Bart & Lynne Ruth - Nebraska

Bart & Lynne Ruth farm near Rising City in Nebraska. We met Bart & Lynne at the Nuffield Scholars Contemporary Conference in Washington in March. He is an Eisenhower Fellow. They farm 2300acres of which 1000 is setup for irrigation. Bart and his son Jeff have been no tilling for 7 years and have really seen an improvement in their crops. Bart feels that the main reasons behind this are - timeliness of sowing
-lower fuel costs

-ability to get back on the ground quicker after rain because the water infiltrates the soil more quickly

-the overall water holding capacity has increased.

Bart & Jeff finished sowing their soybeans the day before we arrived. They had trialled three different disc seeders. A JD Maxemerge planter, a JD 1990 single disc and a JD 1535 double disc seeder. It will be interesting to follow the results of these seeders particularly with emergence, crop health and finally yield.

Nikki and Bart Inspecting Crops

One of Bart’s neighbours runs a 5000 cow dairy. They have a good deal worked out regarding the dairy effluent. Bart is able to irrigate 700 acres with the treated dairy effluent water. This gives them an extra 8 – 10 inches of irrigation per year as well as the nutrients from the shit. They also get 160 acres of slurry injected into their paddocks. This is a great way to get what is essentially free fertiliser as the Dairy has to get rid of in an environmentally sound way. And they have a lot to get rid of!!

Dairy Efflluent Treatment

Irrigation Set Up For Dairy Water

Management Of Cows Was Excellent

They use a consultant for their agronomy information. It costs $6 per acre per year. For this they have their paddocks monitored weekly and recommendations are given. The consultant takes the soil samples as well and sends them off on their behalf.

We left Nebraska to head to the Dakotas and Dwayne Beck had organized a number of farm visits for us along the way. Saturday night we stopped in Chamberlain as it sounded like an old tractor that we once had. It was a dark and stormy night, the toilet light was dim...... the tornado season was in full swing. We watched the weather channel (riveting stuff) and saw yet more tornadoes heading towards us. Once again though the storm passed quickly and the tornadoes skirted around us.