On this episode of Conservation Ag Update, brought to you by Yetter Farm Equipment, Planet Earth Agronomy co-founder Mitchell Fiene reveals a checklist for farmers to consider when shopping for biologicals.
Brownsburg, Ind., no-tiller Mike Starkey shares a story of no-till resilience during a historic flooding event in the Hoosier State.
In the Cover Crop Connection, Mackane Vogel catches up with Koch agronomist Matt Fryer for some cover crop seeding and termination tips.
Later in the episode, longtime Iowa no-tiller and strip-tiller Dean Sponheim discusses the psychological challenges of adopting conservation practices after generations of conventional tillage.
The Video of the Week features highlights from the Cedar Creek Farmers Fall Field Day at Dornacker Prairie Acres in West Bend, Wis., where some cutting-edge technology is doing wonders for Al Dornacker's cows.
This episode of Conservation Ag Update is brought to you by Yetter Farm Equipment.
Since 1930, Yetter Farm Equipment has been providing farmers with profitable solutions. From residue management and fertilizer placement to seedbed preparation, our equipment is designed to maximize your inputs, save you time, and deliver a strong return on investment.
Explore our full line of planter attachments, precision fertilizer placement options, strip-till units, and stalk rollers at yetterco.com. Let Yetter help you prepare your equipment lineup for success today.
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TRANSCRIPT
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- Buying Biologicals? Here’s a Checklist…
- Historic Rainfall Hits Indiana No-Till Fields
- Cover Crop Planting & Termination Best Practices
- Navigating Psychological Barriers of Making Changes on the Farm
- Red Light Tech on Display at Cedar Creek Farmers Field Day
Buying Biologicals? Here’s a Checklist…
Our team got an exclusive look at some of the latest biological trials during the Planet Earth Agronomy Research Farm Tour in Black Earth, Wis. Afterwards, we caught up with Mitchell Fiene from Planet Earth Agronomy and asked him for a checklist you should use when shopping for biologicals.
“You look at the label, and you want a high concentration of active ingredients. A lot of these products have very scientific names. It’s not necessarily important that you know what all that stuff means because you can Google it. But you want to make sure they’re high CFUs, high active ingredients. What that means is one times ten to the eighth or ninth exponent, millions or billions of microbes should be delivered in order for them to be effective in the soil. If they’re lower than that, and they’re in the thousands, they probably won’t do a good job of surviving against what’s already there in the soil. So, you get less of a functionality there.”
“Next is a little more complicated. The species of those microbes should naturally sporulate in our environment, and you can learn that just by Google searching the names. If you look at the label, and Google search them, the first sentence on Wikipedia will tell you whether they can naturally sporulate or not. If they do sporulate that means they’re more durable than the other products on the market. They can likely make it through your spray tank and survive being applied out in our environment vs. another product that might not be able to survive the spray tank mixes.”
Fiene says it’s also important to check if the product has a specific function, if it has fermentation requirements and keep an eye on its shelf life because some products have a short window of viability.
Historic Rainfall Hits Indiana No-Till Fields
Many farmers in Indiana are dealing with the aftermath of an historic flooding event, with some areas in the state seeing nearly 15 inches of rain last week.
Here’s a look at some of the damage on the south side of Indianapolis. I called Mike Starkey, who no-tills in nearby Brownsburg, to see how he’s doing. Luckily, he says he didn’t get hit quite as hard as others, and all is good, especially thanks to the power of no-till.
“We had a 4-inch rain from Friday night through Sunday morning. At noon, it finally quit. Four inches. I was walking in my corn field at 6 o’clock with no mud on my feet. It was amazing! I was walking out there with regular shoes. I go, ‘OK.’ It just shows you the soil structure that we have is just incredible. If I went out there now, it might be a little bit sticky because it’s constantly rained.”
Glad to hear Mike’s doing well. This was classified as a 1-in-1,000-year rainfall event in parts of east-central Indiana. That means there’s about a 0.1% chance of an event of this magnitude occurring in any given year.
Cover Crop Planting & Termination Best Practices
In our latest edition of the No-Till Farmer Newsletter, you may have seen our No-Till Innovator Special Report which includes tips and advice from expert no-tillers, agronomists and researchers. Here’s one agronomist we interviewed for the report who had some interesting notes about best practices for cover crop planting and termination timing.
“Coming into spring and trying to decide on when to terminate cover crops. You know that can be a touchy decision there because if we leave that growing cover crop too long and it does get dry, it's just pulling moisture transpiration pulling moisture out of the ground, right? So if we terminate at the right time, it can have the opposite effect and be a blanket and hold moisture in our mulch. Now, if it gets wet in the spring, which is often the case as well, terminating too early can have an adverse effect, right? Where we've got a mulch over the soil holding that moisture in, it keeps raining, it's too wet to get in the field and plant. So there's always kind of a fine line between when's the right time to terminate. And that's just some hurdles, some extra management decisions there when it comes to a cover crop farmer versus a non-co crop farmer.”
“Just be aware when you're selecting cover crops to establish in the fall — just be aware of how easy they are to terminate. Some cover crops are harder to terminate, requiring a higher use rate of certain herbicides. Just know what herbicides those are and are they compatible with your crop you're planning to plant in the spring.”
Be sure to check out the No-Till Innovator report whether it be your physical copy or the digital download of the report at no till farmer dot com to learn more from experts in the world of no-till.
Navigating Psychological Barriers of Making Changes on the Farm
After more than 30 years in strip-till and no-till, Dean Sponheim has seen the wins, setbacks and hard lessons learned that only time can teach. The northeast Iowa farmer talked about his journey at the National Strip-Till Conference earlier this month and addressed some of those psychological barriers he grappled with when adopting conservation practices.
“Over the 20 some years I’ve been doing this (custom work), when trying to get people started, the biggest drawback that I have seen is right here (the mind). That gray matter between your ears. And to this day, it still bothers me. Anything that we start new or do new, I have sleepless nights and I usually can sleep pretty well. If you want to ask my wife, probably too well. I’m kind of lout too, but it’s the brain. I want you to ask yourself these questions. Why do we change? And I’m not talking, why do we change toothpaste? Why do we change the cereal we eat? I’m talking about why do we change jobs? Why do we do things differently on the farm? That’s basically like changing jobs. What motivates us? And that really comes down to you.”
Look forward to sharing more from Dean’s presentation in the coming weeks on No-TillFarmer.com.
Video of the Week: Red Light Tech on Display at Cedar Creek Farmers Field Day
Let’s wrap things up with our Video of the Week, and an action-packed Cedar Creek Farmers Field Day in West Bend, Wis.
Al Dornacker hosted the event, giving people an up-close look at his no-till operation, cover crops and low-disturbance manure injection system. He’s also incorporating dry wall in his compost because it contains sulfur and calcium.
Meanwhile, in the dairy barn, Dave Klumb from White Leaf Technologies gave us the scoop on the cutting-edge red light therapy being used on Al’s cows. He says the red LED lighting helps heal and repair tissue, reduce pain and inflammation, improve muscle health and increase blood circulation which ultimately leads to better milk production. Blue lights can also be used to kill harmful bacteria and fungi.
What do you think? Send me your thoughts and story ideas to Nnewman@LessiterMedia.com. Thanks for watching. Until next time, for more stories visit no-tillfarmer.com, striptillfarmer.com and covercropstrategies.com.
Facts Only
* Mitchell Fiene is a co-founder of Planet Earth Agronomy.
* Mitchell Fiene recommends checking biological labels for high concentrations of active ingredients (10^8 or 10^9 CFUs) and the ability to sporulate.
* Mike Starkey is a no-tiller in Brownsburg, Indiana.
* Some areas of east-central Indiana experienced a rainfall event described as a 1-in-1,000-year event.
* Certain areas in Indiana received nearly 15 inches of rain in one week.
* Matt Fryer is a Koch agronomist.
* Dean Sponheim is a strip-tiller and no-tiller in northeast Iowa.
* Al Dornacker operates a no-till operation at Dornacker Prairie Acres in West Bend, Wisconsin.
* Al Dornacker incorporates drywall into compost for sulfur and calcium.
* Dave Klumb is with White Leaf Technologies.
* White Leaf Technologies provides red and blue LED lighting for livestock.
* Yetter Farm Equipment provides residue management, fertilizer placement, and seedbed preparation equipment.
Executive Summary
Agricultural conservation practices are being implemented across the Midwest to improve soil resilience and livestock health. In Indiana, no-till farming demonstrated high soil structure stability during a historic 1-in-1,000-year rainfall event, allowing fields to remain navigable despite significant precipitation. Management of cover crops requires precise timing for termination to balance moisture retention against the risk of excessive wetness during spring planting.
The transition to these practices involves both technical and psychological hurdles. While biological soil additives offer potential benefits, their efficacy depends on active ingredient concentration and the ability of microbes to survive the application process. Beyond the soil, precision technology is extending into livestock management, with red light therapy used in dairy barns to potentially improve tissue repair and milk production. These shifts represent a broader movement toward low-disturbance farming, though the adoption process is often hindered by the psychological difficulty of abandoning generational conventional tillage methods.
Full Take
The strongest version of this narrative is that conservation agriculture is a holistic system where soil health, psychological adaptation, and precision technology converge to create a more resilient food system. It positions the farmer not just as a laborer, but as a manager of complex biological and psychological ecosystems.
The content functions as a vendor-supported ecosystem. While the advice provided is practical, the structural framing ties the success of these conservation efforts to specific equipment and technologies. The narrative moves seamlessly from "soil resilience" to "precision fertilizer placement options," creating a loop where the solution to a natural problem is an industrial product. This is a classic integration of educational content and product placement.
Patterns detected: ARC-0043 Authority Game
The underlying paradigm is one of "technological optimism"—the belief that the frictions of nature (floods, soil degradation) and the frictions of the human mind (resistance to change) can be solved through a combination of better data, better biologicals, and better machinery. The unstated assumption is that the transition to no-till is universally beneficial and that the primary barriers are merely psychological or technical, rather than economic or systemic.
Who benefits most here are the equipment and biological vendors who profit from the transition. The second-order consequence is a shift in the farmer's identity from an intuitive steward of the land to a technician managing a suite of high-tech inputs.
Bridge Questions:
1. How do the long-term costs of biological and precision equipment compare to the long-term yields of these practices?
2. What evidence exists for the efficacy of red light therapy in cows outside of vendor-provided testimonials?
3. How might these practices differ in efficacy across varying soil types not mentioned here?
Counterstrike Scan: A coordinated influence campaign would use "success stories" of resilience to create a fear of missing out (FOMO) among conventional farmers, pushing them toward specific high-cost equipment. The content here follows a standard marketing-education hybrid model but lacks the aggressive urgency of a targeted campaign.