By MEGGIE I. FOSTER
Assistant Editor

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — During one of conservation’s biggest road trips, four of Indiana’s most innovative farmers invited more than 100 agriculture professionals from across the nation to their farms for an intensive look at the technologies and production practices that set them aside from the farm crowd.

The Conservation in Action Tour on July 17, hosted by the Conservation in Technology Center, of Lafayette, Ind., featured Mike Starkey, of Brownsburg, Ind.; Don Lamb, of Lebanon, Ind.; Mike Beard, of Frankfort, Ind.; Ken and Rodney Rulon, of Arcadia, Ind. and concluded with a tour of Beck’s Hybrids in Atlanta, Ind.
Attendees of the annual summer tour specialized in agronomy, environmental science and natural resources.

The Conservation Technology Information Center is a not-for-profit organization that works to communicate the importance of conservation to a broad audience consisting of farmers, government officials, university staff and business professionals. The all-day event  kicked off with a tour stop at Starkey Farms, where Mike Starkey discussed his on-farm technologies that enable him to achieve business success, all the while being a good environmental steward of the land.

Starkey, who lives near a booming suburb of Indianapolis, is increasingly pressured by surrounding subdivisions forcing him to consider his field drainage system, especially as his farm is within a watershed that supplies drinking water to nearby Indianapolis. For this reason, Starkey works with the Central Indiana Water Resources Partnership, a division of the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis campus to monitor tile Nitrogen outflow of his farm fields in Hendricks County.

Starkey also advertised his new-till planter, which combines the action of a no-till planter with practical applications such as pop-up fertilizer, raised gauge wheels, spading closing wheels and drag chains.

“This is the easiest way to succeed with no-till,” said Starkey, directing the group’s attention to his new John Deere Ag Spectrum new-till planter. “I started planting no-till beans in 1989, then corn in 1992. At the time, it just wasn’t working for me, so I gave up on the no-till corn.

“In 2001, I started with this set-up and now I’m 100 percent no-till, I have no problems with my equipment. It’s the best way to do it.”
From Starkeys, the tour bus brigade stopped at Lamb Farms of Lebanon, Ind. Don Lamb farms about 7,200 acres alongside his father Bob and brother Dean. In addition to harvesting popcorn, seed corn, waxy corn, seed soybeans and wheat, the farm also runs a composting and recycling business, along with selling landscape mulch. At the compost site, Lambs spread 98 percent of the compost produced on nearby farm ground as fertilizer. Lamb estimates this practice may save him up to $20 an acre. “In our opinion ag could be the next landfill, if we could compost all of our farm waste, we would have the ability to compost it and reapply it onto our fields,” Lamb said.

Meadowlane Farms

For a farm-friendly lunch, the tour’s third stop featured Mike Beard, of Meadowlane Farms in Frankfort, Ind. Beard, an active advocate of agriculture in the local, state and national community farms 1,300 acres and finishes over 33,000 hogs per year with his son, David and son-in-law, Chris Pearson. The Frankfort operation includes 1,000 acres of corn and soybeans, a custom waste application business of 25 million gallons a year and a wean-to-breed hog operation.

“Conservation is not our main priority,” said Beard. “Our no. 1 priority is profit, second is growth and sustainability and we’re firm believers that conservation is a major player in attaining those goals. With the growing concern of air quality, environmental impact, soil crop input and bioenergy, it becomes an important aspect of our business.”

To facilitate a commitment to conservation, Beard utilizes careful nutrient and water management for his hog operation to ensure fewer odors and a better manure product for application on farm fields. In addition, Beard maintains numerous other on-farm conservation practices such as renewal of wetlands, waterways and buffers.

With an eye towards conservation, in 2002 Beard was named Master Farmer by Indiana Prairie Farmer, given the Certificate of Distinction by the Purdue Ag Alumni Association in 2006 and named to receive the Indiana Pork Meritorious Service Award in 2008.

Rulon Enterprises

Rounding out the conservation tour, Ken and Rodney Rulon, of Arcadia invited the tour guests to stroll their fields, which have been 100 percent no-till planted since 1993. Rulon’s family partnership farms approximately 5,250 acres and is known as an early adopter of new technologies in conservation and soil fertility.

“We’ve been no-till since 1993 and our philosophy is it’s just the right way to do it and now with scientific data, we’re beyond debate ability,” said Rulon, who gestured to a list of graphs showing 44 years of yield history, including the last 15 years in no-till that shows no yield drag versus the county, state and national averages. According to Rulon, yield drag is the theortical yield loss when selecting a certain tillage option over another manageable tillage option such as conventional tillage using a moldboard plow.
“It’s a long-term process,” Ken commented, regarding Rulon’s low yield drag data. “We’ve proven that there is no yield drag in conventional corn versus no-till corn, we’ve beat the national averages, so we know it’s completely possible.”

In addition to touting no-till practices, Rulons began to use GPS  or global positioning systems in 1995 to keep field records and monitor yields in 1995. In 1996, Rulons started soil sampling in 1-acre grids every fourth year.

Through the years, the family has added variable rate fertilizer and lime application, variable rate soybean seeding and spatial application of soil insecticide.

According to Rodney, one result of their efforts is a whole-farm fertility records with a high level of precision that is spatially related over time and is in a database that can be analyzed.

“I’m optimistic about the future of farming,” said Ken. “We need to be productive and we believe we are, we need to be sustainable. This is something we’ve done 100 years and we want to do it for 100 more. We want this farm to be in good shape when we pass it on to the next generation, with buffers, waterways, manageable soil fertility and no-till practices, we believe we will.”