Questions about no till

I know that no till was started to combat soil erosion and haven't started doing it yet due to cost (more equipment) which with just getting started is a concern. So the big question is why is it so popular and long term effects.

After talking to some local guys I always hear about taking care of the soil but everyone I've talked to adds that it save money by not making as many trip across a field. But this spring my FIL told me I could plant a few acres he has been renting out. He was raised on a farm and wasn't happy with his renter doing no till. He believes the old ways are better. The field is only about 8 acres. I has been no tilled for about 3 years, sandy loam. It was really tuff to plow and the former tenant has bigger equipment. So whats the deal here? Is it really that good? Should a guy do it say one year and not the next to avoid soil compaction? I'm just learing here so any advice is welcome.

Rick

Notill has to be used a few years to get most of the soil benefits.
You also have to pay attention to compaction but in freezing areas
it will erase plow pan in a few year.

The reason why it saves is you can be down to a planter pass and
some sprayer passes. Smaller tractor, less hp.

In some areas the trash will delay the drying and heating of the
ground too long. Strip till is an option there.

I switched to no-till in the early 1980s. I immediately had a yield loss. The experts said that the yields would come back. Well mine never did. So after five years I switched back. I deep chiseled all my ground that year and had a thirty bushel yield jump in corn. I do no-till after soybeans. My corn ground gets deep tillage every other year.

The only places I have seen continuous no-till work have real good loam soils that are not prone to compaction. I have combination soils that almost all have some clay in them. It does not no-till well. I control erosion with buffer strips. I need hay any way so they work for me.

No-till soybeans seem to work better than corn. Many big operators like to no-till because they can cover more ground. I think that if they did few acres with a combination of tillage they would get more bushels and profit.

(quoted from post at 09:36:39 09/29/11) I know that no till was started to combat soil erosion and haven't started doing yet due to cost (more equipment) which with just getting started is a concern. So the big question is why is it so popular and long term effects.

After talking to some local guys I always here about taking care of the soil but everyone I've talked to adds that it save money by not making as many trip across a field. But this spring my FIL told me I could plant a few acres he has been renting out. He was raised on a farm and wasn't happy with his renter doing no till. He believes the old ways are better. THe field is onlt about 8 acres. I has been no tilled for about 3 years, sandy loam. It was really tuff to plow and the former tenant has bigger equipment. So whats the deal here? Is it really that good? Should a guy do it say one year and not the next to avoid soil compaction? I'm just learing here so any advice is welcome.

Rick

Click to expand...

ayed to have 30 acres no-tilled (didn't own no-till drill) with mix of rye & oats for winter pasture. Did it because I had this land it real good shape for hay baling & didn't want to tear it up. Felt like I wasted my money.........got virtually nothing out of it, winter or spring. Maybe the coastal was too thick or maybe I shouldn't have been turned off by one failure, but I never do it anymore.

Guess I should add that the proir renters were a father son team. They tilled until the dad retired and truned the farming over to his son. First year no till was corn, last 2 beans. The son still rents another field right next to this one and no tilled corn in this spring and it looks great.

After plowing the 8 acres this spring I'm worried that if I try it my soil compaction is going to hurt yields. I planted a pasture mix for hay, clover, alalfa and grass. It looks really good and by the 1st week of Aug was 2-3 tall!


Anyway thanks for the imput.

Rick

This is a topic that can't be summarized in a few words, but will tell some of the major things I know about it. It works best on well drained soils. You will need to wait a few days after your neighbors start tilling, as you do not want to plant until soil works good and seed covers good. Beans probably no-till better than corn in most cases. I have planted beans in set aside ground that had laid out 5 years that yielded just as good as conventional tilled soil. The thing about no-till is once you start it is best to keep doing it, as things will improve as the years go by. You have a lot less weed problems as you don't keep bringing up weed seeds by tilling. I have a neighbor that has been no-tilling for approx. 35 years and raises as good a crop as any of the neighbors. Do some checking around, attend field days and observe others and then decide if it is right for you. If you have wet tough soils, probably not the thing to do. Works great with the right conditions. Just my observations on it.

I'm just finishing my 20th yr of no-till. It takes quite a bit of study to do it right. I'd just about bet that u didn't consult a successful no-till farmer in your area to have him get you thru the mistakes that are usually made. first year notill is tuffer because the soil is so bound up that it doesn't flow; hence the tillage. I, still today, am called on to consult for guys who tried no-till years ago and it didn't work, that want to try it again. planting depth and seed to soil contact are 2 main items in first yr no till. year 4 is when u can become lax and have no-till bail you out for mistakes made. I attend seminar's every year just looking for added things i can use. The first item on the list is to have your soil tested and get it up to standards. that usually costs quite a bit but pays for itself in year one!

The son of one of my former co-worker's switched to chisel plows. Said it increased his corn output. Hal

It works a whole lot better on productive soil than marginal soil. Good drainage is important and is critical on the marginal soils. Soil that has very poor tilth I have found is not conducive with no-till. Our program is minimum till with a zone-till package for row crops. Poor soils will respond if whatever limited tillage that is done on a timely basis. Any deep-till is done in the fall or is not done at all. Springtime is disk or field cultivator for the minimum tillage. Soil PH changes more readily in the top 3 - 4 inches of soil so tests should be done more frequent than conventional. Nutrients such as Potash are consumed out of that top layer at faster rate also.
A lot of farmers experienced what JD Seller did 20 to 30 years ago because a lot of seed varieties were not able to handle the conditions. I know a couple of farmers from back then that tried it extensively and lost their shirts. The varieties today are leaps and bounds better for that program.

Notill saves money on fuel & equipment, need to spray a bit more, and more expensive planter attachments.

It doesn't work well on cold, wet, clay soils. Which is all around me, don't know of anyone no-tilling in my county. Many molboard plows have come out of the groves in the past 10 years, even the chisel plows leave a lot of surface trash & insect pressure.

But if you have the climate & soils to do notill and make it work, you'll be money ahead.

It's a learning process, to figure out what works.

Strip till is a good 1/2 way option, you work up 10 inch strips & apply fert to them, leave the other 20 inches alone, just farm the strips. Even that is difficult to make work in my type of soil/climate. But I have hopes it will someday improve to where it works here.

--->Paul

You need to meet several criteria;

Soil structure has to be right. Climate zone needs to be right. Drainage needs to be right. Hybrid selection needs to be right. Equipment tailored to local conditions must be right. Having a handle on weed control is paramount. Commitment for the long term success must be there. It won't work over night. Don't expect a bin buster in the first year.

Keep equipment in the barn when ground is wet. More so than with conventional tillage.

Meet those requirements, and yields can be equal, or even HIGHER than conventional crops. No till isn't as simple as just sticking any seed into any ground and stand back. There's a learning curve to it. Get everything right and the potential for profit is golden. Expenses go down. (mainly fuel, but some reduction in equipment cost after a while)

I do a small acreage in conventional corn and most in no till. The no till yields are now consistently 10% to 25% better than my conventional crop. Took almost 10 years to see an advantage in yields, less than 3 to see an advantage in profits. After 20 years, I'm hooked. No till works to extremely well here.

Cons:
slower soil warm up
variable yield decrease
heavy residue
requires differnt equipment
possibly heavier disease pressure
heavier pest pressure from overwintering and lack of tillage
variable increase in herbicide use

Pros:
short term:
decrease in soil erosion
reduction of tillage passes resulting in major fuel savings
possibly able to use smaller tractors
decrease in nutriant loss

Long term:
general increase in soil tilth
increase water holding and permaibility
better nutrient availability/possible reduction in required inputs
reduction in compaction and plow layer

summery:
No till is a love it or hate type system. you have an immediate decrease in yield that might be substantial depending on a lot of factors. Slope, soil type, weather etc will all play a big role in what kind of decrease you see. Some people see almost no decrease, some see a big decrease. The offset to that decrease is a lot of harder to measure factors. Cutting out 2 or 3 major tillage passes and not needing that big 4 wheel drive anymore with 4 dollar diesel is not small change. The ability to get started much later then your neighbors might be offest by getting the soil warm enough to get going. Sloping ground tends to take to no till a lot better then flat, damp black.

People also have a hard time quantifing what soil erosion costs per year. Losing 4 tons/acre of soil per year to erosion may not seem like much, only a sheet of papers worth really. But that sheet is coming out of your most productive soil year after year and taking your nutrients with it. And once its gone, its pretty much gone for ever. We really don't get any new soil build up under row crop farming, not nearly enough to offset the erosion. You didn't mention if your a flat lander or a hill farmer, so your erosion may be a lot more if you have a little slope, doesn't take much to be loosing 10-20 tons of soil a year. And once you loose the top soil and get down into your C horizen, well, you'll see even worse yields then on no till.

No till is not a system your going to see best results overnight from. Guys who only try it for a couple of years and abandon it will never get the full potential, same with guys who only no till on their soybean ground. You'll see some benefits, but you won't see the full benefits. run a deep ripper through after 2-3 years and you loose most of what you've gained. Reason for this is no till isn't just what you see on the surface, its whats going on in your soil. Earthworms especially will make a HUGE differnce in soil quality, and the longer they get to work undisturbed, the more impact you will see in soil quality, enough to elimiante plow layers and compaction zones, and you don't get the post tillage compaction. You can easily tell the differnce between a conventional tilled field and no till/strip till with a penetramoter or tile probe or just watching after a rain.

Dad has done No-Till and strip till almost 25 years now, and he noticed a few years ago that his low input test strips were yielding close enough to his high fertilizer input test strips that the yield increase wasn't even coming close to covering the extra input costs. I've talked to other long term no till farmers who have report similer results. However, I have hear dof no long term university studies to support or disprove this. Again, its not over night for any benefits.

Am I fan of no till? yes but I also feel its best value is in a crop rotation on at least B slopes. I am not a huge fan of it on flat black and I see a lot of pest problems in corn on corn either already here or on the horizon not to mention our modern hybreds just don't break down very well. I think it is a bottomline system, you don't get the same yields but you will cut back on costs enough to offset that, to understand it though, you really have to understand your system and whats happening and be able to weigh the long term. it will often come down to high corn values short term vs long term sustanability and efficiency.

Now, besides no till, you might also look at strip till. You'll need a strip till bar, and i suggest doing it yourself not hiring the local coop to coem do it. Most of the time, the coop kids treat strip till just like they are putting on Anhydrous and it sucks. Strip till means putting that slot right where you want to plant in so you need to get that strip right the first time. Nice thing is, it gives you a bare strip to warm up faster while still giving you many of the benefits of long term no till.

I'll also throw this out for you, your local NRCS office may have some programs available for first time no till/strip till with some cost share to help get started.

heres my opinion,you never get something for nothing!in my opinion the first thing you better check is what type of soil you have.and another is what type of crop you grow.the reason is pretty simple,say you had a place thats pretty sandy and well drained, with a fairly limited rainfall.which is fairly common on the high plains. and you decide you were going to raise oats on a no till basis.you really would be shooting yourself in the foot in my opinion,simply because you have well drained soil,limited rain,and a crop whose straw holds 6 times its weight in moisture.what limited amount of rain that fell would be held for the most part by the straw,never even reaching the crops roots ,since you were covered by straw and blocking the sun you would be cutting way back on the moisture drawn up from the subsoil and your crop would suffer as a result.do the exact thing on clay however with large rainfall and you would probably get a better crop because you would (theoretically) dry the soil out some.a better choice in the dryland situation with the same crop would be to use a limited till scenario where you left the straw that held so much moisture at root level or just below,so rain could be utilized more effeciently and moisture from the subsoil would be held also. thats sort of a extreme situation but you get the point.
to me ,and ive tried to look at it objectivly,there are a whole lot of variables to be considered besides just converting to a not till plan or not.plowing,deep tilling helps kill insect pests such as grashoppers,certain flies etc,that must be sprayed in a no till crop.it kills weeds and things that can be a problem in no till.what you save on fuel costs are somwhat offset by this so the actuall fuel costs are somewhat mitigated. bottom line ,like i say you never get something for nothing,i think largely you trade one set of problems for another.I have two small fields side by side,i am thinking very seriously about trying it also one on one side one on the other,most if not all of my equipment is worn out and needs to be replaced anyway so thats not really a consideration.what is though is the fact that very often a no till operation takes four or five years to really show a difference.im not sure in my case i would live long enough to make a real test LOL!

Had a guy, that is doing it, tell us that it takes 8 years before you see the benefits. Don't think my banker would like that. We no-tilled our winter wheat this year, only because it was so wet we could never get in to do the tillage. Will know next July if it was the right way to go. Looks good now, but so does the neighbors who did his with tillage.

OK thanks everyone. I've learned a lot just asking!

I may try it. I have rolling hills and samdy loam over 30 feet of pretty clean sand so I have drainage.

Rick

No-til works for me. We no-til soybeans into corn stalks. Saves several passes, how much does that save you? yield-some times less but many times it is just as good ,if not better than the neighbors conventional tillage systems. With round up beans- there is no increase in chemical cost over conventional. Very easy combining, ground is hard and level.
Good drainage helps, conventional fields will dry out days before you can no-till.
Someone mentioned that soils are cooler during the summer due to stalk cover, that is true, but most times that is not a problem. However, our worst year of no-till was the time when we had a real cool summer, the soils never really warmed up.
For corn next year we use a heavy disk in the fall, no stalk problem next spring.

In the future this won't even be a question
because No-till will just be how you will farm.
When someone says their yields on corn went down,
I always ask how did you put your N on? They never
knifed in their N . Or put it all on at once to
early and lost it.(Nitrogen). Also you need a good
planter with a lot of Yetter spider wheels. You
can plant a lot wetter if your planter moves the
trash away from the row then has spyder closing
wheels. We plant with as light a front wheel
assist tractor as will pull the planter. Vic

In drier climate areas minimum and no-till can make the difference of conserviing enough extra moisture to make a crop that would otherwise not yield or at least not yield profitably with conventional tillage.

As to requiring extra machinery I guess it depends on your methods of no-till. Seems to me that it would require less equipment, not more.

We are 100% no-till and our machinery costs are WAY lower than any of our neighbors!!!

In my area no-till is hit or miss, This year was a hit dew to a dry summer. If you go out of my area no-till works more consist, With that said let me pass on what my cousin found out. He farms 1500 acres and 16 years ago he went to all no-till. Every thing went fine the first 4 years then the 5 year yields started going down and he started getting washes in fields that never had them. 6th and 7 year were no better with yields down from 55bu beans and 229bu corn to 32bu beans and 175 bu corn. The 7th year was a wet fall and about 500 acre were rutted up so he had to work to ground the next spring. He went in and diked the rut's up and got the chisel plow and went to the field, And found out just how hard the ground was. Several trips to JD for chisel plow parts. His beans and corn that year on the ground he worked made 63bu beans and 268bu corn and the no-tilled ground was 29bu beans and 168bu corn. The next year he worked another 500 acres up and his yields went up as before and the long time no-till ground went down even further. Now I have to say he always keeps his ground limed and fertilized per soil samples over all these years and rotates his ground with corn, soybeans and wheat and 200acres of hay. He still no-tills every year but he works up about 500 acres every year and now his yields are staying consistently higher. Now every 3 years the ground gets worked in a rotation. He has even went back to the moldboard plow to turn the built residue under and likes the results in the yields. He said the cost of burn down and round up beans he can work the ground cheaper and plant non-GMO beans and corn and come out ahead on the worked ground and gets a dollar a bu more for the non-GMO beans and corn. He said with the way he farms now working ground and no-tilling and crops in a rotation he is making more money now than he ever did his crops always yield and look good now. I don't think no-till every year on the same ground will ever work around here. Ground needs to be turned over, Worked after 3 years to keep from getting a hard pan close to the top. Just my 2cents. Bandit