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Okay, I admit it. I spend way too much worthless time looking at Facebook posts with agricultural-related videos.
Very few of these ag-related videos feature no-tillage, strip-tillage or cover crops. Instead, the majority of ag-related Facebook videos fall into a half-dozen categories:
- Even though plowing today is a no-no, hundreds of videos document turning the ground with anywhere from a one-bottom horse-driven plow up to a 21-bottom plow pulled behind a 1,100 horsepower Big Bud tractor.
- Tractors, tillage tools, combines, grain carts and semi-trucks stuck deep in excessively tilled muddy fields.
- Small-acreage farmers in India doing wacky field work, such as pickup trucks with two or more trailers hauling 87 bales of straw at a time.
- Kids that often look to be no more than 8 years old plowing and tilling fields by themselves, or sitting dangerously on a tractor fender while Grandpa makes a pass with the field cultivator.
- 100-year-old steam-driven tractors pulling a 15-bottom plow with a wooden deck where 15 standing men constantly adjust plow depth and residue coverage for each moldboard.
- Fires that completely destroy combines, tractors and grain trucks while burning valuable crop residue.
Is No-Till Boring?
While you often see color photos on Facebook of farmers no-tilling, strip-tilling or seeding and terminating cover crops, few videos explain these all-important conservation ag practices.
Maybe it's because there’s not enough action or excitement with no-till compared to mud flying everywhere when a 500-hp tractor and 40-foot disc is stuck up to its axles. Or a $600,000 combine buried in a tilled field too wet for harvest that leaves 17-inch-deep ruts that requiring discing several times before another planting season rolls around.
Banking More Dollars
It’s probably wise for no-tillers to keep being boring with Facebook videos. Instead, continue to concentrate on banking more dollars than the farmers featured in these crazy, action-packed fire, mud and water videos that document many high-priced disasters that could have been prevented with no-till.
