FAYETTE, Ohio – Fulton County, Ohio, farmer Les Seiler is passionate about soil health. So much so that the personalized license plate on his car reads: “NO TIL.”

Conservation ag, specifically soil health, isn’t just a passing fancy with Seiler. He’s been at this practice toward sustainable crop production and improving the land for future generations the past three decades.

Seiler’s efforts haven’t gone unrecognized as fellow growers and conservationists have honored his work. Earlier this month, the American Soybean Association (ASA) presented Seiler with the 2023 National Conservation Legacy Award for the Northeast Region during the annual ASA Awards Celebration event at the Commodity Classic farm show in Orlando, Fla.

Seiler farms 1,650 acres with his older brother, Jerry, 40 miles west of Lake Erie, near Fayette. Seiler said he began focusing on soil preservation in 1986, when he and his brother set aside conventional tillage practices and looked to conservation farming methods on their farm where they grow corn, soybeans, alfalfa, malting barley and wheat. Today, the two make no-till, grass waterways, filter strips and planting cover crops routine components of their overall farm management plan.

Waterways, Les Seiler said, were used where needed. That practice involves 15-to-30-foot-wide buffer strips on all fields along streams. This venture was a cooperative effort with The Nature Conservancy.

“We have so much soil erosion because of poor soil health, and we can’t infiltrate waste on the land anymore,” Seiler said. “We’ve seen the need to do something different besides conventional farming practices of moldboard plowing and a lot of tillage. We needed to do something about our soils washing away. No-till was a quick fix. The transition was rewarding right away because it slowed down the erosion.”

Seiler said the no-till switch made it easier to manage their 34 different soil types.

Jerry Seiler said the farm has a 40-year history with no-till, 15 years of cover crops and extensive use of filter strips to manage water, keep the soil on the farm and build up soil health. They have seen huge improvement in the water infiltration on the farm. When there is runoff, the water is clear.

“Les is a big advocate for soil health,” his brother said. “He’s really been pushing that and trying to use only things that promote soil health and are not detrimental to it. Back in the 80s when we first started taking over the farm, we had gullies and brown water in the creek. We just hated seeing that and we started implementing filter strips and waterways. Then we gradually started no-tilling and using cover crops. Now we’re planting all green and keeping something growing in the field as long as possible, even in the winter.”

Michael Vittetoe, of Washington, Iowa, received the 2023 National Conservation Legacy Award for his no-till efforts in the Midwest Region.

Vittetoe’s operation includes 50 head of cattle in addition to row crops, cover crops and pasture. The southeast Iowa family business is nestled amid a county filled with an abundance of hog operations.

“We have long strived to be good stewards of the land by taking action to reduce soil erosion and improve water quality,” Vittetoe said.

Vittetoe’s grandfather was an early adopter of reduced tillage in the area, moving away from the use of the moldboard plow. Waterways, terraces and filter strips also have been an integral part of the operation for decades.

“Our goal is to keep all the soil here and as many of the nutrients here as we can so we can grow the best crop possible,” he said.

After more than a decade of using cover crops to help mitigate soil erosion on hilly fields, Vittetoe said they’ve used the practice on 100 percent of their row crop acres for the last two years.

“Over time, we began experimenting with cover crops on our flat, heavy clay soils to actively manage excess moisture in the spring, especially ahead of soybeans,” he said. “As we gained more experience with cover crops, we observed lower weed pressure in fields with living rye.”

Vittetoe added that in many cases no weeds were present. By integrating cover crops in their management plan, he says they’ve reduced chemical herbicide requirements by 60-70 percent in both corn and soybeans.

“I see an opportunity to eliminate chemical herbicides in our soybeans in the near future as we continue to learn and gain experience with the system,” he said.

Cereal rye is the primary cover, seeded on all Vittetoe’s corn and soybean row crop acres. For the last four years, Vittetoe has also grown cereal rye for seed production. And, he says they have found it beneficial to use the cover in what he calls “relay cropping.”

“We seed the rye in the fall like we normally would, and then we plant soybeans into it in the early spring and let them grow together for the first half of the growing season,” he said. “When the rye is mature, we harvest it over the top of the soybeans, and then the soybeans take over the second half of the growing season with a normal harvest.”

As a third-generation conservationist, Vittetoe said the management practices first put into use by his father and grandfather helped set the stage for him and his sister to carry on the family legacy.

The Conservation Legacy Award is a national program designed to recognize the outstanding environmental and conservation achievements of soybean farmers, which in turn help produce more sustainable U.S. soybeans. A national selection committee, composed of soybean farmers, conservationists, agronomists and natural resource professionals, evaluated nominations base on each farmer’s environmental and economic programs.