Turning our attention now to an interesting multi-year trial. South Dakota no-tiller Rick Bieber split one of his fields in half — one side got no fertility, and the other side got the best management practices. Yield went down 10-15% in the first 3 years on the side without inputs, but by year 4 it started going up, eventually equaling the other side of the field by year 5. Rick, how in the world did that happen?

“We see that it’s balanced itself. Our testing shows that our nutrient content on the fields with 0 fertility has actually been going up significantly, and that’s all because of a process called rhizophagy cycling, where plants can and will manufacture their own nutrients if the balances are in the soil. I’m talking about biological balances, where all your fungi, bacteria and little critters come back into a balance, and they only do that when the chemical side of things — the carbon, oxygen, phosphorous, magnesium, molybdenum, etc. — all those levels become accessible and uniformly distributed within our soils so the plants can get them.”  

Bieber never stops experimenting. Here he is seeding a mix of non-GMO corn, turnips, radishes, oats, barley and more on a 19-degree day at the Fields of Sinsinawa in southwestern Wisconsin last week.

Watch the full version of this episode of Conservation Ag Update.