Event shows explosive growth of no-till

By Larry Dreiling

Three years ago, No-Till on the Plains, Inc., held one of their Whirlwind Expo events in Ogallala, Neb. Fewer than 100 people attended.

What a difference drought, irrigation reductions, increased chemical costs and interest in ethanol will do as nearly 300 people attended NTOTP's most recent Whirlwind event, near Bladen in south-central Nebraska.

Much of the morning session of the daylong event was held at the farm of Brian and Keith Berns, with an afternoon of presentations held at the Blue Hill Community Center. The event was partially funded by grants from the Nebraska Environmental Trust and PrairieLand Resource Conservation and Development Council.

"It's amazing to see this many people here," said Brian Lindley, NTOTP program co-coordinator. "The interest in no-till has really climbed, with all the things that have gone on in agriculture in the last few years. It means we'll be continuing to educate newcomers with the basics, as we work to assist and support those long-time no-tillers with further opportunities to learn."

Familiar faces

To that end, faces familiar to attendees of previous NTOTP events were there to offer several different on-farm demonstration sessions:

--Bud Davis, former Kansas conservation agronomist for Natural Resources Conservation Service, brought his rainfall simulator, demonstrating how falling raindrops affect soil. When there is little organic matter in the soil, the aggregates in the soil are not very stable. By building more organic matter in the soil, erosion can be reduced.

--Dr. Paul Jasa, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension engineer for no-till system management and precision agriculture, and Dr. Ray Ward, president of Kearney, Neb. based Ward Laboratories, were in a familiar position: Deep in a soil pit, showing how the Berns's soils--in continuous no-till since 1998--and conventional-till soils may look alike at the surface, but deep down, the brothers' no-till soils beat conventional-till soils for yields.

Jasa repeated his call for farmers to have patience when beginning no-till operations.

"What matters more than anything is that people stick with no-till," Jasa said. "What makes no-till work is continuousness. You can't build structure like this with one-pass tillage or 'skip-a-till.' You just broke that down and now you'll start over again."

Farmers learn from farmers

Aside from the scientists, it's farmers who live with no-till that other producers want to learn from. The Berns brothers were more than happy to offer their knowledge, showing specifically how crop rotations and cover crops fit into a no-till program. The first stop was at both dryland and irrigated sorghum fields. They showed off some irrigated sorghum that produced a good lesson for them.

"This is milo planted July 5. We didn't get Roundup sprayed on it when we should have, so I came back with two pints of atrazine and a pint of 2,4-D," Brian Berns said. "It hurt the roots of the crop but it did get the broadleaves. It didn't do anything for the grasses.

"On one pivot, we have double-crop milo. It definitely is about five days ahead. It was a lesson learned: Don't put 2,4-D on a double-crop since it will stunt it."

Double-cropping certainly made sense to the brothers this year.

"One of our thoughts is about planting double-crop behind wheat. When wheat is $6, it can compete with corn and beans for an income stream," Brian Berns said. "When wheat is more of a normal price, we feel like we need another source of income off that field to make it compete with corn.

"We've done some experimenting with double crops. Last year we did a half pivot of double-crop beans behind wheat. Last year, wheat harvest was earlier, so our beans then did 40 bushels."

Double-crop soybeans

This year, wheat harvest was later, delaying double cropping of soybeans.

"I guess only time will tell. If it doesn't freeze too fast, we should have a decent shot at making a crop. It's worth trying. Even if the beans freeze, it's worth having something growing," Brian Berns said.

The brothers have two plantings of double-crop soybeans. The first was planted July 7. The second was planted July 20.

"I didn't get as good a stand as I would have hoped," Keith Berns said. "I needed to replace the opening disk on my drill. They are setting pods."

Ray Ward told me if they freeze and I don't harvest them, then I'll have some dry matter as fertilizer. Two tonsof dry matter on beans is about 80 pounds of nitrogen. Eighty pounds of nitrogen at 50 cents a pound is $40 an acre. That's more than was paid for the seed. You would have had to spray the wheat stubble with Roundup anyway.

Soybeans are a low cost double crop or cover crop into wheat, the brothers said. The nitrogen fix planting soybeans offers can cover those seed costs.

"You can buy seed pretty cheap in July, since lots of dealers have leftover seed they'll sell for replant policy price--half price," Brian Berns said. "It's a way to get a double crop with a nitrogen fix, if it freezes and you don't get a crop."

Proso cover crop

The brothers also showed off their cover crop of proso millet, planted around the edge of some of their fields.

"We drilled the proso millet into the wheat stubble Aug. 9," Brian Berns said. "Our intention on this was not as a cash crop but as a cover crop to have a living root system as long as possible. It's a low cash investment and it doesn't take too much moisture to get a crop.

"Around here, I think it has the potential to be a cash double crop behind dryland wheat, particularly in a year when you had moisture and you could get the crop up right away. Otherwise this is cover crop."

ET irrigation scheduling

A highlight of the after-lunch session was a presentation on irrigation scheduling by Jenny Rees, UNL Extension educator for Clay and Webster counties, and Daryl Anderson, water quality specialist for the Little Blue Natural Resources District. The two demonstrated their work with the Nebraska Agricultural Water Management Demonstration Network.

The network has established a number of demonstration projects in farm fields across the state to implement new tools and technologies, to address and enhance crop water use efficiency and energy savings.

One of the projects is to provide on-site reference and crop evapotranspiration (ET) information for more accurate in-season water management.

"The problem is growers irrigate using one of several criteria, most of the bad ones," Rees said. "There's intuition, the neighbor, there's calendar/days since last rainfall or irrigation. Why not crop evapotranspiration?"

Rees and Andersen showed an atmometer (or ET gage) and watermark sensors as ways to properly monitor when to irrigate. Thousands of these items were distributed to irrigated producers covering nearly 60,000 irrigated acres, 20,815 producers and 39,500 crop consultants.

"The results of the first year showed producers averaged 867 irrigated acres on their operations," Rees said. "With an average estimated irrigation amount of 8.8 inches per acre for corn and 7.2 inches per acre for soybeans, netting a 1.7 inch savings each over previous year."

Over a million acres of irrigated cropland and 12,000 irrigation wells function in the Upper Big Blue, the area set for the original ET measurements. Saving one inch of irrigation water in this area would reduce pumping of groundwater by 27.1 billion gallons. With current diesel fuel price, this would result in about $5 million savings in energy cost due to reduced pumping in this district alone.

"One of the comments we had after we tried this was this makes you more aware of the need to schedule irrigation based upon facts versus a gut feel to irrigate," Rees said.

The annual NTOTP Winter Conference is slated for Jan. 29 and 30 at Salina, Kan.

For more information, contact info@notill.org or call (888) 330-5142.

Larry Dreiling can be reached by phone at 785-628-1117 or by e-mail at ldreiling@aol.com.

10/1/07

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