of you are familiar with the UNL crop budgets.
[00:20:11.990]They'll purchase every year,
[00:20:13.330]or they will come up with every year,
[00:20:20.530]and for each crop they'll have a variety of practices
[00:20:23.950]throughout the state, and the cost of producing Corn,
[00:20:28.120]or Soybeans, or Wheat, and what I did is I went through 'em
[00:20:33.690]and I looked up the lowest cost practice they had
[00:20:38.320]and for instance on irrigated Corn,
[00:20:42.420]the lowest cost practice was irrigated Corn
[00:20:47.760]it was no-tilled into Soybeans.
[00:20:49.460]270 bushel yield Eastern Nebraska,
[00:20:53.020]well I didn't have that yield,
[00:20:54.360]but I had a lower cost, 2.79.
[00:21:00.400]This is using, to make it apples to apples comparison,
[00:21:03.620]I'm using their land and machinery costs,
[00:21:07.120]and then adding in my cover crop costs.
[00:21:09.850]So that's the break evens I was coming up with.
[00:21:15.990]Example, irrigated Soybeans I think they had
[00:21:18.990]a 73 bushel yield no-tilled drilled
[00:21:22.050]with the break even of 7.45.
[00:21:23.940]I had 70 bushel it was 6.52.
[00:21:30.330]What's really hard to come up with is a cost
[00:21:33.300]for Wheat, I raised Oats down here,
[00:21:38.440]I don't know if you could get as good a Oats yield
[00:21:41.400]as we can up by the South Dakota border.
[00:21:45.980]So what I came up with is,
[00:21:48.710]I used the cost that I used to produce Oats
[00:21:53.160]and I put in a Wheat yield, I looked into the average
[00:21:59.060]Wheat yield down here and the variety trials.
[00:22:02.470]I think it was University of Nebraska Wheat yield trials
[00:22:05.950]average yield the last four years was 82 bushels an acre.
[00:22:12.550]I put in 78 bushel Wheat, with my costs,
[00:22:17.920]the problem we have in this area is we have a high land cost
[00:22:21.830]when you're putting a small grain in.
[00:22:23.690]You know we have such good yields of Corn,
[00:22:25.980]Soybeans so there was a $260 land cost.
[00:22:30.310]I'm hoping rent is getting to be less than that
[00:22:33.380]around here, but this is a $260 dryland rent.
[00:22:39.640]Dryland land cost and I had a $5.04 bushel break even.
[00:22:47.750]You know you could be tempted to take the Wheat
[00:22:49.660]out of the rotation, the problem is then
[00:22:53.690]you don't get the low cost on the others.
[00:22:56.440]It's the system together, I guess what I'm trying
[00:22:59.860]to say is, if you're not making a whole lot of money
[00:23:03.940]on that third crop, the whole system is making money.
[00:23:07.890]I can hedge a profit on these break evens
[00:23:10.280]and I have been the last two, three years.
[00:23:12.450]I've been hedging aggressively on my prices.
[00:23:20.030]So, soil biology and organic matter
[00:23:22.380]is our cash cows, and we need to feed them.
[00:23:26.290]Cover crops, more carbon,
[00:23:28.830]and we need to keep the ground covered.
[00:23:31.740]Stray from 75 bushel Wheat contains
[00:23:33.890]50 pounds of nitrogen, five pounds of phosphorous,
[00:23:36.830]100 pounds of potassium, 3,000 pounds of carbon.
[00:23:40.560]This was from Duane Beck a couple of weeks ago.
[00:23:44.040]So when we're tempted to take off straw,
[00:23:47.850]Corn residue all for that matter,
[00:23:49.680]we have to put that cost in there
[00:23:52.440]and it's really hard to replace that carbon.
[00:23:55.510]You have to grow a cover crop.
[00:23:58.410]So my payoff, less inputs, as good or better yields.
[00:24:03.390]Better water infiltration.
[00:24:06.500]The soil just doesn't move on my farm anymore.
[00:24:10.452]A lot of my waterways I've done away with.
[00:24:15.870]Better water infiltration, therefore less erosion.
[00:24:19.220]Almost none with no-till,
[00:24:21.780]and then more water holding capacity.
[00:24:24.300]You know I know there's some argument over
[00:24:27.200]what 1% organic matter holds, I mean is it as much
[00:24:31.200]as an inch in six inches?
[00:24:32.530]Jay what, it's something that's debated.
[00:24:38.578]Depending on soil type.
[00:24:39.440]Right.
[00:24:41.219]Yeah it's 1%, decent amount.
[00:24:43.370]Yeah, let's say it's a 1/2 inch then,
[00:24:47.450]so I was doing the math if all our Ag land
[00:24:51.770]in Nebraska could gain 1% and we would gain a 1/2 inch
[00:24:57.510]of moisture that would be like
[00:24:59.660]one and 1/2 lake McConaughys for storage.
[00:25:04.200]So I'm on the natural resource commission
[00:25:08.240]for the state and you know we travel a lot
[00:25:11.230]around the state, and I see a lot of things
[00:25:15.470]that's going on, Western Nebraska alls you hear about
[00:25:19.431]is recharge and re-timing.
[00:25:21.400]They wanna figure out how to build a structure
[00:25:23.900]to hold their water so they can re-time it for irrigation.
[00:25:27.410]Well, that's part of our answer.
[00:25:30.460]Probably not quite as sexy, can't go water skiing on it.
[00:25:34.695](Jeff chuckling)
[00:25:37.680]And then last but not least, water quality.
[00:25:44.010]That's a huge issue for being on the commission
[00:25:48.450]what we see, just one example, we worked with
[00:25:53.150]the City of Hastings 25,000 people.
[00:25:57.670]They had to put in water treatment that cost 45 million,
[00:26:04.050]and that's $1,800 for every person in the town.
[00:26:09.970]To treat their water, they have nitrate plume
[00:26:14.040]coming in from Ag land to the west
[00:26:16.590]and that's also causing uranium to be released
[00:26:18.950]into the water also.
[00:26:21.310]So at what point will you know,
[00:26:24.160]will they start to look to us people
[00:26:26.270]in Ag and say, can you guys do a little better?
[00:26:29.330]So a huge help in water quality
[00:26:34.230]is if we can get that living root
[00:26:36.300]in the soil, year round.
[00:26:39.450]The better organic matter.
[00:26:42.160]To hold the water, and I think we can make it pay too.
[00:26:48.780]So, that field in the middle there,
[00:26:50.740]that's the raccoon field so,
[00:26:53.587](audience laughing)
[00:26:55.530]anyhow, thanks for hearing me.
[00:26:58.041](audience applause booms)
[00:27:05.090]Questions for Jeff as we switch presenters here?
[00:27:12.440]Just a matter of interest,
[00:27:13.580]how much rainfall do you think you could
[00:27:15.260]absorb before you would have runoff?
[00:27:18.670]Can you take six inches or eight inches?
[00:27:20.850]Yeah we had, in this past year we had a week period
[00:27:25.810]where we had two three inch rains.
[00:27:28.270]The only water I seen moving on our farm
[00:27:30.650]was Bow Creek came out of its banks.
[00:27:36.080]Very little water movement.
[00:27:38.010]I don't, we don't have the Crofton Clay, our uplands
[00:27:41.870]are sands, Thurman sands so we already have
[00:27:46.040]pretty good infiltration.
[00:27:48.110]But I have pictures of our farm 30 years ago.
[00:27:53.480]It was from an airplane a picture taken
[00:27:56.230]and there is erosion on it,
[00:27:58.080]you can see the water was running down the hill,
[00:28:00.787]and it doesn't do that anymore.
[00:28:06.580]Did you have better luck
[00:28:08.500]drilling in to standing Oat stubble
[00:28:10.680]or chopped straw laying on the ground?
[00:28:13.800]Definitely standing, that right after you get done
[00:28:20.210]combining and you have that straw on the ground
[00:28:23.300]it's really tough unless you can get a really sunny day.
[00:28:27.800]I was really surprised at how good that worked.
[00:28:32.260]You mentioned you did some flying
[00:28:34.680]on this last year, we flew on Rye and Turnips in Corn.
[00:28:41.570]We didn't get much of a stand and in standing Soybeans
[00:28:44.510]we got a pretty good stand.
[00:28:45.600]What's been your experience?
[00:28:50.050]The flying on I've done I've had pretty good luck.
[00:28:55.720]I guess the consistency I don't like.
[00:29:00.290]I'll have sandy knolls will have a thin
[00:29:03.450]stand of Rye on and that's where I'll have
[00:29:05.730]Mare's Tail escapes, Soybeans I've flown on Oats
[00:29:13.310]and Clover had perfect conditions, it rained on it,
[00:29:18.290]and the insects ate all the clover as it came up.
[00:29:23.150]I have a drill, I'm trying to, I'm just trying to get
[00:29:27.710]my crops sequenced so I can get crops out earlier
[00:29:32.300]and get the drill to work.
[00:29:35.600]Okay, thanks for the questions,
[00:29:36.710]we'll have more questions for Jeff during that panel,
[00:29:38.900]so thank you Jeff for your time.

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Nebraska Cover Crop & Soil Health Conference - Jeff Steffen

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