Erosion control

Many of our fields are on hills and have terraces to help prevent soil erosion from water runoff. The terraces are ridges that have been built in the field that to slow and redirect the water. The water moves to grass covered drainage ditches. It’s hard for me to explain but this past fall we had a very heavy rain event and I had the opportunity to take a group of pictures of terraces and waterways in use. This field had two years of wheat and is in currently in a rye cover crop so it was near maximum soil erosion protection. This part of this field might be rotated to corn for silage next year or soybeans due to more choices to control weeds after the crop starts growing.

To Cover Crop or not

Authors note: Much of this is my recap of the 2012 No Till on the Plains Winter Conference. I went into the conference wanting to wrap my mind around utilizing cover crops in no till better. I still have many questions, but they might be best answered from experimenting.

Implementing cover crops in no till cropping systems has been a concept introduced to me at the No Till on the Plains winter conference a couple of years ago. Cover crops are plants seeded and grown between cash crops. These plants can be legumes that takes nitrogen from the air for the plant to use, brassica's that are deep rooted that help break compacted layers of soil and trap nitrogen, or grasses that hold soil and take up nutrients.

Gabe Brown, North Dakota farmer and rancher, was the first farmer that really got me interested in this crazy idea. He had found that a complex blend of plant species with varying root depths not only survived, but thrived in through North Dakota droughts. In the initial presentation a few years ago he talked about grazing cow/calf pairs for a month on a cover crop blend, I think he estimated the weight gain on the calves generated $100 or more an acre, that really perked my interest. At his presentation this past winter we told of a corn crop planted in a cover crop blend of cereal rye, vetches, oil seed radishes, turnips and a variety of other plants species. His cost of production was $1.10/bu he made one herbicide application to terminate the rye and set back the vetch enough to not compete with the corn and the cover crop blends provided all the nutrients. The expenses for his cover crops were covered by grazing them with cattle. He showed pictures of a corn crop that was planted into some of the heaviest ground cover of I've ever seen, at around tassel stage the trash was very deteriorated, at harvest the space between the rows were bare with the exception of some vetch that looked about a foot tall, and a couple of weeks later the vetch really started growing.

So Gabe Brown had luck with his cover crops during North Dakota droughts, but how would they deal with a Kansas drought? Gail Fuller, east central Kansas and Ryan Speer, south central Kansas, each gave presentations about their use of cover crops in last summer's drought.

Fuller has had cover crops longer in his rotation and felt early in the season his corn had the potential to be some of his best ever. He showed pictures of it green where his neighbor's corn was burned up from the drought, but relief from the drought came too late for it. After harvesting as forage he planted cover crop blends back to it to protect the soil and keep soil ecology working. The cover crops looked like they had good growth in his photos.

Ryan Speer is transitioning cover crops to his crop rotation and has experimented some the past few years. Speer's dryland corn was horrible, I think he said it yielded in the 15 to 20 bushel per acre range this year, but he noticed his yield monitor jumped up to 60 to 70 bushel range in a spot where there had been a plot of sun hemp between wheat crops three years ago. He stated that evaporation in the fairly short fallow period, late June to early October, is more than the water requirements of many of the cover crops. Speer has also been having rye and radishes flown on to irrigated corn fields late in the irrigation season. These are some very sandy field and he's seen an increase in soil organic matter to help increase both the water holding capacity and fertility of these fields.

So how do I tell how much nutrients are these cover crops are either tying up to be released when they decompose or nitrogen they are "making" in the case of legumes? Ray Ward of Ward Lab, recommends farmers either estimate how many tons of hay the cover crop may make and determine protein value of the various plants or send a vegetative sample from one square yard for a cover crop analysis. Many cover crop advocates emphasizing some very diverse mixes so I feel sending a sample would be more helpful.

How do cover crops effect soil biology? Dr. Jill Clapperton soil biologist and president of Rhizoterra Inc explained that poor soil biology produced poor crops in terms of both crop yields and nutrient content. She went on to tell us that most soil organisms are fed by the soil organic matter and when cover crops are used there are more actively growing roots throughout the entire growing season to keep producing soil organic matter. She also stated that the more diverse mix of plants that are growing on top of the soil the more diversity in soil organisms, since a monocropping system is used for cash crops this leaves cover crops to be a major source of plant diversity. Earth worms are one of the biggest and easiest to recognize soil organisms and they absolutely dislike soils that have had mechanical tillage performed. Mechanical tillage disrupts the soil organisms that earth worms live on.

Fuller commented on having part of a field that was poor even though soil tests revealed that fertility was the same as the rest of the field. A mycorrhizea test revealed that it was severely out of balance there. Clapperton mentioned that Ward Lab and a few others are capable of testing for it now. Determining which cover crops helps correct mycorrhizea problems is a challenge.

I sat in a presentation of Dr. Jonathan Lundgren an entomologist with USDA-ARS, stationed at North Central Agriculture Research Laboratory, Brookings, South Dakota. He does extensive research and studying of predator insects. He stressed that reducing soil disturbance and careful scouting and using insecticides only when thresholds are met are a help preserve insect predators. He felt cover crop blends are helpful in recruiting more predators insects to fields to reduce need for insecticides.

I ran into a neighbor, Craig Ballou, he had a stop on a sunflower crop tour last summer at a double crop sunflower field without commercial nitrogen fertilizer. The field had been in a sun hemp cover crop between two wheat crops. It's a common practice of no till farmers in my area to raise two continuous crops of wheat. From past soil tests on double crop sunflowers in this rotation the nitrogen left was the same as what he had applied so he decided to not apply it. With our winter wheat growing season the soil doesn't warm soon enough for the residual nitrogen from a legume to be available for the wheat other than a possible protein boost.

Here are Craig Ballou's double crop sunflowers on August 30th. No nitrogen fertilizer was applied and Craig said they did very good, I could tell he was proud of them when I asked him about them.

I feel transitioning to cover crops is the next step in our no till rotation. I feel it will be a fairly slow transition as we learn what mix of plants and how to seed them in a timely manner. We will need to start on land we own, partially to insure we receive the long term benefits of it and to also prove to landlords that this crazy idea is viable.

Winter meetings

After the first of the year when things are generally slow on the farm, meetings heat up. There are many production meetings ranging from local to national level. I'm fortunate to have a good one in what is practically my back yard.

Last week I attending No-till on the Plains Winter Conference. This was their 15th annual meeting and my 7th, I've been to everyone of them since coming back to the farm, my dad was one of the founding board members. Attendees were primarily from the Great Plains, the region that covers Texas to North Dakota and Missouri River to the Rocky Mountains. Each year brings more international attendees, particularly from the Canadian prairie Providences, in the past a lady connected to a Former Soviet Union State has attended.

Over the years the list of presenters have had an international flair either from experience and cooperating with foreign researchers or are farmers or crop consultants. This year the international guest speakers was a crop consultant from South Africa, a group of Canadian farmers from Saskatchewan and Alberta and Canadian researchers.

The conference kicked off with with Apple computers co founder Steve Wozniak speaking in a relaxed question and answer setting. He focused on innovation and mentioned how smaller companies can be more flexible and can cater to specific markets to fill a niche that larger companies can't meet. I didn't win the Ipad door prize autographed by the Woz.

There were three speakers in the breakout sessions that left an impression on me. Part of the reason they left the impression is not just validation for what we currently do, but also help nudge us in the direction of even more sustainability. As the definition of sustainability changes I have determined I will never claim as being sustainable.

Jill Clapperton, a soil scientist that studies soil biology and health. She had an in depth presentation about how soil residue, soil structure and soil biology are inter related and essential in a healthy no till cropping system. She also teased us with the findings in a soon to be released study by a graduate student working under her on healthy soils producing healthy food, I will be looking for it. Instead of attending her last presentation I went to Paul Jasa, engineer with University of Nebraska Lincoln, he understands no till systems and the equipment upgrades required, great source for sifting through the various attachments.

Francis Yeatman, a South African crop consultant had a very interesting presentation on soil fertility and the need for indepth analysis of soil tests and following up with tissue testings. He had many clients that had over applied fertilizer and lacked the proper balance of available nutrients that resulted in deficiencies. In his work he has found that not all nutrient sources are the same, some can help build soil structure while supplying crops with the nutrients while others only provide the crop with nutrients. In his information packet was a chart showing the effect of high and low nutrients levels have on other nutrients.

Jonathan Lungren, a USDA-ARS researcher at the North Central Agricultural Research Laboratory. Spoke about preserving beneficial insects in a no till system. Much of his work revolved around corn rootworms which seems to have a built in defense mechanism that requires a great number of beneficials to control. Dewayne Beck of Dakota Lakes research farm had contacted him to determine why corn rootworms weren't a problem. They determined after adding rootworms to the rows of corn that enough predators were present to prevent any noticeable loss. A favorable environment was created for beneficials due to a varied crop rotation that included cover crops and limited needs of pesticides.

I feel our farm is moving in the right direction. We soil test on a regular basis and observing plants for nutrient deficiencies is part of our in season scouting program. Our increasing use of sunflowers as a double crop between second year wheat and grain sorghum or corn shows several benefits because of more plant diversity, increase in beneficial insects, we have actively growing plants feeding soil biology during what would be a long period of not having desirable plants growing, and I feel wheat stubble decomposes faster putting carbon into the soil faster. We have an irrigated field that has a wheat and double crop sunflowers prior to a corn crop might be a candidate for some non Bt corn trial based on some of Lungrens comments about sunflowers attracting beneficial insects.

I also visited with some an up start oil processor that was trying to generate interest in Safflower for bio diesel. The timing of seeding and harvest works well for us as a replacement for some acres of soybeans and it also the oil content ranges from 35% to 40% even with lower grain yields it has potential to out produce soybeans in oil content. I feel as an industry we need to keep finding and improving crops to increase oil production on current crop acres.

Always changing down on the farm

I am going in a different direction in this blog. Based off a tweet I posted on Twitter the other day. "Farming is not static, it's always evolving: better genetics, new crops, different methods." These few words generated numerous reposts, retweets, and a discussion with a gentleman about genetically modified organisms, GMO.

Farmers have always planted the best seed that they could get. In the past they saved seed from the best plants for next years crop. Then plant breeders became involved cross pollinating different plant lines to bring better characteristics to the plant. Now in the day and age of DNA testing and gene mapping, plant breeders have tools to identify the specific seeds that resulted from the cross speeding up seed development.

Companies such as Monsanto, DuPont, and Sygenta, have become involved in the seed business. These companies have brought advanced science that allows them to insert a gene from different plant species to make them resistant to herbicides and insects. Currently the only GMO crops in production are corn, soybeans, cotton, and canola. These plants are thoroughly tested and approve by the various regulation agencies in the United States. European countries have been resistant to allow Genetically Modified Organisms to be raised, and limits imports. However the countries that make up the European Union are allowing research plots and evaluating the safety of GMO crops. I feel that GMO crops are safe, I trust the regulatory agency to use sound science to allow crops to enter our food system. I also feel that these agencies will pull a product, based on sound science, if they are found to be unsafe after release.

There has been several crops tried on our farm in addition to wheat over the past 100 some years that my family has farmed in Ottawa county Kansas. We are always looking for new crops that will fit into our cropping system. A crop that looks promising for our rotation is winter canola. Being a broad leaf plant with a similar growing season as wheat it will allow us to use different classes of herbicides to control troublesome grassy weeds that plague our wheat. A change that is going to take place is an increase our acres of dryland corn, advances from traditional breeding have made it better at tolerating droughts, a drought tolerant GMO corn is expected to be available in 5 or 6 years. With grain sorghum prices lagging behind corn we are evaluating food grade grain sorghum for the gluten free market and we have an acquaintance that in the past has shown interest for milling some into flour.

Farming methods have changed a great deal in the past several years on the farm. When I was growing up moldboard plowing wheat fields was the accepted norm, weed seeds were buried deep and the fields were kept bare with additional tillage leaving the top soil very fine and prone to blow away . Then we started burning the wheat stubble to sterilize weed seed and some mid to deep tillage to break up compaction layers, still keeping the ground bare until fall wheat seeding. On fields with less weed pressure we would be less aggressive with tillage and would leave some wheat stubble on the surface until fall wheat seeding. Then in the mid 90's we took a leap of faith and started no till farming on select fields, leaving the stubble. No till was working on those fields and we had found what crops worked and where to place them in a crop rotation so more acres were added. Now 80% of our farm land is in a long term no till system, because of lease agreements that require that land to be in continuous wheat unless it needs rotated out for weed control we would be at 100% no till.

Some of the benefits of no till is that it saves labor, fuel, it greatly reduces soil erosion, and traps soil stored carbon. It saves labor by not requiring as many people spending several hours a day performing tillage operations, but with our rotations we spend more time seeding spring planted crops and harvesting them in the fall. It takes a tremendous amout of fuel to turn the soil during tillage operations. Every time soil is turned over carbon is released into the atmosphere in addition to a tremendous amount of dust. Tillage can also create a hard layer in the soil, soil compaction, that prevents plants from reaching water and nutrients, after a few years in no till this layer disappers. Bacteria and micro-organisms essential for plants thrive under no till. The wind doesn't blow the soil away because of the crop residue shields the soil and water doesn't wash the soil away as much because it will soak into the soil much the way it did when it was a prairie. We do rely on herbicides for weed control, but with our crop rotation we can use different crops and herbicides with different modes of action to help control them. I feel in the future we will learn more about dealing with weeds and pests from the organic community and eventually there will be less difference in commercial and organic.

Farming has changed in the last 38 years of my life and will continue to change using traditional plant breeding methods with modern genetic manipulations to bring them to their fullest potential. New crops will be brought into the cropping mix as they become better suited and more economical for a farmer to produce. Farming methods will slowly continue to change, the acceptance of no till and it's variants such as strip till is growing. Who knows perennial crops might become viable or Kansas might become the leading produce state.