2024 Show-Me Level Sponsors
Meet the 2024 Speakers
Russell Hedrick, a first-generation no-till farmer from North Carolina, made history with his 2022 harvest, shattering the record for dryland corn with a yield of 459.1 bushels. He is known for being innovative and having an unconventional no-till approach. He first tried his hand at row crops in 2012 to 30 acres. Today, he has grown his operation to more than 800 acres.
Dr. Jerry Hatfield is the recently retired director for the USDA-ARS National Laboratory for Agriculture and The Environment. His focus is on the role of management practices that enhance soil health to increase the efficiency of agricultural systems in the use of natural resources and positively impact ecosystem services. Hatfield graduated from Kansas State University in 1971 with a B.S., Univ
Jeremia Markway ranches with his family at Markway Ranch, located in central Missouri, where they raise hair sheep, cattle, Quarter horses and custom graze others' livestock. Most recently he managed research farms at Lincoln University in Jefferson City for eight years. His interest in managed grazing took off when his parents built the first electric fence in 1983. Since then it has been a never
PAST MO AG STEWARDSHIP CONFERENCES
2023 Mo Ag Stewardship Conference Featured speakers
Phil Needham
David Kleinschmidt
Drexel Atkisson
Phil is no stranger to learning new things, after moving to the US in 1989, he pioneered record-breaking wheat yields and grew a business out of trying new technologies on planters. Hear insights on how to grow your wheat yield and learn how to optimize your planter set up.
Drexel Atkisson
David Kleinschmidt
Drexel Atkisson
Drexel is a life long Missourian who has dedicated 3 decades of service to producers through is work at NRCS. His years of helping producers, as well as implementing regenerative practices on his own farm, have developed into a depth of understanding in service to others.
David Kleinschmidt
David Kleinschmidt
David Kleinschmidt
David has worked on both sides of the aisle, from ag retail sales to now running his own agronomy consulting business since 2018. He has worked with producers all over the country to not only improve their profitability, but to boost their understanding of how soil functions in order to continuously improve their farm land.
Jimmy Emmons
An international leader in the soil health movement, Jimmy served as the regional coordinator for USDA's Farm Production and Conservation Program. He recently joined the Oklahoma Conservation Commission as its Soil Health Mentoring Coordinator. Jimmy and his wife, Ginger, manage 2,000 cropland acres and 5,000 rangeland acres with regenerative agriculture techniques in Dewey County, Oklahoma. Their annual Rainfall is 20" Jimmy says. They received Oklahoma's first Leopold Conservation Award in 2017.
Russ Jackson
Russ Jackson grew up on the family farm in Mountain View, Oklahoma. After graduating high school, he attended Cameron University and Southwestern Oklahoma State University. From an early age he worked alongside his father using conventional heavy tillage on a wide variety of soils. After hitting a wall with a decline in yields and even in fall grazing on wheat pasture he realized pH levels, along with fertility, weren’t the only problems facing the farm.
High fuel prices in 2005 was just the nudge he needed to try a different approach, which landed him on No-till. Using No-till stopped soil erosion and led to the first signs that the soil could be repaired. Wanting to continue this healthy process, a transition, in 2013, to double cropping using HRW wheat, HRS wheat, canola, corn, milo, sesame, cotton, and soybeans began. Adding cover crops and grazing cover crops to the operation in 2015 only helped accelerate the process.
The addition of cover crop mixes has added supplemental grazing for cow/calf pairs and stockers while allowing time for the native pastures to rest. By continuing these practices, he has seen multiple benefits to the soil, including water retention, increased organic matter, and earthworm activity.
In the fall of 2017, with the support of the Kiowa County NRCS & OACD, a fall grazing mix demonstration farm project was planted to experiment with different plant species followed by a county wide field day of testing water infiltration, a demostration of packed soils from previous years of tillage, and grazing practices.
Russ was awarded the prestigous Leopold Conservation Award in 2018. He operates this third-generation family farm in Southwest Oklahoma with his wife Jani, and their two children Kate and Paden.
Keith Berns
Keith Berns combines over 20 years of no-till farming with 10 years of teaching Agriculture and Computers. In addition to no-tilling 2,000 acres of irrigated and dryland corn, soybeans, rye, triticale, peas, sunflowers, and buckwheat in South Central Nebraska, he also co-owns and operates Green Cover Seed, one of the major cover crop seed providers and educators in the United States.
Through Green Cover Seed, Keith has experimented with over 100 different cover crop types and hundreds of mixes planted into various situations and has learned a great deal about cover crop growth, nitrogen fixation, moisture usage, and grazing utilization of cover crops. Keith was honored by the White House as a 2016 Champion of Change for Sustainable and Climate-Smart Agriculture. Keith also developed the SmartMix CalculatorTM one of the most widely used cover crop selection tools on the internet Keith has a Masters Degree in Agricultural Education from the University of Nebraska and teaches on cover crops and soil health more than 30 times per year to various groups and audiences. Keith also was appointed by Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts to be part of the Nebraska Healthy Soils Task Force and had the privilege of serving as the chairman.