Advancing Soil Health and Profitability in a Corn and Soybean Rotation – Evansville, IN

Pat is a fifth-generation farmer who is continuing in is grandfather and father’s stewardship of the soil.  “Growing up we had dairy cows until the summer of my eighth-grade year, and after selling the cows, we continued doing row crop farming primarily with corn and soybeans and occasionally wheat,” Pat says.

In 2016, Pat’s father asked him if he wanted to do more than just help seasonally when not busy with his day job in IT consulting, and Pat was more than willing to step up to the next level of managing and running the farm.  In that same year, Pat attended the National No-till conference in Indianapolis, IN with a life-long friend who invited him to go.  Pat’s attitude going up to the conference was that no-till was good a practice to implement on his farm’s hills, based on his experience with his father.

After the third day of the conference, Pat called his father and told him they should “Sell all the tillage equipment,” and that “all we need is the planter and the tractors.” His dad’s response was, “Good thing one of us stayed home and grounded.” That spring they planted the whole farm with the no-till planter, and following harvest, they planted cereal rye as a cover crop for the entire farm.

Pat attended the National No-Till conference for the next three years, seeing a huge transformation in the conferences’ content and message.  “The first year, if you were doing no-till you were golden, by the third year, if you were doing just no-tilling but not using cover crops, you were no better than the neighbor who was still plowing,” Pat says.

From 2017 to present, Pat has immersed himself in the regenerative agriculture movement, using 8-12-way, high-biomass cover crop cocktail mixes, planting green and crimping.  He has spent considerable time and money continuing his regenerative agriculture education, attending soil health events in multiple states, along with in-person and online classes including…