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Central South Dakota | No-till is #1 reason.
Keeping your stubble standing as long as possible. That means using fluted rolls in the corn head so the stalks aren't all chopped to hell. We get enough moisture to grow a corn crop every 3-4 years so wheat is a part of our rotation if we want it to be or not.
Here are some of our typical rotations:
1. winter wheat/ corn/sunflower/spring wheat
2. winter wheat/ corn/beans/spring wheat
3. winter wheat/corn/bean/corn/sunflower/spring wheat
4. spring wheat/corn/bean/corn/sunflower/spring wheat
5. winter wheat/corn/bean/corn/pea or lentil/winter wheat or spring wheat/corn/sunflower/spring wheat
6.winter wheat or spring wheat/ corn/ corn/bean, pea, or lentil, or sunflower/corn or either wheat/
I didn't even include milo, flax, millet, or oats in the mix or my list would be really long. All are viable crops, but with the price of winter wheat we have kept acres of that down the past few years. It's crazy the amount of different crops we can grow and all the different rotations we have. I'm the sprayer guy here and I know you have to have your A game on because depending on chemicals used and rotation I have to think 18 months behind myself and 18 months in front of myself to use the proper chemical to have no carry over.
I think being far enough north that the cool winters are helping us considerably versus a guy in Kansas or Texas. Too much heat on the ground just burns up residue. This is just my personal opinion with no scientific fact to back it up, but as our area moved away from summer fallow to a no-till continuous cropping system I believe we started to create our own moisture on a more consistent basis because more crops were transpiring, I don't feel we get as hot anymore like the summers of my youth because the black dirt isn't absorbing all the heat from the sun. The ground doesn't get that hard baked cement feel to it anymore, it's just a nice crumbly, fluffy texture to it and the earthworms have come back with the stoppage of tillage. It is not uncommon to combine corn and have the standing stalks and a layer of the previous years wheat stubble down the rows. The other thing I never do is take a nutrient credit for organic matter. I treat that as my bonus reserve bank. Just some of my observations.
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Soil test........
