-Submitted photo
Rockwell City-area farmer James Hepp was the featured speaker for the seminar “Building a No-Till, Strip-Till System Without Deep Pockets" during the 33rd annual National No-Tillage Conference in Louisville, Kentucky, in early January.

ROCKWELL CITY — Without healthy soil, a farmer has nothing — just dirt. That’s a theme that Rockwell City-area farmer James Hepp heard a lot when he spoke at the 33rd annual National No-Tillage Conference in Louisville, Kentucky, in early January.

“I picked up a lot of great advice and insights,” said Hepp, 35, who was the featured speaker for the seminar “Building a No-Till, Strip-Till System Without Deep Pockets.” “Meetings like this remind you to take the ‘t’ out of can’t, become intentional and have goals.”

More than 600 farmers, researchers, educators and industry experts from across the United States attended this no-till conference, as well as attendees from Australia, Canada, Hungary, Italy, New Zealand and beyond.

During Hepp’s presentation, he shared innovative ways to make soil health pay, how to cut the learning curve when getting started with no-till and strip till, and why the reallocation of resources is an overlooked key to boosting return on investment (ROI).

“While no-till and strip till are great conservation practices, that’s not why I started using them about six years ago,” Hepp acknowledged.

-Farm News photo by Darcy Dougherty Maulsby
James Hepp has hosted a number of field days on his farm northwest of Rockwell City to help other farmers learn about no-till, strip till and other conservation practices, all with a focus on return on investment.

A first-generation farmer, Hepp was trying to cut costs. He questioned every management decision as he pushed the pencil. He had a 290-horsepower, 2003 Caterpillar tractor, a 25-foot field cultivator and a smaller, traditional ripper. The tractor needed new rubber tracks, along with some other repairs, plus it wasn’t the most efficient tractor for tillage.

“I figured I’d need to spend about $100,000 to $150,000 for a bigger tractor,” said Hepp, who received a 2024 Young Farmer Leadership Award from the Iowa Farm Bureau. “Then I’d need bigger tillage equipment, which could easily add another $50,000.”

He also figured in Iowa State University Extension’s custom rates for tillage passes and fertilizer application, such as anhydrous. “Then add in your time, fuel and other costs, and there’s easily $42 to $100 attached to every one, two or three tillage passes you make. I couldn’t afford tillage and started asking, ‘Do we really need to do all this tillage?'”

Keith Sexton, the local landowner who created an opportunity for Hepp to farm through a crop-share agreement, had dabbled in no-till. He didn’t oppose Hepp’s plans to try more no-till and strip till. In 2019, Hepp started no-tilling all his corn acres going into soybeans the next spring and strip-tilled the soybean acres that would be planted to corn.

Along the way, he learned all he could about how to succeed with no-till and strip till. No-till doesn’t mean yields have to suffer either, said Hepp, speaking from experience. “While I want to produce as many bushels per acre as I can, my main focus is ROI.”

-Farm News photo by Darcy Dougherty Maulsby
Two samples of soil were used in this soil health/tillage/drainage demonstration conducted by Jeremy Viles, a Calhoun County Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) district conservationist, during the drainage water recycling field day near Lake City in 2024 on Mark Schleisman's farm. The no-till soil sample on the right came from a field farmed by James Hepp (shown here). When water was poured on the tilled soil and the no-till soil, the no-till soil acted like a sponge and allowed the water to infiltrate easily. This prevents runoff, controls erosion and helps prevent nutrients from entering water supplies.

Paying the “erosion tax”

As Hepp gained experience with no-till and strip-till, he developed a new appreciation for the value of soil health — and the cost of soil erosion.

“Every spec of black soil that blows or washes away carries nutrients with it, which contributes to pollution,” he said. “Think about how damaging and costly erosion is over the years.”

It’s a concept that’s top of mind with Brian Dougherty with UnderstandingAG, a consulting group focused on regenerative ag for more productive, profitable, resilient farms.

“We’ve just masked the symptoms of lost topsoil and poor soil function with added fertility, pesticides and other technological and engineering fixes,” Dougherty said.

Determining the cost of erosion starts by assigning a value to soil. Assume it’s possible to purchase more topsoil if the existing topsoil erodes away. One common way to put a value on soil is to determine how much fertilizer it would take to replace the lost nutrients.

“You can run a total nutrient digestion (TND) test on your soil to get a breakdown of what it contains,” said Dougherty, who calculated numbers from his family’s farm in northeast Iowa, which has silt-loam soil with just over 3% organic matter in the top 6 inches.

He created a spreadsheet to take the numbers directly from this test and calculate a value per ton of soil, based on average fertilizer prices in the past several years. To determine the cost of erosion, he used the Natural Resource Conservation Service’s (NRCS) tolerable soil loss, or “T” value of 5 tons per acre.

Soil-loss estimates are complex, because they depend on models to predict soil loss, Dougherty acknowledged. “Despite the complexity, 5 tons per acre per year is a reasonable estimate for the Midwest,” said Dougherty, who added that actual erosion rates were likely much higher in 2024, due to heavy rainfall events earlier this year.

In his calculations, Dougherty put a small value ($20/ton) on soil carbon, plus he valued the major micronutrients. With an erosion rate of 5 tons per acre, this equates to a cost of about $50 per acre per year in lost nutrients.

“That $50 per acre per year is an alarmingly high number in my book,” Dougherty said.

The actual cost would be higher, he added, because the soil that erodes away comes from the very top of the soil profile, where organic matter and nutrient concentrations are highest.

“The reason we consider this rate of erosion to be ‘tolerable’ is because no one has to write a check for $50 per acre every year as an erosion tax while their soil disappears,” Dougherty emphasized.

4 tips for success with no-till

Since there is a learning curve with soil conservation practices like no-till and strip till, Hepp offers these four tips for success:

1. Have a goal. It might be better soil conservation and soil health, improved ROI, or all of the above. “I want to at least double my money whenever I can,” said Hepp, who also values conservation. “No till and strip till help me do this.”

2. Learn all you can. There are many free resources available, from YouTube videos to field days across Iowa, to learn about no-till and strip till. Hepp is also a fan of the educational resources available through XtremeAg.com. “Don’t be afraid to ask a no-tiller in your area for advice,” added Hepp, who is willing to help anyone who wants to learn. “In my experience, no-tillers are open to sharing tips about what works and what doesn’t.”

3. Determine what resources are needed. Success with no-till and strip till requires some specific equipment, including trash whippers on the planter and equipment on the combine head that speeds up residue breakdown. Those can include stalk devastators or Calmer corn heads, said Hepp, who bought a used 8-row corn head and rebuilt it with a Calmer kit. “This equipment shreds the stalks and turns it into confetti,” he noted.

4. Don’t give up. Hepp is the first to admit that no-till fields can look pretty ugly compared to tilled fields early in the growing season. “All that changes by July and August. Then the no-till fields look fine.”

Most of all, be willing to try, Hepp said. “I like the quote that says, ‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.’ The opportunities are endless to try new things, reallocate your resources more efficiently through no-till and strip till, and boost your ROI.”