No-Till Farmer Blog

We finally finished barley harvest last night and took our first sample of soft red winter wheat.  It rained every day but one the last ten days, not much, just enough to keep you from working full days.

The barley ranged from 30 to 90 bushels and the drowned out areas really pulled down yields.  We have had a year’s rainfall in southwest Ohio in half a year.  The test weight was down to 42-44 lbs.

The wheat sample showed 58 pounds at 15% moisture. Yields will be all over the board on it, too.  The more nitrogen and fungicide you got on, the better the yield.  Some got neither in this area this year.

An important management factor for me was the use of trychaderma again on my seed.  I used the Gaucho insecticide fungicide package with Sabrex Root trychaderma root fungicide. Both contain trychaderma I find profitable in my corn, soybeans, and cereal grains.

They both made over 10 bushels more grain and up to near 20 bushels over the insecticide/fungicide.  Another thing I do is add 2 lbs of Tillage Radish to my wheat seeding and that added near 10 bushels this year.  I had 90 bushels with both, 80 bushels with either trychaderma or radish and 70 without either.  I did not test non treated seed.

Some of my corn strips are visually different with trychaderma today and I have heard the same across the country.  I really feel any good seed company ought to just add that to all their seed, it’s well worth the dollar or so extra cost for them.  Some of the seed companies I deal with do that but none of the mainstream companies do yet.

Some fields are a wooly mess around here with so few days without rain.  Weed control is job one again this year but the biggest impact is our late crop as some corn won’t be knee high by the fourth of July next week.  We need a really good summer to make something of this crop.

Resistant weeds are worse this year as expected.  Sharpen and Ignite are becoming popular words in weed control here and more Gramoxone was used this year than any I have seen.

It’s a mixed bag in Ohio but it’s all behind maturity wise except for weeds.  The bugs really haven’t had a chance yet with all the rain.

Most of the corn got planted here with hopes of $6 per bushel but some preventive planting was taken.  I can’t imgaine what an early frost or cool summer would do to prices.

I have heard a lot of positive comments about the condition of crops planted into cover crops around here.  They are some of the better looking fields around.

There will be lots to talk about at St. Louis in January and it will be here before you know it!

Ed Winkle

While no-till farming practices have established themselves or rapidly expanded in many regions of the U.S., it appears agronomists in Mississippi have a different problem — getting no-till off the ground.

Ernie Flint, Mississippi Extension Area Agronomist, recently explained the virtues of no-till crops in an AgFax.Com submission.

Flint says that while doing research work during the 1990s, he found that cotton growing in no-till soil during a drought period transpired as much, if not more water, than plants growing in tilled soil.

Moisture tests done on soil cores showed that even though no-till soil was significantly drier, cotton plants growing in it were getting enough water to remain active, while plants in tilled soil were obviously wilted and suffering the effects of moisture stress.

“Since then,” Flint writes, “I’ve seen this difference many times in actual field environments — not only in cotton, but in other crops. Corn plants show this difference more quickly than the other field crops we grow.”

One of the primary reasons no-till plants can extract more water from soil, Flint says, is that the mycorrhizal network is still intact, whereas it has been damaged by tillage in conventional cropping systems. This network is formed by beneficial fungi that act as an extension of the plant’s root system to find water and nutrients. Flint says porosity and improved organic activity are also factors.

But these concepts aren’t catching on with many growers in the South. Flint acknowledges that no-till has some problems, just like conventional tillage, but when the most stressful periods of heat and drought arrive, no-till usually proves its worth — especially for those who can’t irrigate.

Flint knows some farmers will point out fields that suffered under no-till conversion, but he suspects those failures have more to do with poor drainage, poor fertility, low soil pH, or compaction resulting from decades of tillage and soil erosion.

“Problems like these have to be addressed before crops can be grown in any system, and especially in reduced tillage,” he wrote.

“However, I commonly see growers who go to great lengths and expense to end-run these problems without dealing with the basic soil-quality issues that would have made reduced tillage work for them.”

Flint says the adoption of a paradigm change, like converting to reduce tillage, may require generations to accomplish in his area. He says he’s often reminded that the shift to hybrid corn took over 30 years, even though the benefits were immediate and apparent.

“The conversion of Southern farmers to something as management-related as no-till may require much more time than that,” he says. “However, if no-till crops ‘weather’ this drought — as they likely will — the adoption period may be shortened.”

Here’s hoping that growers in cotton country will speed up the learning curve a bit, so they can reap the benefits of no-till that farmers in North are already enjoying. Sometimes a successful journey starts with taking that first step.

It’s good to see that the American farmer is doing more with less. In this case, they’re growing more corn with fewer amounts of applied fertilizer.

To be certain, they’re getting more technology from the ag industry to help hit those higher yields. That said, the Fertilizer Institute says that corn production has nearly doubled in the past 30 years with slightly fewer nutrients used than in 1980.

No-tillers are leading the way. For example, in our 3rd annual No-Till Practices survey answered by 502 No-Till Farmer readers, nearly 60% said they were applying less than 1 pound of nitrogen to reach their expected yield goal. That’s quite a bit less than the 1.2 pounds-per-bushel teachings of the past.

When you consider the public scrutiny farmers are placed under — some of it unfair, when you think of the fertilizer many of these same critics might apply to their lawns and see run off into storm sewers during heavy rain events — there are signs that farmers, in general, are much more responsible than given credit.

“Efficient food production and protection of the environment are not mutually exclusive goals,” says Fertilizer Institute president Ford West. “While our critics’ voices are often louder than our advocates, the numbers don’t lie. This new data shows yet one more reason that agriculture is a leader in environmental stewardship.”

I expect no-tillers to keep leading the effort to be more and more efficient with nutrients and raise the standards. It’s important that they take that leadership role.