A John Deere Publication

Man standing with arms crossed on a dirt road next to a field.

Tyler Tobald returned to his family farm in North Central Kansas after earning a degree in bassoon performance. The fifth generation to farm here, he helped lead a transition to no-till, cover crops, and cover crop grazing from conventional tillage, minimal crop diversity, and reliance on mechanical hay harvesting.

Agriculture, Sustainability January 01, 2025

Sweet Music

Together, soil health principles form a lovely tune.

by Bill Spiegel

By themselves, cover crop species like sorghum sudan, sunflowers, and buckwheat are akin to a single instrument making music: interesting, but nothing special.

Yet together, these plants—plus the 20 or so additional species in Tyler Tobald's mix of cover crops after winter wheat harvest—blend together like a symphony of colors, textures, and sizes in the field.

A harmonious blend of living things in these wheat stubble fields makes sense to Tobald, himself a gifted musician. In his youth he played piano, cello, and woodwinds, and even majored in bassoon performance at Kansas State University. He had no plans to farm when he set off to college, but after a health scare, he came back home to recover.

He discovered a passion for farming that he never knew before. Trouble is, he lacked the knowledge he needed. "It didn't matter what sort of farm event I attended, I was the dumbest person in the room," he recalls. "It was painful, because I would stand there with this glassy-eyed look over my face, not knowing what anybody was talking about." That naivety was kind of freeing, in a way. He attended conferences, watched YouTube videos, read college books and research papers, and asked questions to learn more, able to bring fresh ideas to the operation, which was then operated by his father James and uncle John. Tyler helped the family switch from conventional farming to no-till and cover crops in 2010.

It was a massive change to the operation, which they now call JTAC Farms. Prior to adoption of no-till and cover crops, the Tobalds' crop rotation had consisted of several years of wheat, followed by several years of grain sorghum, and then a fallow period.

That system really didn't work. "We struggled with it," Tyler says. "It wasn't a balanced approach." Once they determined that what they were doing wasn't working, they scrapped it. "We started with a blank sheet of paper and designed a crop rotation around cover crops," Tyler explains. "Rather than adapting cover crops to fit our rotation, we did the opposite. And that has helped make our crop rotation work a lot better."

The cover crop system was designed to keep the cowherd happy.

"Our cattle are our best return on investment. We have fed so much less silage year after year, and that saves time, wear and tear, slashes the chopping bill, and allows us to graze year-round," he adds.

Growing cover crops in North Central Kansas though, can be an iffy proposition.

"We push it about as hard as we can. Every now and then, God will render judgment against me," he says with a wry smile. "And 2024 was one of those years where I pushed it just a little too hard."

Grazing opportunities are where cover crops shine. Cover crops are planted on about a third of the cash crop acres, and all acreage is grazed except for wheat planted after soybeans. After the winter wheat harvest, Tobald plants a mix of cover crop species.

"We're looking for a balance of brassicas, legumes, grasses, and broadleaves, with a balance of warm and cool season. We want to get a lot of warm season growth and plenty of biomass," he explains. "We also want a little bit of cool season species to overwinter and come up the following spring and keep a living root in the ground."

Above. Black baldy cattle offer the right disposition. Tyler has started to post videos on social media sites YouTube and TikTok under the JTAC Farms handle. Cover crop blends are diverse and feature as many as two dozen species. Cover crop grazing is an integral part of JTAC Farms' operation. Tyler Tobald has built his own solar charging system with customized electric fence lines.

Improving soil. Based on soil test results, legumes in the cover crop mix deposit nitrogen into the soil, helping the Tobalds dramatically reduce synthetic nitrogen and herbicide applications. Organic matter has doubled in some fields; water infiltration capacity also has improved.

Those numbers are tangible, but there is much more happening underneath his feet. That, he adds, is harder to explain.

"You're taking it on faith that your soil is doing processes that we don't even fully understand yet," he explains.

"There's still things we don't understand going on down there, and you've just got to trust that it's working."

Crop residue on the surface protects the soil, he adds.

"We lose so much moisture to evaporation on bare soils. The sun just absolutely bakes the soil surface. Having armor on top of the soil is the same as having mulch in a flower bed," Tyler says.

Makerspace. A natural-born tinkerer, Tyler's handiwork is present in nearly every building and machine on the farm.

He built the farm's solar-powered fence chargers, which power the farm's cross-fence grazing system. A fleet of carts, each armed with reels of electric fence wire, are custom designed for each field layout, and feature the correct number of step-in fence posts for cross grazing. The split fences are fence tape, which is easy to assemble.

Tobald also designed and built a low-stress cattle handling system that perfectly fits their operation's needs. The system is new and a huge upgrade to an old and unsafe series of pens, alleys, and panels.

"I love being able to work cows the way we do now," he explains. "Before, we were just getting hurt. I've got two senior citizens helping me and it's not great for them to be getting hurt like that. We had to do something better, so I came up with something better."

Tyler dives into on-farm research, and has begun working with a drone company called Taranis, which provides flyover data on a subscription basis through his local cooperative, Central Valley Ag.

In 2023, Taranis found weed pressure on one of Tobald's fields. Normally, the entire field would be sprayed, but only about 75% of the field had reached a treatment threshold.

"They sprayed the necessary acres and that ended up saving me more than what the drone scouting costs," Tyler says. "That's less chemical, less damage to the corn, and less compaction."

The aerial imagery can show a host of disease challenges, nutrient deficiencies, weed infestations, and insect pressure, guiding him to make profitable decisions.

"Drone scouting is massive, and I think it is so slept on right now," he adds.

He is such a believer in Taranis and drone scouting that he has become a spokesperson for the company on social media.

In fact, Tyler is building a social media following by talking about day-to-day farm activities on YouTube, Facebook, and TikTok under his channel, JTAC Farms.

The musical performer in him influences the entertainment value of Tobald's social media outreach, but there also is an element of giving back to the folks from whom he learned, and still is learning.

"There are so many amazing things to learn. I want to learn as much as I can for as long as I can," he says. ‡