Growing No-till Wheat with Cover Crops in NW Minnesota

Fourth generation producers, Kari Olson, Nicole Strafelda, and their dad Rob Olson demonstrate how they harvest wheat and plant cover crops on their farm in Northwestern Minnesota. Travis Doeden, Soil Conservationist, NRCS, joins them as they discuss the benefits and the challenges of no-till farming with cover crops on their 2,300 acres of corn, wheat, and soybeans. Kari shows how they use their new stripper-header to spread wheat chaff more evenly across the field. Nicole helps out with driving the grain cart and loading the cover crop seed mix into the drill seeder, while Rob proudly oversees his daughters hard at work in their wheat field. They discuss profits, inputs, and yields as well as their many EQIP projects, including bio-strips, pollinator planting, sediment control structure, windbreaks, and the Department of Transportation snow fencing along a nearby highway.
Videography by Dan Balluff
For more information about soil health agricultural practices please visit the Minnesota NRCS website at: www.nrcs.usda.gov/conservatio...
And for more videos about other NRCS conservation-related projects please visit the Minnesota NRCS UA-cam channel at: / @minnesotanrcs
www.nrcs.usda.gov
/ nrcs_mn
Time stamps:
00:00:00 Introduction to Nicole Strafelda, Kari Olson, and Rob Olson
00:04:12 Introduction to Travis Doeden, Soil Conservationist, NRCS
00:07:15 Farming with cover crops
00:05:18 Benefits of no-till farming and cover crops, profits, inputs, and yields
00:19:19 Conservation practices
00:20:10 DOT fencing and pollinator planting
00:21:00 No-till gardening
00:22:05 4 generations of farming
#covercrops
#soilhealth
#regenerativeagriculture

[@scottschaeffer8920]

Bravo! I like the stripper head, the higher stubble catches more snow, and taller stubble might help ground nesting wildlife. Pollinator strips-I hope this becomes a normal site on working farms!

[@TioPablitoGaviria]

They need drive more slow during seeding! It helps a lot decreasing weed germination!

[@anamnesiser]

Worms and fungus?
Or are they still spraying (poisoning) the land? 🤔

[@TioPablitoGaviria]

Glyphosat is not harming Earthworms.
Tillage harms them a lot!
Take a spade and start digging in a No-till crop where weeds are sprayed off before seeding and also dig in a soil that was tilled before seeding! You will see the no-till soil has much more active soil life 🪱