Featured Speaker: David Brandt

David Brandt farms 1,150 acres in Carroll, Ohio who utilizes cover crops and no-till to promote soil health. He is a cover crop seed dealer with Walnut Creek Seeds and has been profiled by NRCS. He has worked with and received awards from many conservation and farming groups, and is committed to participating in research.

Brandt substantially reduces his fertilizer costs with multi-species legume cover crops. "Our nitrogen use in fields without cover crops is 170 pounds an acre," comments Brandt in an interview with Ohio NRCS. "Where we have cover crops and longtime no-till, we’re down to about 20 pounds an acre. That’s more than $100 an acre per year nitrogen savings, and we’re not sacrificing any yield."

Recently, Brandt has been working with researchers at OSU to reduce input costs of both fertilizers and herbicides through the use of soil health practices, including cover crops.

Featured Speaker: Scott Magnan

Scott Magnan runs Scott Magnan's Custom Services in St. Albans, which offers custom crop services, performing practices such as manure spreading, round bailing and planting. The company is networked with Woodchuck Custom Harvesting offering bunk packing and mowing. Scott has been an innovator in bringing precision agriculture to the area integrating it into his own operation and other area farmers business plans as a dealer for Ag Leader technology and Yetter Manufacturing. Scott offers precision Ag training and support through a CWF grant to assist with proper utilization of investment. Scott is the current chair of the Farmers Watershed Alliance. He has been a participant in UVM Extension projects including several projects with the no-till planter. Scott grows and sells crops using the farm as a tool for his own trials.