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Crop rotation is vital to no-till successBy Doug Rich
"There is money in farming; it just depends on how the whole package works together," Alan Mindemann said. Mindemann, a farmer from Apache, Okla., was a featured speaker during the third No-Till Oklahoma Conference held Feb. 8 and 9 in Norman, Okla. The conference covered a wide range of topics dealing with no-till production, including weed control and crop rotations. Weeds Topping the list of hard-to-control weeds in no-till situations is marestail. Joe Armstrong, weed science Extension specialist at Oklahoma State University, said marestail explodes in the fall with no-till and is one of the worst weeds in no-till soybeans. A single marestail plant can produce over 250,000 seeds, and to make matters worse, marestail has now been confirmed as ALS-resistant in Oklahoma. "Use all products in rotation and combination for best results and to deal with resistance," Armstrong said. To identify herbicide resistance on their farms, producers need to look at their herbicide history, evaluate their applications, and do side-by-side comparisons. "The best thing a producer can do is start with a clean field, hit those weeds when they are small and use 2,4-D when available," Armstrong said. Armstrong mentioned Sharpen (Kixor) as one of the new burndown products that works well, particularly when drift is a concern. Pigweed is another stubborn weed in no-till that has become resistant to glyphosate herbicide products. Resistant pigweeds were first found in Georgia in 2005. Doug Shoup, southeast area agronomist with Kansas State University, said to use pre-emergence herbicides in soybeans and cotton for better control. Growth regulators in burndown applications are useful. Amaranth is an herbicide-resistant weed, also. Shoup said amaranth has shown resistance to five different herbicide modes of action. He said growth regulators and HPPD herbicides in corn are effective against amaranth. Crop rotation Crop rotation is important to a successful no-till system, and it helps break weed and disease cycles. The variety and intensity of crop rotations varies from farm to farm and on the amount of annual rainfall. "The crop rotation that fits your farm is the best one," Matt Gard, a producer from Fairview, Okla., said. "One size does not fit all." Gard farms in northwest Oklahoma where the average annual rainfall is 25 inches. Most of that rainfall comes in heavy downpours. Gard has used canola, oats, alfalfa, sunflowers, corn, and has even seen a return of peanuts used as a rotation crop. Canola, following wheat, is a long tap-rooted crop that uses water and nutrients that are deeper in the soil profile. Sunflowers are another plant with a deep tap root. "Let the tap root do the tillage for you," Gard said. Alan Mindemann said when he started farming all you could grow was wheat and cattle. No-till proved that to be wrong. He has used double crop cotton, winter canola, sunflowers, grain sorghum and sesame as rotation crops with wheat. Mindemann said cotton was a good double crop for them because they can grow it cheaper and let the frost defoliate it. Winter canola is a cool-season broadleaf that Mindemann believes will be a winner for them. There are better, non-shatter varieties of sesame available now, and Mindemann planted it where wheat froze out. "It pays to have on-farm storage with all of these different crops," Mindemann said. When evaluating the success or failure of a crop rotation, Mindemann said not to look at a single crop but to look at the entire three- to five-year rotation. His goal is to have high yields and low cost per unit of production. Mindemann said if he can get those right, then he can have some things go wrong. "We have never had a full rotation that did not make money; diversity helps minimize the risk" Preston Simic, a producer from Billings, Okla., said. Simic has used a double crop soybeans-corn-wheat-double crop soybeans rotation. He has also used a wheat-double crop milo-corn-wheat rotation. "A no-till rotation has worked for us in Oklahoma," Simic said. Mark Schrock, a retired K-State professor who now farms near Tribune, Kan., said the traditional rotation in his area was wheat-plow-graze cattle. When he is trying for three crops in two years, Schrock plants a rotation of wheat-double crop grain sorghum-full season soybeans. He has also tried wheat-double crop soybeans-wheat, which is said to work more often than you might think. Matt Steinert, a producer from Covington, Okla., said there were five issues involved in his crop rotation decisions--economics, asset utilization, weed pressure, risk management, and weather. When he began using a crop rotation, Steinert said their wheat yields had reached a plateau and their input costs were up. Until then his crop rotation consisted of wheat-wheat-graze out wheat. The most common crop rotation he uses now is wheat-double crop soybeans or grain sorghum-sunflowers-corn. He has also used a rotation of wheat-wheat-corn-corn. Steinert said this gives him two years to break the weed and disease cycle, and it gives him good residue for a spring crop. Cotton has been a good rotation crop because it is a full-season broadleaf. The only problem has been harvesting the cotton in time to plant wheat. Canola is a good rotation crop, but Steinert said they have had trouble getting it established in heavy wheat residue. "No-till is the oldest type of agriculture," Jim Stiegler, retired Oklahoma State University plant scientist, said. History Stiegler gave a brief history of no-till in Oklahoma during the opening session of the No-Till Oklahoma Conference. The no-till movement began with a book called "The Plowman's Folly," written by Edward Faulker and published in 1943. Later, there were stubble mulch jamborees held across Oklahoma in the mid-1950s. The introduction of 2,4-D, MCPA, Paraquat, and Roundup all played a role in the development of the no-till concept, but Stiegler said it was the introduction of the John Deere 750 no-till drill that helped producers make the switch to no-till. Stiegler recalled many people--including Dwayne Evans from Nash; Joe Lane from Enid; Dale Fain, the area agronomist from Enid; and Ned Biffle from Ada, who built his own planter in 1979 to plant corn into Bermudagrass sod--were the pioneers for no-till or conservation tillage in Oklahoma. Every state in the High Plains region can point to pioneers like these who were constantly looking for better, more efficient ways to produce crops. In 1980, there were 16 million acres of no-till in the U.S. and by 2000 that figure had grown to 50 million acres. "Today no-till is playing a key role in national and international issues as it relates to carbon sequestration," Stiegler said. Doug Rich can be reached by phone at 785-749-5304 or by e-mail at richhpj@aol.com.
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