Plowing/Disking in the Fall

[Barndog56]

A no-tiller with healthy soil wouldn't get those ruts to begin with. I would post a link to a Gabe Brown video discussing how much water his land could absorb after a torrential downpour, and driving on it with no issues, but I fear it may have a picture that distracts you.

Forgive me for putting forth an alternative ag system from the one that's gone unchanged for the last 50 years. I won't waste any more of our time with my blasphemy........

 

[yoderjac]

Here's today's situation. Now how would a no-tiller go about fixing those ruts? Lol. I don't have a road grader.

View attachment 27042

Boxblade.

 

[yoderjac]

Let me also say this. There are cases where I till. There are conditions where tillage may do more good than harm. Everything depends on your situation. The objective is healthy soil and minimizing tillage is one technique to get there.

One example is logging decks. They are a necessary part of timber management and if left alone with my heavy clay soil weeds won't even grow in them for many years. Heavy logging equipment going over the same ground over and over results in compression so tight that nothing grows. If managed well, they can become great small kill plots. My first step is tillage. I use a sub-soiler to relieve the compression. Without this step no-till is useless. I'll then cycle buckwheat and WR for a couple years and finally convert to perennial clover for a 5-10 year cycle. Because the clay has zero OM the clay will glaze and crust heavily. No-till does not work well. So, I'll use a min-till technique where I use my 3-point hitch to raise a tiller so high that only the top inch of soil is disturbed. It is enough to break the crusting and let the seed germinate and grow. Once the plants are large enough they have enough energy to deal with the clay.

The point is that reestablishing the soil microbiology eventually allows the soil health to recover all the while feeding deer. So, I'm 7 to 10 years in before OM even begins to start building top down. It can easily take another 10 years of no-till before the full microbiology is back. Farmers have to deal with yield, harvesting, and overall economics. As food plotters, we don't have those issues. I specifically don't want to produce as much crop per acre as possible. I only want to produce as much crop as my soils and nutrient cycling will support. Yes, I will amend with lime and fertilizer but my long term objective is to reduce these to zero if possible. My food plots are a small part of a deer's diet as well as a small part of my overall habitat plan.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[WeedyJ]

I'm not a farmer and I don't play one on TV, but I have listened to a lot of Ray's and Gabe's presentations on YouTube. I think we can all, or most, agree that good soil is built from the top down, and there IS harm to soil health from tillage. But to be a successful farmer doing this, Gabe Brown incorporates so much more, eco farming as he calls it. Also, the way they market and sell their products and have so much more integration with livestock, egg sales, etc. is what makes his overall model work. It's not just the no till. Even HE says the other guys will always out produce me, but I will out profit them. This is not a model easily adapted, I would think, to the large scale, limited crop farms that exist. It would take a lot of time and desire. Hopefully, in time, we'll figure it out.

 

[Howboutthemdawgs]

How does this relate in the food plotters world? I understand the theory of no till and regenerative farmer but that is on economic scale. I care about attracting and feeding wildlife. On my place I planted about 5 plots for 7 acres this fall. The two I tilled turned out exponentially better than others which where sprayed broadcast and mowed. I believe I had so much thatch from my summer mix that I didn’t get good contact. I want to do what is “right” but I also want results.

 

[yoderjac]

How does this relate in the food plotters world? I understand the theory of no till and regenerative farmer but that is on economic scale. I care about attracting and feeding wildlife. On my place I planted about 5 plots for 7 acres this fall. The two I tilled turned out exponentially better than others which where sprayed broadcast and mowed. I believe I had so much thatch from my summer mix that I didn’t get good contact. I want to do what is “right” but I also want results.

It was a long trip for me. I too thought a nice clean plot of my crop is what attracted and fed wildlife when I first started. I've learned I was spending a lot of time and money and not benefiting wildlife as much as I thought from traditional farming techniques. There are lots of threads on this site where i describe my journey. It begins with understanding deer and how little of their diet comes from our food plots. The key to feeding deer is not providing high yields of a crop. The key is providing quality food during the stress periods when nature is stingy. Nothing we can do can overcome the intrinsic underlying fertility of our soils. We can amend in small areas (food plots), but only a small percentage of what deer eat will come from it. What we can do is to even out the boom and bust cycles of nature. If we are smart about our crop mixes and focus them to provide quality food during times when nature is not providing much quality food, we can improve the health of the herd. We can have much more impact by large scale habitat management like smart timber management. One can impact hundreds of acres of habitat with a net profit, not just a few acres of plots. When we combine the large scale habitat management with focusing small scale food plots on specific stress periods we can multiply the impact.

Food left in a food plot after a stress period is over does not contribute to herd health at all. When native food is plentiful, it doesn't matter if deer are eating my soybeans or native pokeweed. Both are high quality nutritious deer foods. What is sustainable? What happens to the herd if/when you can't do what you've been doing. Things change in our lives. You never know if you will be able to do next year what you did this year. Illness, job loss, transfer, property sale, ... can all cause us to stop. Will our deer suddenly lose a major resource because we have produced clean farm like fields at the cost of soil health. What will the soil produce when we stop the high inputs we use to make up for naturally nutrient cycling? With a longer term view, our soils will be healthy and support great native deer foods. Changes will be slow over time and deer herds will adapt rather than sudden.

So, for me, my view of what "exponentially better" is has changed over time.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[jsasker007]

I'm just a simple foodplotter and sometimes i'll disc up the ground and sometimes it's throw and mow---depends on the situation. To each their own.

 

[trampledbyturtles]

To each their own...

Like in the dirty 30s when farming practices and drought darn near crippled the country,

Oh wait, that's right, we're supposed to pretend like that never happened.

Move along, nothing to see here.
Full steam ahead with conventional ag.



Not singling u out Jsask, just saying.

 

[jsasker007]

Things may have progressed a little since then. Nothing illegal about what I'm doing so I'm not too worried about it. Everyone's an expert. I don't follow the crowd I do my own thing with my own stuff and won't change what I'm doing because someone thinks their way is the only way. For me it's just a hobby and always will be. I wasn't around in the 30's.

 

[trampledbyturtles]

Again. Wasnt directing that at u jsask.
Just the mindset.
Like u said things have progressed. That's the way things should naturally go.

 

[jsasker007]

I'm more of the mindset that whatever methods a person chooses is up to them as long as it's legal. Wouldn't be very realistic for me to think everyone should do what I do or they are wrong--they just do it different. I like to hear people sharing what things they have done that actually have worked and also learn from others' mistakes to avoid certain failure if possible. The guys in the mountains and the guys in the valleys are probably planting different crops and using different methods---completely up to them whatever or however they do it. We are all on the same team so to speak.

 

[Victor Van Meter]

Well, I got my answer and then some!
Thanks for the replies.

VV

 

[Mortenson]

Yeah we're supposed to be on the same team. None of this will matter, not my cornfields nor Gabe Brown's rotational chapacubras, when we live in a meatless society thanks to AOC's green deal. Personally our farm makes less passes of tillage than we did a few years ago, so I can be proud that we're going in that direction. And my neighbor who had his 10 bottom plow hooked up, more power. I like how that flipped over black dirt smells. I'm just hoping I don't get sued by all the city slickers when my 300+ acres of radish cover crops start rotting. Going to be some articles in the papers around the midwest when that happens.

 

[S.T.Fanatic]

Yeah we're supposed to be on the same team. None of this will matter, not my cornfields nor Gabe Brown's rotational chapacubras, when we live in a meatless society thanks to AOC's green deal. Personally our farm makes less passes of tillage than we did a few years ago, so I can be proud that we're going in that direction. And my neighbor who had his 10 bottom plow hooked up, more power. I like how that flipped over black dirt smells. I'm just hoping I don't get sued by all the city slickers when my 300+ acres of radish cover crops start rotting. Going to be some articles in the papers around the midwest when that happens.

To a farmer it smells the same as pig shit. Smells like money. It is short lived and if people dont like it they can go back to the cities where they came from.

 

[Baker]

Very interesting conversation. Will be interesting to see how things develop over the next decade.

To delve in over my head, I wonder how govt subsidies fit into the equation ? I saw the other day where over 50% of farmers revenue is govt subsidy based. Without question economics dictate. Do the subsides influence technique? If subsidies weren't there how would ag in America change...crops grown, techniques, the entire scope of the American farm?

Just curious

 

[Tree Spud]

From a professional farming standpoint, I often wonder how much no till approach has to do with soil health, vs the cost savings realized on fuel, man hours, and equipment wear and tear?

As you get older, you find that those who tell you what you are doing is wrong or not good, those arguments eventually come full circle and what you were doing is totally acceptable.

Remember when eggs were bad for you and would kill you with all their cholesterol? Now the American Heart Health assoc encourages eating eggs for a healthy heart.

 

[yoderjac]

From a professional farming standpoint, I often wonder how much no till approach has to do with soil health, vs the cost savings realized on fuel, man hours, and equipment wear and tear?

As you get older, you find that those who tell you what you are doing is wrong or not good, those arguments eventually come full circle and what you were doing is totally acceptable.

Remember when eggs were bad for you and would kill you with all their cholesterol? Now the American Heart Health assoc encourages eating eggs for a healthy heart.

For most farmers, the driver is the bottom line. The soil health improvement is a tool. You can see that is exactly how NRCS marketed no-till to farmers. The message was: No till and cover crops can improve yield while reducing input cost thus reducing risk and increasing profit. Most would tell you that they like the idea of sustainability, but not at the cost of reduced profit. That is why NRCS crafted their arguments based on the bottom line improvement.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[yoderjac]

Things may have progressed a little since then. Nothing illegal about what I'm doing so I'm not too worried about it. Everyone's an expert. I don't follow the crowd I do my own thing with my own stuff and won't change what I'm doing because someone thinks their way is the only way. For me it's just a hobby and always will be. I wasn't around in the 30's.

Nothing wrong with making your own choices and convincing yourself which approach work for you. The idea here is not tell anyone what they should be doing. It is to educate folks. Most laymen have been convinced by the food plotting industry that success looks a certain way that is consistent with them selling product. Most laymen's experience with planting crops is what they see farm fields look like. I think when folks are educated on the subject, over time, trying different approaches, they will make better decisions. We all learn as we grow. I've made some very large turns on my journey.

Not following the crowd and basing your approaches on science and then adapting as needed to reach your goals is a great place to start!

Thanks,

Jack

 

[Catscratch]

I sometimes wonder if a little mechanical cultivation is not a better alternative to the chemicals we are putting on crops to make no-till methods work? I do throw-n-mow on all my plots. Plots don't have to make me money though. All I know is that I'm ok with a loss, and Epstine didn't kill himself.

 

[FarmerDan]

Very interesting conversation. Will be interesting to see how things develop over the next decade.

To delve in over my head, I wonder how govt subsidies fit into the equation ? I saw the other day where over 50% of farmers revenue is govt subsidy based. Without question economics dictate. Do the subsides influence technique? If subsidies weren't there how would ag in America change...crops grown, techniques, the entire scope of the American farm?

Just curious

Government subsidies. I don't know what the equation is. I just looked at the 2017 Census of Agriculture for Virginia. Total net cash farm income was $835 million dollars which includes $60 million from federal farm programs which includes payments for things like CRP and other conservation programs. It might seem a simple statement, but, like with all things accounting, it isn't. So.....

I'll go out on a limb and assert that federal farm programs don't affect technique directly. What they have the potential to do is shift production of certain crops to different areas. It's a subtle manipulation of the profit equation. So, maybe we grow corn on land of marginal value for its production. Enter the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). What ends up in the program is the land that isn't very valuable from a cost-benefit perspective.

As I mentioned in a previous entry above, if a producer wants the benefits of farm programs, they are required to employ conservation practices as prescribed by NRCS. Do these programs work to achieve their intended purpose? I think we need to have a vigorous debate. Many say we no longer need farm policy. I say, let's give it a try! But, I don't think we'll like the outcome!

We have come a long way toward implementing on-farm practice to conserve soil. As we farm, we can do one of three things. We can mine the soil. We can maintain the soil. Or, we can improve the soil. From where I sit farmers are more sophisticated than they have ever been, and are concerned with and involved in soil improvement. Is everybody all the time? No. But, we're getting better.

Farming in the future...in the next 10 years....will be much different than it is today. Change is slow, and seems non-existent, but it comes. Our understanding of soil will improve. Think about soil sampling, the taking of a dozen cores to represent millions of pounds of soil. Core sampling will fade and sensor driven sampling will prevail. The data it generates will allow a different understanding of the medium in which we grow. Couple that with yield monitors and we'll begin to see areas in fields that we probably ought not be farming - from an economics perspective.

Change. Farmers don't like it. If you change and it doesn't work out you don't have many opportunities to recover. It took a solid 12-years for farmers to fully adopt corn hybrids even though they could see the differences with their own eyes! I'll leave the thought process involved for you to figure out!