DIRT Workshop Roundup: Strip Tillage, Cover Crops, Relay Crops, and Grazing

This is our final episode of season three. What a great season it has been! To close out season three, we wanted to bring you a highlight reel from the recent DIRT workshop. However, with two full days of material and dozens of experts weighing in on a variety of topics - there was no way to condense things down to a 30 minute Soil Sense episode. So instead, I chose to pull clips from four different individuals, each of which weighed in on a different panel during the DIRT Workshop.

Today’s guests were chosen not only for great information and stories, but also because they have not yet been featured on this podcast.You’ll hear from Steven Schuster, a farmer in Minto, North Dakota, talking about strip tillage, then will hear from Stefan Gailans, who is with the Practical Farmers of Iowa talking about cover crops, then Russ Gesch from USDA ARS based out of Morris, MN who shared about relay cropping, and will finish today’s episode with rancher Jerry Doan from McKenzie, ND who describes some of this practices grazing cover crops.

“It’s not necessarily about getting the highest yield. It’s about having the most profit from the yield that you are getting, and controlling risk.” - Steven Schuster

“A living cover crop is still standing up. Those row units can move through that a little better, so that they don’t plug. They can cut through the cover crop in the soil, get good depth control, and cover up that furrow again.” - Stefan Gailans (on planting soybeans green)

“We call these winter oilseed ‘cash cover crops’, because we’re wanting to harvest them to tap into new markets, but also getting those environmental benefits of using it as a cover crop.” - Russ Gesch, Ph.D. (on relay cropping camelina/soybean)

“When I was growing up, it was wheat and summer fallow, and half of that soil is in South Dakota because that’s where it blew to back in those days. And I didn’t know if we could bring those soils back...and we’ve been really impressed by how we ARE bringing those back.” - Jerry Doan

This Week on Soil Sense:

• Steven Schuster, farmer from Minto, ND talks about strip tillage
  
• Stefan Gailans, research and field crops director for the Practical Farmers of Iowa talks about cover crops
  
• Russ Gesch, Ph.D., research plant physiologist with USDA ARS in Morris, MN on relay cropping camelina
  
• Jerry Doan, rancher from McKenzie, ND on grazing cover crops
  

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Soil Sense Podcast is hosted by Tim Hammerich of the Future of Agriculture Podcast.