No-till is growing across the country – 1.5 percent a year, according to a 2012 report by USDA’s Economic Research Service. It began in the 1960s, caught hold with the fuel crises of the 1980s, and is being adopted for a number of reasons.
Growth has been slow in some areas – for example, the flat alluvial plain of the Missouri Bootheel and Eastern Arkansas, where erosion control is less of a concern. But “where there’s a lot of slope to crop production areas,” Tim Schnakenberg, University of Missouri Extension regional agronomist, told Ozarks Farm & Neighbor,” there is quite a bit of no-till going on, along with minimum tillage.
One of the benefits to no-till – where the seed is drilled directly into the ground through untouched residue from the previous crop – is the soil, and the weed seeds resting within it, are not disturbed.
“It keeps them still and out of sight, and less likely to germinate compared to if you do tillage,” Schnakenberg explained. “You also have the benefit of moisture retention, which is huge, and then the savings from not having to perform tillage operations, which are very expensive; there’s a lot of diesel burned, and high horsepower tractors are used, to do tillage. You have less wear and tear on machinery, and savings of a lot of fuel.”
Schnakenberg said no-till is the predominant management approach in forages, and in some cases is the only viable alternative.
“Many times from a forage standpoint, forages are planted on ground that’s not as tillable; if you do till them, you’re going to bring rock up or you’re going to have soil erosion, so a lot of pastures and hay fields are no-tilled for that reason,” he said. But there are a couple of drawbacks to no-till; it leaves a cooler and wetter environment for the newly sown seed, so it’s not going to come out of the ground quite as fast. Schnakenberg also said producers have to be careful to keep residue from building so much that the colters can’t cut through it which can lead to a problem called “hairpinning,” in which the residue is pushed by the drill into the ground with the seed on top of it and unable to make seed-to-soil contact.
Some no-till farmers also experience increased weed growth, John Lee, agronomist for the Arkansas state office of USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, told OFN. “Sometimes it does increase the reliance on the use of herbicides to control weeds, especially because you’re eliminating tillage as a means of controlling weeds,” he explained. However, the somewhat higher herbicide cost would be offset by significant fuel savings from fewer passes across the field and the increased yield potential from getting crops planted earlier in the spring.
Although no-till has not been adopted very extensively in Arkansas row-crop country, Lee said there’s been an increase in recent years due to the series of wet springs and the run-up until lately of diesel prices. Despite the drop in fuel prices, Lee says no-till converts are not reverting to conventional tillage. “What I have seen is farmers will convert back from no-till if they start running into problems with trying to control weeds,” he said. “Normally, if the farmer can see where they can still establish a crop and get a good yield, regardless of whether the price of fuel is cheaper or not, they’ll continue to no-till because it gives them more time to do other things.”
Schankenberg noted it’s also possible for farmers to move to no-till without a big equipment outlay.
“Here in Missouri, most soil and water conservation districts have no-till grain drills for rent,” he said. “A typical fee is about $10 an acre. If you’re a small producer and you’ve got highly erodible land, you can’t always afford to go out and buy a $30,000 grain drill, but you can rent one for $10 an acre if you’re doing a 20 or 50 acre patch. Having those soil and water district grain drills available has saved tons and tons of soil over the years.”
