Farming

Who has the worst soils?/ Who has the best Soils? How do you maximize below-average soils? Damian Mason talks with Kevin Matthews and Concept AgriTek’s Tyler Meyer about making the most of below-average soils.

Temple's recent upgrade to new concaves in his combine has brought a noticeable improvement. Here are the side by side numbers.

Sometime between your crop's late reproductive stage and mid-winter, you have the opportunity to improve your soil quality and protect it from erosion by planting cover crops. Do you plant cover crops? Chances are, you don’t. Because most farm ground acres lay barren from harvest until planting. Kelly Garrett sees that as a mistake now that he’s seeing big results and financial returns after several years into his cover crop journey. Kelly is joined by Austin Tiefenthaler, a cover crop seed producer, with advice on incorporating cover crops into your operations.

Temple has bugs on his grain sorghum. Luckily he has an expert on hand to tell him what to do about it.

Farming is a business with high capital investment and historically low margins. Successful farming depends on more than just high yields — navigating the financial aspects of the farm is crucial, especially when the farm economy tightens.

Kelly talks about the cover crop mix he uses on his farm, what he likes about the recipe and how he is getting paid to cover crop through his program with TruterraAg. Want more info on how you can get paid to implement sustainable farming practices like cover cropping, no-till and more, visit TruterraAg.com/xtremeag

They sliced and diced this corn early on as the cover crop wouldn't die off. After mowing it, they figured it would just end up being cattle feed, but somehow they managed to use fertility to take it to yield and learned something in the process.

The Member Spotlight is on Iowa’s James Hepp. James — to put it lightly — isn't afraid to try new new things. He got into farming by crafting an arrangement with a retiring operator whose children wanted to retain the farm asset. James shares with Damian some financial and business tips that could help an aspiring young farmer get established.

Mike and Kelly take a look at the root structures of two different wheat seed treatments. Their hope is that they can find a way to control diseases in the soil and plants without using traditional synthetic chemicals.