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“If we truly want to see these practices spread, it's up to us to share the message and help everybody along. I've got local people who are doing their full-scale tillage, but they're trying cover crops to keep the soil where it is. That's a step in the right direction.”
— Brian Ryberg, 2022 Strip-Till Innovator Award Winner, Buffalo Lake, Minn.
Brian Ryberg, who farms 5,200 acres in Buffalo Lake, Minn., was the first farmer to strip-till sugar beets in Minnesota, the nation’s largest sugar beet producer. His award-winning strip-till, cover crop and soil health practices — in addition to his commitment to educating other farmers about strip-till — make Ryberg a deserving winner of the 2022 Strip-Till Innovator Award.
In this episode of the Strip-Till Farmer podcast, meet the 2022 Strip-Till Innovator Award winner Brian Ryberg and learn about his award-winning practices.
Read our feature article and watch our videos about Ryberg’s operation and practices.
The Strip-Till Farmer podcast is brought to you by Dawn Equipment.
Dawn Equipment, a family-owned company in Sycamore, Illinois, has a reputation for responsive customer service and American-made quality products that goes back to its origin nearly 3 decades. The company has grown to more than 40 employees and numerous products, earned awards for innovative design plus a growing number of patents, but it has not lost its commitment to U.S. made products. And customers and dealers can still call to speak directly with sales and engineering staff. Dawn has redefined several market segments like strip-till and active hydraulic control of planter and attachments. Dawn was the first company to make a remotely controllable planting product. Dawn continues its commitment to innovation, to customer service, and to active response to the changing needs of America’s farmers. Visit them at www.dawnequipment.com.
Full Transcript
Michaela Paukner
Welcome to the Strip-Till Farmer Podcast, brought to you by the Pluribus Lite from Dawn Equipment. I'm Michaela Paukner, Technology Editor at Strip-Till Farmer. In today's episode of the podcast, you'll meet the 2022 Strip-Till Innovator Award winner Brian Ryberg, who farms 5,200 acres in Buffalo Lake, Minnesota. Let's jump right into the conversation.
Brian Ryberg
Brian Ryberg, Buffalo Lake, Minnesota. So we're in the very corner of Sibley County. So we farm in four counties, but just the way they sit. They're not very far apart. Started farming in 1986 with my dad, I farmed in partnership with my parents for 10 years until they retired. And so we formed Ryberg Farms Inc at the time, my wife and I. And kind of expanded from there. We have four full-time employees, raising corn, soybeans, and sugar beets. And we transitioned our farm in 2014 to strip till and about that time started to use cover crops as well. It's been a real learning experience, but been very good.
Michaela Paukner
Good. How many acres are you farming, and what are your soils like here?
Brian Ryberg
Yeah, so we have heavy clay soils, very good soil, very good topsoil, high organic matters. So we farm about 5,200 acres, and then we custom farm about another 1000 to 1500 depending on the practice, whether it's Spring planting or fall harvest. And a lot of that is also done in strip till or conservation methods as well.
Michaela Paukner
Okay. What drove your decision to try strip till?
Brian Ryberg
Well, we were coming off of really high corn markets, and so at that time we had been raising all corn and our sugar beets, no soybeans, because the corn market was so good that they just told us that was a better return. And so we were spending a lot of time thinking we had to get the soil black to raise corn on corn. And so we're doing multiple passes of heavy tillage in the Fall and coming back and having to do spring tillage to level that out and plant the corn. And at that same time, I tell the story, we had an excavator at the time when we'd taken down a grove on a farm we had rented just to try to square it up to farm it easier. And there was some pasture land, then we broke up. And that would've been 2013. So come June of that year, I'm starting to look at the crop and the corn in this pasture land was greener and taller than it was in our conventionally tiled ground that had been there forever.
And I'm starting to question what we're doing, and so started to ask some agronomists and had them come look and started to think about our soils and what we were doing to soil structure and whatnot. And so we started to think about we've got to do something different, this isn't sustainable. And at the same time the corn market's dropping, so we know we got to cut back our costs. And so really kind of fell onto the strip till thing, more of a cost savings measure than anything else and didn't recognize all the soil benefits, soil health things that were going to come along with that, all the agronomy things. So it just kind of fell into place. We knew we couldn't and if our climate didn't feel comfortable. We could go to no-till, just because we were cold in the Spring. So we thought this was kind of a happy medium and liked the idea, we could do our fertilizer replacement more of in a band situation and keep it right in the root zone.
So two of my guys that have been with me for a long time, I treat him like partners in there. I mean, this is a team approach and everything we do. And so we started researching about the strip till thing, and we went to the strip till conference and met some people and started asking a lot of questions and decided that's what we wanted to do. So by 14 we were ready to take the leap and actually demoed one in fall of 13 then. And so we had a few acres that were in that in 14. And by the Fall of 14 we knew this was the way we wanted to go, and so we jumped in whole hog.
Michaela Paukner
Wow.
Brian Ryberg
Yeah.
Michaela Paukner
So following the fall of 2014, you started strip tilling all of the acres that you were doing?
Brian Ryberg
Yeah.
Michaela Paukner
Okay.
Brian Ryberg
Yep. Today we strip till probably 80 to 90% of what we do. And the rest is just a vertical till, so very minimal till to plant soybeans into. So we don't necessarily strip for soybeans, but one method or another is much more of a conservation type practice than the heavy tillage that everybody else in our area does or that we used to do.
Michaela Paukner
So most people around here are doing heavy conventional tillage?
Brian Ryberg
Correct.
Michaela Paukner
What do they think about you doing strip till?
Brian Ryberg
I tell the story. I had a friend of mine, older guy, but they've been a very aggressive and progressive family in the area, big farmers. And when he first heard about what we were going to do and that we had this strip till machine. He drove on the yard, and he said, this is not going to work, don't even try it. And, of course, the more he talked, the more I wanted to prove him wrong, and he couldn't give me any reasons that it wasn't going to work, because I'd always have a comeback for him. And so there was a lot of naysayers and my dad was a coffee shop guy, so he would go listen to all the negativity about what these crazy guys are doing south of town. And he'd kind of take those people on, and I'd have to tell him at some point that I just don't want to hear it anymore.
We think we're doing the right thing, and it's working. And he was always an innovator, so he was supporting us, but he was kind of mining the battlefield for the people that were not thinking we're doing the right thing. But I think we've gained a lot of respect in what we're doing. We've done some custom work for other people that want to try it, and we've had agronomy people call me and tell me how nice our crop looks, or how much greener the corn looks or that type thing. Had landowners that have recognized what we're doing and have called, and we've been able to expand because of that. They want people to practice things like what we're doing. So it's really been a big plus for us and a big advantage. So we're enjoying that.
Michaela Paukner
Yeah, for sure. Talking about the equipment that you're using, what are you using right now for your strip till rig and then your planter as well?
Brian Ryberg
So we purchased the soil warrior, at the time. So one of the first drawbacks we found out is that there wasn't many companies that made equipment for 22 inch rows, and sugar beets for whatever reason historically has always been raised on 22 inch rows. And so that's why we were there. And so there was only a few companies that did everything we researched said, SoilWarrior was kind of the Cadillac and their price tag was also that way, but they did make a 22-inch machine, and they're 75 miles away from us. So we felt that was a safe bet, if we're going to commit to this thing a hundred percent, we want to work with the best equipment and good people and have them close by. So that's been a great experience. We've gotten along very well with the equipment. We've gotten to be really good friends with a lot of the people down there.
And so if we have issues they are quick to address it, or they help us through settings and whatever. So that's kind of the simple piece. We have the original machine we bought, and we've made some upgrades to it, but as far as our planters, they're just conventional planters, so we don't freshen strips in the spring. We just go right in and plant, right into them. And we really don't have anything different on our planters than most people do. Early on, we saved some fields for the Spring just to try it, and it worked fine. I just didn't like the idea of this big, heavy machine out there in the Spring for compaction reasons and whatnot, although we never saw any issues with that. So it's nice to know if we can't get it done in the Fall, we can fall back to the Spring time. My nephew Chris is our techy guy, and he runs the strip till machine. And so that's his baby in the Fall. He's committed to doing that, and he just chases the combine and gets the strips done.
Michaela Paukner
I know you said it's the 22-inch spacing on the strip till machine. Do you have shanks on that, or what do you put on there?
Brian Ryberg
Yeah. We use a triple colter. So there's a lead colter up front, and then two offsetting wavy colters in the back. So we're tilling eight inch to 10 inch strip, depending on soils, and running four to six inches deep at the most.
Michaela Paukner
How many rows does it have, and what are you putting down in the strip when you're doing a fall strip tilling?
Brian Ryberg
Yep. So we're a 24 row, 22 inch, so it's 44 feet wide. They make a 60 footer, so we're getting up there in size. And so it's twin bin, so we do only our P&K and some micros in the Fall. We don't do any nitrogen in the Fall. Part of that was I was in the CSP program and that was one of the requirements that I signed up for. But we also believe in that just for fear of losing that nitrogen through leeching or whatever throughout the years. So we kind of spoon-feed our nitrogen in the spring with a planter and a side dress pass and whatnot. So just the P&K in the fall, basically.
Michaela Paukner
Okay. And what are the rates of P&K that you're using?
Brian Ryberg
We do a lot of variable rates stuff just depending on soil samples, we pretty aggressive on that. So we're narrowing up, we were at 4.4 acre grids, we're going to two and a half, so we're trying to farm by the foot, so to stay a little closer. And so we'll run from 100 to 450 pounds of product through those.
Michaela Paukner
And then what rates of N are you using for the corn, soybeans, and sugar beets?
Brian Ryberg
So corn on corn, we're running about 200 pounds, but we put about, basically, thirds. A third of that on with the planter. A third, we use 32% nitrogen as a carrier for weed and feed over the top, as we spray our herbicide on. And then the last third gets to be a side dress, and then soybeans is about 160 pounds. We're able to get by with, and similar on corn, on sugar beet ground.
Michaela Paukner
And when you're trying to do that, the farming by the foot mentality, what are some of the things you have to consider when you're out there making the strips and then planting?
Brian Ryberg
Well, it's really always driven by the soil tests. And so grid testing every two and a half acre good might have a different pH, different organic matter. We work with an agronomist that helps put those maps together for us, our variable rate maps. And then Chris plugs him into the system as he's doing it. But just trying to get more balanced fertility out there. We've rented land from a livestock producer, all the manure went right off the edge of the place, and so that end of the field tends to be higher in fertility, because of the manure for many years, versus the far end of the field that needs it. And so as we grid tested, we recognized a lot of those imbalances, and we're able to level those out now through the years. And so that's where we really find value in the grids.
Michaela Paukner
For sure. You're not putting nutrients where they don't need to be.
Brian Ryberg
Right.
Michaela Paukner
Then saving money on the inputs themselves.
Brian Ryberg
Yeah. Right now, with high fertility costs, anytime you can be more efficient with that is really a savings in the end.
Michaela Paukner
And I know that's a big thing with the environmental benefits of strip till as well. And what are some of those benefits that you've seen, Brian?
Brian Ryberg
Yeah, so our focus with the strip is to keep all our fertility as close to the root zone as possible. So, obviously, it started out with the strips. We're putting that in that strip or in the root zone, under the plants, as we plant. We've changed our side dress rig to a wide drop system, so we're putting the nitrogen right next to the row versus over here in the middle and hope that the roots get there. Just everything we do, even some fungicides on sugar beets, we're banding right over the roll. We're just trying to target right where the roots are, and try to be the most efficient we can with the fertility and any treatments that we do.
Michaela Paukner
What are some of the specific challenges and considerations for sugar beets and strip till?
Brian Ryberg
So the strip till thing in 22 inch rows, the first thing we really recognize we had to be really good at was residue management. So corn stalks, trying to fit between a 22-inch triple colter machine. The flow through and not plug. So we went away from chopping corn head, we went to calmer stock rolls on a corn head, so we size that residue, and we drop it straight down so as the corn stock stands there, if it's chopped off the residue kind of lays right around both sides of that. And so over here in the middle where we're going to make our strip is actually fairly black already with the chopping corn head is a lawnmower blade, and it throws everything and kind of creates a map of residue. So that really helped us out. So we harvest the corn, then we run a vertical till machine through to help size that a little better and to flatten the corn stalk.
Because early on the other issues we had is we run a big combine with big fat tires on, and so we would drive down some of the rows, and the other rows that weren't driven on stay standing. Well, we'd go in there, and we'd make our strips. And then if the wind blew, the standing stalks would catch all that residue, kind of like a snow fence. And they'd cover up our strips, and so then they wouldn't dry out or warm up in the Spring. So by making this vertical till pass, we kind of make the whole field the same, and we flatten out all those, so the field is uniform, and then we make our strips. And we don't have that issue anymore. So that's kind of the big key.
And so sugar beets, just like corn on corn, you'd want the blackest strip you can get. So it warms up and collects the heat and sunlight in the Spring to get that plant off to a quick start. But other than that it's been fine. I had some stomach pains and trying to get your mind around doing the right thing. The very first years I was planting sugar beets late one night, and you'd look out to the side, and you'd see all this corn stock residue and think, what am I doing? This is crazy. And I turn around and look behind me, and I'm planting beets in this nice black strip. I had to tell myself, well, the sugar beet plant knows it's in a black strip, it doesn't care what's over here, next to the row. And it's worked out just fine.
Michaela Paukner
Great. How many of your acres are sugar beets this year?
Brian Ryberg
So this year we have 725 acres of beets.
Michaela Paukner
Okay.
Brian Ryberg
Yeah, so we tend to be heavy on the corn and soybeans kind of fill in the gap between the beets. And so, I think, this year we're almost 3000 acres of corn and 1500 acres of soybeans and seven something of the beets.
Michaela Paukner
How do you decide what acres you're doing the sugar beets planting on?
Brian Ryberg
So we're on a five-year rotation. We try to put our sugar beets on really well tiled land, they just do better if they on good pattern tile ground. So we have a few farms that we won't raise beets on just because they're water challenged and so that we kind of just sit down and lay out our fields and decide, okay, this year these fields are going to get sugar beets. And next year we're going to shift them over here and so on. And so as we build our chemical plans, because sugar beets are very sensitive to some chemicals, so you have to watch what you use, because some will carry over.
They don't affect maybe soybeans or corn, but they could affect sugar beets. So we're very cautious about the chemistry we use, and we use that on all our acres, so we don't have to worry about, okay, if we switch this farm shoot we use that chemical on there. We can't do that. So we're very consistent throughout our chemistry program, so we just kind of lay it out that way. And then low pH farms, we put lime on to raise the pH, because sugar beets do better on that. So we try to target that two years ahead of when we're going to have beets. And you just kind of have to get in that thought process to prepare for that crop to give it the best chance to succeed.
Michaela Paukner
When in the year are you applying the lime and how much lime do you apply?
Brian Ryberg
So generally we stockpile ahead of Fall, and then they'll apply it after the crop is off. So we have a co-op come in and there's a lime spreader, and they spread it. And we're doing about three tons to the acre, but we also do some variable rate stuff there, too. And so it could be from one ton to five ton, depending on the pH of those grids as to how much we put on. And they're able to do that with their spreaders.
Michaela Paukner
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Brian Ryberg
No, so that was a little bit of a fear of going to strip till, because all of a sudden we're going to do our own fertility, and we always just called the co-op and say, that field is harvested go spread it. So there's a little bit of a learning curve, but we've done all our own spraying forever. And so, basically, it's the same thing. You've got to have a tender truck there that supplies the strip to a machine with fertilizer and Chris does a great job, and he knows how to run the system to punch in the rates he needs, or to load up the variable rate map. And we just do it, so we don't really hire any outside services for anything anymore. There's times we get caught in whether we might have to hire an airplane to do some spraying or something like that, but that's pretty rare. I mean, it's pretty low percentage. So basically everything is in-house.
Michaela Paukner
How do you split up all the work that needs to be done among the five of you?
Brian Ryberg
So we kind of specialize, and we just tend to continue doing that. So I'm kind of the spray guy in the Spring. Chris and Jason, that have been with me the longest, each run a planter. So we have a 24 row planter and a 36 row planter, they run planters, and then I'm putting on pre-emerge chemical behind them. And then our other two guys are kind of the tender guys, so they keep seed and chemical to both of us, or all three of us to keep us going. And then as we go throughout the year, we run two sprayers. So two of us will be running sprayers, and Jason is right now side dressing nitrogen on corn. That's kind of his baby. And again the other guys kind of keep tending to us, and they haul green and do whatever they can fill in wherever. And then as we get to Fall, two of the guys run combines, and one runs a grain cart, and then I'm the sugar beat guy, so I run the sugar beet harvester.
And Derek who works with us runs the topper, and then we bring in some part-time people as well. We have to have a lot more people and truck drivers for Fall, but we've just kind of gravitated to each guy kind of running one certain piece of equipment and just being really good at it, and it seems to work out. So.
Michaela Paukner
Yeah, that seems like a good strategy.
Brian Ryberg
Yeah. We can always have somebody else jump in at times if needed, but we tend to just keep our own rig and keep that going.
Michaela Paukner
So you mentioned that you're using cover crops as well and that you started with strip till. What are you using for your cover crops?
Brian Ryberg
So on 2013, 14, right in there. I was always bothered by our sugar beet ground after harvest has no residue, it's just black soil. And it's pretty fine soil, because it gets through the harvesting process and so on. It just gets really fine and tends to blow up pretty easily. And we'd gone through a bunch of open winters, where we just weren't getting any snow pack, and so the winds would come up and that dirt would blow, and it would fill road ditches. Yeah, I mean, that's still a problem today. But it's kind of a black eye for a sugar beet producer, because it's coming from their farms normally. So we just started thinking of if we can seed something right after harvest, maybe there's a chance we could get it to grow before it freezes up and have some cover there to try to maintain that soil.
So we started with cereal rye, just simple. We got a pull type spreader from the co-op. As soon as that field was harvested, we had a tractor and the spreader, we'd spread it, and we just used the field cultivator at the time and scratch over it. And the first few years we actually had really good growth. We had some warm falls and thought, well this is easy, this is going to be great. And it worked really well. And cereal rye will roll over winter and, of course, take off and grow again in the Spring. We thought this was very simple. Well, since then we've had very few warm falls to allow that to happen. It's always there, and I think they tell me it germinates at 37 degrees or something in the Spring, so about the time there's any snow that melts, it's greening up, and it's coming, and it grows rapidly in the Spring.
So that's been kind of our go-to cover crop. For a number of years we experimented, and we tried to do some interceding in our corn, while we side dressed. We had a box on a side dress bar, so we could do that in one pass. And we always got it established, and we played around with different mixes and blends of different cover crops. But in 22 inch rows, we tend to get a really tight canopy through August, and so it wouldn't get any sunlight. And so by harvest it would die. There was nothing there. Very few falls, did we have anything green that would even show up in the corn anymore. So our budget was 15, $16 an acre and if we're not getting any return on that, it just didn't pay to do that anymore.
So our focus now has been just trying to get that cereal rye on in the Fall. And we're trying to do it on corn stack that are going to soybeans. So, we had that same box that was on our side dress bar. We could move to our vertical till piece, so we could do that in the Fall in one pass. But it was a small box, and we struggled to get enough acres through it. And it would take two people to load it and was kind of cumbersome. So this past year after winning the Conservation Legacy Award, we got a grant, and we purchased terragator, an older terragator with just a spreader box on. So our goal this fall is just to go out and spread several farms ahead of the guy running the vertical till. And so we're not holding him up. He can get a lot of acres done. We can hopefully get more acres covered in the Fall and have a larger percentage of our farm undercover crops. We'll see how that plays out.
Michaela Paukner
So this fall it'll be more acres than just the sugar beets that are cover crops.
Brian Ryberg
We've always done all our sugar beet acres. And now as we like planting soybeans green into that standing rye in the Spring and so our focus is to try to get more acres done there. So yeah, hopefully, we can get all that done this fall.
Michaela Paukner
Yeah, hopefully.
Brian Ryberg
We'll see how that turns out. But yeah, it was nice to get the grant to kind of help fund that. And it was through the Walton Family Foundation as part of the American Soybean Association, so it was a pretty cool deal.
Michaela Paukner
Yeah, that's exciting.
Brian Ryberg
Yeah. It'll be a new piece of equipment to learn how to run, but I don't think that'll be too bad. We help out a guy that raises a lot of peas, caning crops in the summer, and so we're going to play around on his acres to make sure this all works before fall too, because he always puts a cover crop on.
Michaela Paukner
Oh, sure.
Brian Ryberg
So I said, hey, I'll come to a couple of farms for you just to get the bugs out of this thing. And so we should be ready to go by fall.
Michaela Paukner
Nice. Yeah. How many pounds of cereal rye you typically put on your acres?
Brian Ryberg
We, typically, 45 to 50 pounds to the acre. We might go a little heavier than that, and that seems to be enough on the black sugar beet ground. On the corn stalks, you get some tied up in the residues, so we may have to go up to 60 pounds or something like that. But yeah, this year where we had it on sugar beet ground, and then we strip that in the Fall for corn. Well, with a later Spring planting, that rye just kept growing and growing. So it got a little wooly on me, but we got it terminated, and the corn looks great. And it was a little nerve-wracking though thing, and we got to get out there and get this killed off. But it all worked out fine.
Michaela Paukner
Good. And then how are you terminating it, typically
Brian Ryberg
Just with Roundup. Yeah.
Michaela Paukner
Okay.
Brian Ryberg
Very easy to kill and within a week it's pretty much brown. And it's nice that if you do get some growth to, it just kind of lays down and kind shields the soil, so it prevents more weeds from coming up. We hit these 90 degree days, that sounds like coming up this weekend, that'll kind of help insulate that. And corn plant tends to shut down. They tell me at 95 degree weather or something like that. So if we can maintain that soil temperature, and insulate a little bit, maybe we've got a better chance to keep that corn growing and kind of move along. So yeah, that's of good benefits that way.
Michaela Paukner
Yeah, for sure. Are there any specific things you have to consider with using cover crops in a strip till system?
Brian Ryberg
No, not really. We've tried about everything and it's worked. One of the things that I would be leery of, if there was a scenario where you planted radishes or turnips or something early, and you waited till fall to strip it, if you have those tubers that are of good size could create problems for the strip till machine and trying to get through that. But yeah, otherwise, we just really haven't had much issue with anything. And they seem to kind of work nicely together. I mean, it's great to have that cover crop growing up between the strips to keep from wind erosion and water erosion, that type thing, but yet have that black strip to plant into. Yeah. Works out well.
Michaela Paukner
Good. I've heard from a couple of strip tillers, they say they can't find a way to make cover crops work with their strip till system. Knowing that you can do it up here, and you're colder than a lot of people who are using strip till in the corn belt states. That should be I think some encouragement for people to give it a try.
Brian Ryberg
Yeah. I mean, obviously, I think if you were in northern Minnesota, your odds are against you more so than where we are. But in a perfect world, it would be nice to have those warm falls to get something going for winter. But that's just our geography and part of what we got to face. And we're going to play around this fall and mix some oats with the cereal rye. Maybe the oats would get up going a little faster in the Fall. I don't know. We're going to play with that, just to get something growing ahead of the Winter time in case we have open winters again, because it's no fun seeing your dirt moving to the neighbors.
Michaela Paukner
Yeah.
Brian Ryberg
We're just trying to prevent that. And I'm on the sugar beat board, and I've been on there now for seven years almost. And it's always been kind of a black eye for the sugar beet grower to have his dirt moving. And so when I came on that was kind of one of my things is to help promote this and people just laughed at me, and now they're like, boy, we really need to do something here. This is getting to be a problem. So it's nice to see people get a little more educated and aware of something they can change, which would be a great thing. And just better stewardship, try to keep the soil where it belongs.
Michaela Paukner
What are some of the benefits for you to be on the sugar beet board, and do these events that get the word out about what you're doing?
Brian Ryberg
I was told we were the first ones in the state of Minnesota to strip till sugar beets. So there's a few more now that have picked my brain, and I'm certainly willing to mentor anybody to answer questions and help them from failing, because there's too many people that will try something and if it doesn't work perfectly the first time, they just scrap it. So I don't want that to happen to somebody, because I really believe this is a good system. Sugar beets are very susceptible to wind in the Spring and can blow out, causing you to have to replant. So whether you use a cover crop or nurse crop in the Spring or leave residue on the field to help that wind erosion, it's going to help the crop succeed, because you're not being susceptible to have any blow out. So as I've been on our board from our local co-op, there's a few other guys now, that are strip tilling beets that I've helped. And we bounce ideas back and forth, so they help me, too.
And then I'm also on the National American Sugar Beet Growers Association Board, and so there's people in Colorado or Idaho that have stripped tilled for years. It's just a normal practice for them. So I've learned from them and share with others as well. And there's several people now up through the Red River Valley that are trying to strip till, because they really have an erosion problem, wind erosion problem. So you kind of build your network of people, and we tend to all share ideas and help each other. In the conventional farming world, you tend to be all in competition with each other.
Michaela Paukner
Oh, okay.
Brian Ryberg
So you don't want to tell your secrets. Where I found in any of these conservation type things, it just seems to be more sharing going on, and it's great. So you get to be friends with a lot of people, and they're willing to help us. And I mean, I had a phone call this spring from a guy that's going to plant corn into cereal rye, he's up in the valley. And, is this going to work? Yeah, it's going to work, do this and this. And I've done the same thing. I've called somebody else, if we're going to try something new. And you think, this is going to work. And so you kind of create your own family of people, and it's been great. So I'm always willing to share and help people as much as I can. So.
Michaela Paukner
I think that's one of the things I think is really great about our events, too, is that we get so many people like you who are willing to share what they're doing instead of, oh no, that's mine. Now, everybody wants everybody else to succeed, because it's good for all of us.
Brian Ryberg
Yeah. If we truly want to see these practices spread, I think it's up to us to help spread the news, share the message, and help everybody along. I mean, I've got local people that are just trying to do the cover crop thing for erosion. I mean, they're still going to do their full scale tillage and all that, but they're just starting to think about trying to keep the soil where it is. And so that's the step in the right direction. And the same guy that told me what we're going to try and do was never going to work. He's done some cover crop stuff after sugar beets. You try to get the ball rolling, and try to spread that as far as you can. But it's still pretty slow at this point. But, I think, the government programs are starting to tend to, I don't want to say, force people into more conservation methods, but certainly willing to supposedly help fund some of that or finance some of that. So I think that's a big plus. So, we're gaining traction, but maybe not as fast as we'd like to see.
Michaela Paukner
Sure.
Brian Ryberg
So.
Michaela Paukner
What do you think is something that you know now that you wish you knew when you were first starting to strip till?
Brian Ryberg
I think our biggest struggle was the residue side. And nobody had ever really talked about that, because there isn't many in narrow rows. So if you're in 30 inch rows, you have more wiggle room, you have more room for residue to flow through, that type of thing. So I think that's part of the message I tried to share with somebody else to say, hey, wait a minute, you maybe need to consider doing this before you strip, so you don't have a problem. The thing we're trying to learn now is with high fertility costs, is there cover crops that can give us some type of fertility benefit? How do you measure that? How are we sure that we're not going to cut ourselves short?
How do we soil tests to make sure we're not going backwards? We've cut our P&K rates, maybe 75% of a total just because we're being more efficient with it, but we're also watching our grid testing to make sure we're not going downhill. We're not burning up those nutrients and not replacing them, so that's still a learning process. And right now with high grain prices and high fertilizer, you don't want to cut yourself short and give up the chance to still produce a really good crop to take advantage of the market. So you got to be very cautious about that. Yeah.
Michaela Paukner
Right. Yeah. That's amazing now that you've been able to cut your inputs.
Brian Ryberg
And it makes sense. I mean, I remember somebody showing me on a PowerPoint, if you broadcast 300 pounds of fertilizer over the whole field, this is what the scatter map looks like. If you put half of that, the 150 pounds into that eight to 10 inch strip, holy cow, there's a very high concentration of fertility. So at standard reason, you should be able to lower your use rate, because it's all available to the root system versus spread all over the field. So I think it makes sense, but we keep watching that, and I mean we produce really good crops, and we'll compete with the conventional guys with no problem. And so it must be working.
Michaela Paukner
Yeah. Right. What are your typical yields for corn, soybeans, and sugar beets?
Brian Ryberg
Last few years we've raised really good corn. I think, probably, a five-year average, we'd be over 200 bushel. We've had some fields over 250. Soybeans, as we gravitated to strip till and less tillage. Our yield seemed to keep climbing. And so, again, our five-year average is probably 62 to 65 bushel beans. The sugar beets, our co-op average I think is about 28 ton, and we're probably right in there, 28, 29. We've probably seen the yield bump in what we're doing on corn and soybeans. But the sugar beets, I can't say we've seen that yet. We can maintain, and we produce the same tons and the same sugar, but I'm not going to brag that we're going to do better than the conventional guy.
Michaela Paukner
Yeah. But still you're doing the same with less in terms of the input, so right there it is.
Brian Ryberg
Yeah, it's the margin at the end before you see it.
Michaela Paukner
Yeah.
Brian Ryberg
Yeah.
Michaela Paukner
For sure.
Brian Ryberg
When we were doing our corn on corn back before we transitioned, we were burning about three and a half to four gallons of fuel per acre just doing fall tillage. Today that soil warrior doing basically our fall tillage, our fertilizer application, and our spring tillage, because it leaves it so nice, we don't have to come back in the spring. We're burning 0.6 to 0.8 gallons.
Michaela Paukner
Wow.
Brian Ryberg
When fuel was a buck and a quarter, people didn't think that was a really big deal. But I've had people confront me now, and say, holy cow, you're saving a lot of money in $5 fuel. And we are, I mean, we planted 6,500 acres this Spring. And I got a transport load of fuel in, which is 7,300 gallons, and we're still pulling on the same tank. And I can tell you a conventional guy would be far more than that.
Michaela Paukner
Yeah. Right.
Brian Ryberg
And I always kind of get a kick out of that, especially, in the Fall, because that's a heavy fuel use time. I had one, a picture in my head that'll be there forever, and I should have taken with my phone. But one of the big guys in our areas got this huge four-wheel drive with this huge ripper behind, with a pickup behind with a thousand gallon fuel tank pulled behind that, there is this train going down the road. And I'm like, wow, we just don't have to haul the fuel and deal with all that. And so it's so nice. It just really simplified things for us. In the Spring, all have to do is focus to keep those planners going. And we don't dig up rocks anymore, so we don't have to have a rock picker out there first. We don't have to have multiple field cultivator with guys driving them, just keep the planters going. And we didn't really realize how nice that was going to be at first. So it worked out well.
Michaela Paukner
Thanks to Brian Ryberg for today's conversation. You'll find a transcript of today's episode and our featured series about Brian in his operation in the link for this episode at striptillfarmer.com/podcasts. And many thanks to the Pluribus Lite from Dawn Equipment for helping to make this strip till podcast series possible. From all of us here at Strip-Till Farmer, I'm Michaela Paukner. Thanks for listening.
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