Spring tillage can boost production and cut costs
Sunday, March 8, 2015
That's the experience of this Iowa corn producer, who also finds that it reduces the autumn workload and reduces erosion risk
by JIM ALGIE
After 20 years spent tweaking conservation tillage on his Iowa corn and soybean farm, Jeff Reints figures he finally has a complete system that can speed up field work and boost production while cutting labour and input costs.
Since 2008, Reints has run spring strip tillage just ahead of corn planting, using a 24-row disc till unit indexed to the width of his corn planter. In each row, a trio of wavy coulters cuts and stirs an eight-inch strip of soil to a depth of about five inches. Trash whippers precede the coulters to clear over-wintered residue. A fertilizer cart follows, blowing air-delivered liquid fertilizer through two-and-a-half-inch hoses into narrow seed zone bands.
Planting follows within about 24 hours to give damp soil a chance to dry. The process flows with less horsepower at quicker ground speeds.
"We've been pretty consistent since 2008 with this type of tillage system," Reints said in a recent interview from his home near Shell Rock, Iowa. "We're making subtle little tweaks, more on our fertility blend and analysis of that as we continue on. But, right now, we're pretty comfortable with the system," he said.
Reints was among speakers invited to the late February annual convention in London of the Innovative Farmers Association of Ontario. Established in the early 1990s, the conference concentrates on tillage and cropping alternatives for soil conservation.
Other speakers at this year's conference included University of Washington geologist Dave Montgomery, whose 2007 book, "Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations," underlines the role of soil management in sustaining human societies. Also invited were Windsor area no-tiller and Neufield scholar Blake Vince and Rodale Farms manager Jeff Moyer, who has conducted comparisons of organic and conventional field trials.
Dakota Lakes Research Farm manager Dwayne Beck and Jonathan Lundgren, a U.S. Department of Agriculture entomologist, were to speak about their research – Beck on diverse cover crops and Lundgren on plant diversity as an alternative to pesticides.
Reints' experiments with limited tillage began when he was in high school. "We were starting to really see . . . extreme erosion on some of our steeper slopes," Reints said of his and his father's introduction to conservation tillage. "Then fuel costs started to increase and, along with the introduction of biotech crops – basically the Roundup Ready soybeans – this really helped kick it into high gear."
The move to spring tillage helped relieve autumn workloads. Jeff's dad Elso still works around the farm. But these days, it's mainly Jeff, his son Clay and a former employee, now associate, Bruce Swinton. Together, they manage about 3,600 acres, sharing techniques and equipment.
"Often in the fall, by the time you get done combining, the ground is freezing up or you get that first couple of inches of snow and you just don't have the opportunity to get your fall strip-till done," Reints said.
"For us, with the coulter-type machine, it takes less horsepower and you can run at a faster ground speed. We went from running about a five and a half mile an hour operation to . . . this one at eight miles an hour constantly. So you're getting more acres per hour, plus the same size tractor can pull more rows of this machine than a shank machine."
Spring tillage also allows for crop residue breakdown over winter and lessens erosion risks by reducing the window of bare ground exposure.
Handling the "fluffy mat" of post-combine corn stalks is "always the challenge for fall strip tillers," Reints said. "By spring, it's starting to break down some," he said. BF