Attended by over 900 farmers and Certified Crop Advisors last year, the Feb. 24-25, 2011 Conservation Tillage and Technology Conference provides a wide variety of learning opportunities for this year’s participants. Thursday’s session can begin as early as 8 a.m. and go to 7:30 p.m., with Friday’s classroom activities embarking at 8:30 a.m., then over by 4:50 p.m.

One of my favorite speakers returns for a 9:40 a.m. Thursday time slot. Iowa State University Climatologist Elwynn Taylor is sure to entertain the audience with his insightful “Weather and Climate Outlook.” Taylor’s perspectives are bound to improve your forecasting I.Q. and generate plenty of laughter.
The agenda is packed with 65 presenters and panelists divided up into eight main topic areas over the two-day conference. On Thursday, choose between Cover Crops, the Corn University, Nutrient Management and Advanced Scouting Techniques. Friday’s choices include a Soybean School, Nutrient Management (again), Water Quality in Lake Erie and Grand Lake St. Marys, Tillage and Water Quality, and Planter and Precision Ag. Of course no one can take in each session so you have to pick and choose what you want to hear.

Let’s take a closer look at these topic area offerings. Corn University gives participants the ability to tap into the Midwest Corn All-Stars from Purdue University, University of Illinois, University of Kentucky and The Ohio State University (OSU). Bob Nielsen, Fred Below, Laura Overstreet, Chad Lee and Peter Thomison will talk about factors influencing yield, a 300-bushel corn formula, strip-till, no-till and whether 300 bushels per acre by 2030 is fact or fiction.

The Cover Crop section is crammed with 18 speakers from 12 different universities and companies. Learn about cover crops as fumigants, nitrogen sources, organic matter builders and erosion arresters. Find out how best to fly them on, inoculate them, select them, and benefit from them.
Nutrient Management is headed up by OSU’s Robert Mullen and Purdue’s Jim Camberato, tackling maximum yield concepts, environmental risks, soil phosphorus trends, nutrient efficiencies, manure/commercial fertilizer application and much, much more.

Advance Scouting Techniques hit on diagnostic tools, answering difficult grower questions, on-farm research, compaction, white mold, the value of drainage tile and gypsum.

Another Midwest All-Star team will be on hand for the Soybean School on Friday. State Soybean Specialists Shaun Casteel (Purdue), Vince Davis (Illinois) and Shaun Conley (Wisconsin) head the talented lineup that also features Kip Culler, the Missouri farmer who has produced the world record yield of 160 bushels per acre. Team members include OSU’s Dr. Anne Dorrance (diseases), Dr. Ron Hammond (insects), Dr. Robert Mullen (fertility) and Cat Salois, a Pioneer Soybean Breeder.

Water Quality in Lake Erie and Grand Lake St. Marys continues to be on the radar screen. Hence, the policy viewpoint from the Ohio Farm Bureau’s Larry Antosch, dissolved phosphorus runoff from Heidelberg University’s Dave Bokee, NRCS’s Mark Scarpitti on reducing runoff, and OSU’s Larry Brown on management of liquid manure precedes a farmer panel headed by Brother Nick Renner.

Register before Feb. 15 and save $10 to $15. Do it online at http://ctc.osu.edu or call 419-223-0040, ext. 3.

Readers with questions or comments for Roger Bender may write to him in care of this publication.