Owner Jacob Farm and Cattle, Sedgwick, Kansas

Landowner -Tenant Panel

Ryan Speer joined Jacob Farms and Cattle near Sedgwick, Kansas 15 years ago as a farm manager, and brought the farm into a continuous no-till operation shortly thereafter. He has since become an owner in the business.

Continuous no-till in both dryland and irrigated systems has allowed the farm to grow in acreage while requiring less labor, thanks to crop diversity and the use of cover crops to boost cash crop yields while reducing losses due to evaporation.

The cash crops include corn, soybeans and wheat; they also grow grain sorghum on dryland acres and cover crops. Ryan’s area of Kansas receives about 30-inches of rainfall per year. Ryan believes in the mission of No-till on the Plains to provide important information to farmers, to help them develop and fine-tune the no-till system.