Alan Ness
Manitoba-North Dakota Zero Till Farmers Association
Experience and research are paying off big time.
Alan Ness, Man-Dak’s executive secretary in Underwood, North Dakota, attended Bismarck’s first no-till workshop around 1980.
“There was excitement and controversy,” says Ness. “We’ve made great strides since then, but we really haven’t solved all of the production challenges. There’s more to be done in areas we hadn’t even considered 35 years ago.”
Ness says when conservation tillage was a new concept, farmers focused on getting the basics down pat – getting the seed into the ground with direct seeding equipment, weed control and fertilizer application. Not all farmers trusted the claims of conservation tillage advocates, and some farmers were cut short by machinery costs.
“A lot has changed,” Ness says. “Now we talk about moisture management and nutrient management. On both sides of the border, virtually all the research is in conservation tillage or no-till situations. The big, exciting ideas are soil quality benefits, improved infiltration, and the reduction of compaction issues and crusting problems. Cover crops in a no-till system is a new and exciting subject.”
Experience and research are paying off big time. Burndown treatments, a staple of weed control, are more effective now that producers understand the importance of timing and can access a range of products to curb resistance build-up. And split applications using a residual herbicide have become a useful tool for controlling weed flushes in conjunction with a glyphosate burndown treatment.
“Basically, any system that has residue management is considered conservation tillage,” Ness says. “Virtually everybody is using some form of conservation tillage.”
Ness thinks that the rate of adoption has probably crested, but within that group farm managers are steadily moving from minimum till to no-till. Producers are also learning about the benefits of managed crop rotations. Ness says a typical farm in his area used to grow wheat and sunflower or flax.
“Now that same producer is probably growing winter wheat, spring wheat, sunflowers, peas and canola – just a whole bunch of crops. I had a neighbor who had 13 different crops in the ground a couple years ago.”
Similarly, with improved management, light sandy fields that once yielded 10 to 12 bushels an acre now produce 20 to 30 bushels. Conservation tillage is stabilizing the soil, and the crops are benefiting from better nutrient and moisture management.
Harold Regier
Producer - Watrous, Saskatchewan
“The soil isn’t drifting anymore.”
This farm manager near Watrous, Saskatchewan, says no-till has changed farming for the better. Regier got disgusted watching his soil blow away, so he started reducing tillage about 25 years ago.
“The soil isn’t drifting anymore, but I use lots of chemicals,” Regier says. “I don’t summerfallow, don’t till and don’t even have a cultivator to fight fires in a stubble field.”
He says he may harrow a little. “But I don’t band in the fall anymore. I used to band fertilizer and harrow-pack in spring. I have an air seeder now and just put fertilizer down at seeding time.”
The kind of soil conservation practices Regier uses play an important role in soil reclamation. Tilled soil in poor condition can take hundreds of years to build it back from the effects of wind and water erosion, loss of organic matter, contamination and salinization.
Although zero-till practices generally require extensive fertilization, studies show that when soil is properly managed, it can be built back in a fraction of that time, possibly within a couple of decades.
“Old problems like wild oats and wild millet are history, and I see a lot of earthworms.”
Regier says with continuous cropping and no-till, his ground has mellowed. This allows him to seed canola shallow. It holds moisture better and there’s more fiber on top. He says that he’s gotten some of his weed problems under control. “Old problems like wild oats and wild millet are history, and I see a lot of earthworms,” he says. “And I like the fact that I can rotate into small grains, oilseeds and peas.”
However, Regier says he has some issues. Germination is slower because the soil stays cool a little later in spring. He sees dandelions, a few thistles, and narrowleaf hawksbeard is moving in. Because he’s still getting Roundup Ready® canola volunteers three and four years later, he does a spring burnoff. “We have gopher and badger holes that never close up. And we have rough indentations in places on some fields from spring harvesting twice in a row in soft conditions.”
Ron Heller
Alberta Reduced Till LINKAGES
“We’ve been putting back the organic matter.”
Extension agronomist Ron Heller in Vermilion, Alberta, says that even the conservation tillage vocabulary we use today is changing. “I don’t like the word ‘tillage’ anymore,” he says. “I like to look at seeding practice and soil disturbance. At one time, a 4-inch opener on 10-inch row spacing was doing 40 percent soil disturbance. The standard now is easily less than 2-inch openers on 10-inch to 12-inch row spacing.”
The huge swing toward lower disturbance seeding and equipment has happened relatively fast. Only a generation ago in Alberta, fall tillage was pretty much standard procedure. Today, less than 20 percent of crop land is tilled. About half of all Alberta seeding is performed in a system that retains the majority of crop residue.
“The strong swing to very low disturbance technology is exciting, and I don’t think the curve has peaked,” Heller says, “Producers who want to adopt no disturbance are calling us all the time.” The focus now is on rebuilding damaged soil rather than on sustainable farming. “We feel our systems are sustainable,” Heller says. “We’re putting back the organic matter and certainly replacing the nutrients.”
However, there’s still a lot more to learn. “Some farm managers need to be convinced that a field can be both fallow and covered with residue; it never needs to be black and exposed to erosion.” Progressive no-till managers, who have mastered crop diversity and rotations, are now learning to work in forages. “We can cycle forages through very easily,” says Heller. “For the $12 cost of an application, we can terminate perennial forage and go right into annual cropping with no-till. We call this sod seeding.”
Thirty years after the start of conservation tillage, Heller says, the big challenges for sustainable farming are age and money (demographics and capitalization) rather than technology and technique.
“When it’s time for a land title to change hands, this can be troublesome,” says Heller. “The land title may be amortized over many years, but the young operator can’t do that with equipment and still needs a down payment. That’s the number one challenge we have in agriculture now.”
Heller says he has yet to meet a farmer who has adopted reduced tillage and wants to go back to the old tillage system.
Back to Top Back to Table of ContentsWrite a comment
- Required fields are marked with *.
Alan Ness
Manitoba-North Dakota Zero Till Farmers Association
Experience and research are paying off big time.
Alan Ness, Man-Dak’s executive secretary in Underwood, North Dakota, attended Bismarck’s first no-till workshop around 1980.
“There was excitement and controversy,” says Ness. “We’ve made great strides since then, but we really haven’t solved all of the production challenges. There’s more to be done in areas we hadn’t even considered 35 years ago.”
Ness says when conservation tillage was a new concept, farmers focused on getting the basics down pat – getting the seed into the ground with direct seeding equipment, weed control and fertilizer application. Not all farmers trusted the claims of conservation tillage advocates, and some farmers were cut short by machinery costs.
“A lot has changed,” Ness says. “Now we talk about moisture management and nutrient management. On both sides of the border, virtually all the research is in conservation tillage or no-till situations. The big, exciting ideas are soil quality benefits, improved infiltration, and the reduction of compaction issues and crusting problems. Cover crops in a no-till system is a new and exciting subject.”
Experience and research are paying off big time. Burndown treatments, a staple of weed control, are more effective now that producers understand the importance of timing and can access a range of products to curb resistance build-up. And split applications using a residual herbicide have become a useful tool for controlling weed flushes in conjunction with a glyphosate burndown treatment.
“Basically, any system that has residue management is considered conservation tillage,” Ness says. “Virtually everybody is using some form of conservation tillage.”
Ness thinks that the rate of adoption has probably crested, but within that group farm managers are steadily moving from minimum till to no-till. Producers are also learning about the benefits of managed crop rotations. Ness says a typical farm in his area used to grow wheat and sunflower or flax.
“Now that same producer is probably growing winter wheat, spring wheat, sunflowers, peas and canola – just a whole bunch of crops. I had a neighbor who had 13 different crops in the ground a couple years ago.”
Similarly, with improved management, light sandy fields that once yielded 10 to 12 bushels an acre now produce 20 to 30 bushels. Conservation tillage is stabilizing the soil, and the crops are benefiting from better nutrient and moisture management.
Harold Regier
Producer - Watrous, Saskatchewan
“The soil isn’t drifting anymore.”
This farm manager near Watrous, Saskatchewan, says no-till has changed farming for the better. Regier got disgusted watching his soil blow away, so he started reducing tillage about 25 years ago.
“The soil isn’t drifting anymore, but I use lots of chemicals,” Regier says. “I don’t summerfallow, don’t till and don’t even have a cultivator to fight fires in a stubble field.”
He says he may harrow a little. “But I don’t band in the fall anymore. I used to band fertilizer and harrow-pack in spring. I have an air seeder now and just put fertilizer down at seeding time.”
The kind of soil conservation practices Regier uses play an important role in soil reclamation. Tilled soil in poor condition can take hundreds of years to build it back from the effects of wind and water erosion, loss of organic matter, contamination and salinization.
Although zero-till practices generally require extensive fertilization, studies show that when soil is properly managed, it can be built back in a fraction of that time, possibly within a couple of decades.
“Old problems like wild oats and wild millet are history, and I see a lot of earthworms.”
Regier says with continuous cropping and no-till, his ground has mellowed. This allows him to seed canola shallow. It holds moisture better and there’s more fiber on top. He says that he’s gotten some of his weed problems under control. “Old problems like wild oats and wild millet are history, and I see a lot of earthworms,” he says. “And I like the fact that I can rotate into small grains, oilseeds and peas.”
However, Regier says he has some issues. Germination is slower because the soil stays cool a little later in spring. He sees dandelions, a few thistles, and narrowleaf hawksbeard is moving in. Because he’s still getting Roundup Ready® canola volunteers three and four years later, he does a spring burnoff. “We have gopher and badger holes that never close up. And we have rough indentations in places on some fields from spring harvesting twice in a row in soft conditions.”
Ron Heller
Alberta Reduced Till LINKAGES
“We’ve been putting back the organic matter.”
Extension agronomist Ron Heller in Vermilion, Alberta, says that even the conservation tillage vocabulary we use today is changing. “I don’t like the word ‘tillage’ anymore,” he says. “I like to look at seeding practice and soil disturbance. At one time, a 4-inch opener on 10-inch row spacing was doing 40 percent soil disturbance. The standard now is easily less than 2-inch openers on 10-inch to 12-inch row spacing.”
The huge swing toward lower disturbance seeding and equipment has happened relatively fast. Only a generation ago in Alberta, fall tillage was pretty much standard procedure. Today, less than 20 percent of crop land is tilled. About half of all Alberta seeding is performed in a system that retains the majority of crop residue.
“The strong swing to very low disturbance technology is exciting, and I don’t think the curve has peaked,” Heller says, “Producers who want to adopt no disturbance are calling us all the time.” The focus now is on rebuilding damaged soil rather than on sustainable farming. “We feel our systems are sustainable,” Heller says. “We’re putting back the organic matter and certainly replacing the nutrients.”
However, there’s still a lot more to learn. “Some farm managers need to be convinced that a field can be both fallow and covered with residue; it never needs to be black and exposed to erosion.” Progressive no-till managers, who have mastered crop diversity and rotations, are now learning to work in forages. “We can cycle forages through very easily,” says Heller. “For the $12 cost of an application, we can terminate perennial forage and go right into annual cropping with no-till. We call this sod seeding.”
Thirty years after the start of conservation tillage, Heller says, the big challenges for sustainable farming are age and money (demographics and capitalization) rather than technology and technique.
“When it’s time for a land title to change hands, this can be troublesome,” says Heller. “The land title may be amortized over many years, but the young operator can’t do that with equipment and still needs a down payment. That’s the number one challenge we have in agriculture now.”
Heller says he has yet to meet a farmer who has adopted reduced tillage and wants to go back to the old tillage system.
Back to Top Back to Table of ContentsWrite a comment
- Required fields are marked with *.