ASA National Conservation Legacy Award Winner Rulon Enterprises

No-till, Mulch-till, or Conventional-till Corn?

It may seem like a strange title, but this is the type of question that is being asked thousands of times all around our state in various counties right now. Conservation and agricultural professionals are asking specific questions, about very specific fields, which have had this type of information collected from them for over 20 years. We call it the Indiana Tillage Transect.

The Tillage Transect is a mechanism for tracking trends in conservation and cropland trends. The information collected can help us determine whether important soil quality building conservation activities, such as No-till, are being more heavily adopted or not. We can also take the collected data and estimate the average annual soil loss from Indiana’s agricultural lands. All of this information can help us to determine how to focus conservation efforts and resources in the future.

Very simply, every county has a designated route where information is visually captured from the road and recorded for later analysis. The routes generally travel throughout the main ag areas of the county. There are designated points, at regular intervals along the route where information is observed (typically this can be done from the road) and recorded. Information such as: current planted crop, previous crop, type of tillage used prior to planting-if any, and an estimated amount of residue (plant matter) remaining on the soil from the previously harvested crop (this is an indicator of soil erosion potential as bare soil can erode rapidly).

I know that this project may sound a little less than exciting, but the information is quite valuable. In fact, the Conservation Technology Information Center (CTIC) regularly requests this data to aggregate with other states’ data for tracking national cropland trends. In fact, the true value of this project may lie in the opportunity the transect presents for the key, local conservation experts to tour their county/area of responsibility together, discussing conservation planning solutions for observed environmental concerns (i.e. severe soil erosion, instances of impaired water resources) .

See our Conservation Tillage Program web page for more information and to see past Tillage Transect results!  To learn more about ways to improve soil health, improve profitability, and enhance your environmental stewardship....go to the Conservation Cropping Systems Initiative site.

Increased Soil Quality & Environmental Quality through No-till Planting

Here is a short video I found that does a good job of briefly demonstrating and explaining the benefits of no-till planting.  In Indiana, just over 60% of our Soybeans are planted by means of no-till and just over 20% of our Corn.  The Indiana State Department of Agriculture, Division of Soil Conservation and our conservation partners have some excellent resources available to help farmers who are interested in making the transition to no-till.  One great resource is our Conservation Cropping Systems Initiative.....check it out!

Save Money, Save Soil

There is a tremedous amount of data and information out there for farmers to digest these days about how to improve farming. It seems like everybody has a tool, seed, herbicide, or method which will improve profitability and help the farmer be more efficient. One thing for sure that can help you make more money on your farm at the end of the day is to spend less on your inputs. By "inputs" I mean, the cost associated with getting the crops planted all the way through grain delivered.

One method that seems to pencil out time and time again is continuous no-till/strip-till. No-till is a tillage system in which the soil is not disturbed before planting, except for injecting fertilizer nutrients such as liquid manure or anhydrous ammonia and opening narrow strips with a coulter or disk seed-furrow during planting. This means that tillage is entirely eliminated. Furthermore, the entire residue from the previous crop remains on the soil’s surface to protect it from erosion. The economic benefits can really be seen when considering the costs of fuel, machinery, time for labor, and yield returns in dry years (generally more available moisture in no-till).

This is a conservation blog, so of course I have to mention that no-till/strip-till have many, many more advantages for the environment over conventional as well. Conservation tillage, particularly in the form of long-term or continuous no-till, minimizes the soil leaving the field by maintaining a cover on the soil's surface. Since nutrients that can pose some environmental concerns, such as phosphorus, are bound to soil particles the soil savings is doubly important.

There are many more benefits that I could go on about, but I'll stop by referencing one great resource to learn more about no-till/strip-till, cover crops, precision farming and nutrient management, the Conservation Cropping Systems Inititaive. This website has some excellent resources, including two good videos detailing no-till planter setup, and contact information for recieving specific technical help with these practices. Thanks to the Indiana State Soil Conservation Board, the Indiana Association of Soil and Water Conservation Districts, the Indiana Natural Resources Conservation Service, and our other conservation partners for making this great initiative possible!

Resources:
http://www.conservationinformation.org/Publications/BetterSoilBetterYields.pdf

http://www.extension.iastate.edu/Publications/PM1901D.pdf