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South Central Kansas | Don't want to start any wars here, but this whole downturn in the economy is going to sharpen a lot of pencils. I live in SCKS where the soils are mostly Sandy Loam. We have irrigated and dryland ground, Corn mostly on the irrigated and wheat/grain sorghum on the dryland. We are pretty much conventional tillage I would say, a little spraying here and there and a little plowing here and there. I am just wondering how much money we could save by going no till. Heres my thinking
Currently:
Plant
Harvest
Usually one Disking
Chiseling
Cultivate
Plant
f I were to go No-till:
Plant
Harvest
Spray Burndown
2nd Burndown
Plant
If you figure a custom rate for the tillage in the conventional scenario I think they would be a wash compared to the chemicals you would by in the notill scenario. I don't know how to justify going notill, I know it is better in a lot of ways. The guys notilling around here never seem to have the yields everyone else has. Just want to hear some thoughts on this |
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| It takes a lot more fuel and time to chisel than to spray. That's the big saving. Then there's the soil saving from the ground not washing in the spring and summer downpours.
Gerald J. |
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Southeastern Kansas | DIESEL FUEL AND TIME and soil erosion are the big differences. Herbicides seem to equal out with tillage costs however we did notill enough to see a significant weed shift which has changed our herbicide program. Sooner or later you will find yourself mudding out a crop and that is when the tillage comes into play. We were lucky this year as we found much cheaper fuel costs with having to do lots of tillage after the floods and heavy rains. |
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South Central Kansas | I realize the time and fuel savings comparing tillage to spraying. It's just hard to visualize all the variables involved when thinking about the switch such as: Do I need a bigger sprayer to cover all my acres in a timely fashion, Do I need a new bigger notill drill to do a good job? All my current tillage equipment is paid for, should i consider selling all of it to buy a sprayer and drill? Is the yield drag from notill worth not having to see your ground blow? How much fertilizer does all the residue tie up? Will the extra moisture I save by notilling help the crops hang on a little longer in August when the temps hit 100? Just some random thoughts guys! |
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central ne | No-till is cheaper for me because its just me and my dad, he can go fix fence and feed cows instead of running a disk in front of the planter otherwise we would need to hire someone to do tillage and I hate to see the soil leave when the wind blows 40 mph all day long in May. |
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Mooresville North Carolina | The savings is in time, fuel and equipment. I work alone, and can no-till 100 acres while I'm trying to 20 ready to plant conventional. I plant, spray and harvest on less that 2 gallons of fuel per acre. I have one late model tractor, good planter, no-till drill, combine and a 3 point sprayer. What little tillage equipment I have is 30+ year old wore out junk. BUT our land really likes no-till. In our area it is very, very rare to see any land worked. |
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| I wonder if the neighbors don't see record setting yields with their no-till because they are now feeling comfortable doing continuous crop every year because they're saving enough moisture while those who aren't doing no-till in your area are still using fallow periods and therefore have more time to build a soil profile.
If we chem-fallow and our neighbor has a fallow period with tillage our yields are normally better than our neighbors yields simply because moisture is so valuable in this area. Could be different in your area I guess. |
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mascoutah, IL | I think no till and tillage both have there place. We till all of our corn ground and have no tilled our beans on and off for about 5 years. I really like no till beans but we have a lot of flat wet ground that does not allow us to get an early start. Last year we had to work it all up to dry it out. Our few rolling fields work great for no till. This year we plan on doing 50/50 figuring we will till our wetter fields unless it gets extremely dry in the next month to month and a half. The costs for us to disk, field cultivate, and plant are about the same price as sparaying with burndown and a pre and planting. At even costs and yields I would prefer to no till. Some guys around here have bought turbo tills or like tools and run them once or twice. They do a great job but I can't justify a $40,000 tool for just bean acres. I would really like to try strip till but thats a whole other story.
BTW it takes a whole lot less labor if that is an issue.
Edited by dmswil 3/1/2009 22:21
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| As Ed Winkle would say, it saves Oil, Soil, and Toil. In my opinion it's the only way to farm. |
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West Central Wisconsin | We are currently transitioning to all no-till because i am tired of picking winter potatoes! plus we had a lot of washing last year during a few storms and it makes my stomach turn to see soil washing away. I say that we are "transitioning" because we need to work some feilds to take care of washouts and some feilds just need to have the dead furrows leveled out. Our goal is to only do some deep tillage if needed in the future, but only IF NEEDED because the biggest "potatoes" grow deep :) |
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Saronville NE | Saves fuel, saves soil, saves time, saves moisture for crops to hold out longer in a dry yr, thats worth alot, saves hours on equipment and it isnt cheap to trade equipment all the time. |
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Texas | I have both no-till and conventional till cotton. Now I know that my situation is totally differtent than probably everyone elses is. However, one of the benefits of no till is the savings in repairs on farm equipment. Another savings is that my tractors are not running continuously. Now, I may have more specialized equipment needs my no till is saving me money and lots of it.
1. Repairs on farm equipment. I am doing a lot less deep tillage and I don't have to replace sweeps, guage wheels, shanks or bearings near as much.
2. I put less hours on all of my equipment. I cut the hours I put on tractors in half or more.
3 I have much less where and tear on my tractors. These tractors are IVT tractors and rarely ever do they run over 1500 RPM.
4. Since the tractors don't work as hard, I rarely ever have to replace tires on tractors or implements. The tractor tires never spin so they see minimal wear.
5. Less repairs that I have to hire done. Since, I have more time, I can repair things on my own much more than in the past. For example, if I had a pivot break down during the summer, I would call the pivot service and have them come see about it. I simply did not have time. Now, I can complete many of those repairs myself. I can also spend more time shopping around for chemicals, parts, etc.
6. Since the ground is flat from no-till, I don't have near as many breakdowns on harvest equipment.
7. Fuel savings are huge because I rarely ever load the tractors.
8. don't have to purchase sweeps, or knives or other tillage parts near as often.
I really don't know that much about corn, milo or soybeans. What I do know is that it takes 3 to 5 years to see the full benefit of no-till. It takes time and I have seen my yields increase nearly every year.
Edited by dbltfarmer 3/1/2009 22:49
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Brazilton KS | Colonel Potter - 3/1/2009 20:23 Don't want to start any wars here..... Good luck with that! This is going to draw out the "true believer" zealots like you wouldn't believe!
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nw kansas | I have had the same thoughts as you, yields some better some poorer on both systems. Cheaper-no not at all, but a whole different style of doing things. No till drills wear darn fast and are not cheap to rebuild, chemical high and not doing the job it did 5 years. Under irrigation no till works lie a charm but don't thin you aren't going to cuss it because of not knowing what to do to make it work or what attachments to or equipment to have, dry land we put out 600 chem fallow wheat 1500 min till and a small amount of full tillage. Rain is the limiting factor to making no till work up here, under no till .50 of rain is as good as two inches but if you are dry at wheat drilling you are just up creek without paddle because the ground is hard as rock, min till can plow to moisture and get it up. Had a good example this year with a neighbor that went no till and we min tilled I got mine up and he had streaks where he couldn't blow thru hard ground. As for the blowing dirt I have seen more no till chiseled in the last 5 years than conventional tillage. Reason why is that if you don't get the wheat up and you take a disk drill in there it cuts most of the trash loose and when the wind hits trash starts blowing across dry soil and starts it blowing. My though is play with it because there is a time and place for it on our farm just not 100%. |
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| I don't know if it is any cheaper than conventional tillage. We are about 80% no till, we have some that is in continuous wheat that is still tilled. We grew slowly into no till as we became more confident in it and figured out a decent way to go from milo to wheat, still working on getting soybeans and sunflowers to work better and to consistently yield with second year wheat. Where we have seen no till shine for us on steep, rough, thin, rocky fields that normally yields low. No till milo really seems to hang on during a hot dry August, a few years ago we harvested 100 bu no till milo while conventional till neighbors were barely getting 20 bu. I feel with no till you have to go out and play with it and find out what works for you and what crops and varieties fit you management style and your fields. After 20 years on our irrigated land and 15 plus years on dryland we are still learning. |
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southern MN | The sartup costs are pretty steep - old iron is already often owned & cheap to replace with good used, while notill stuff thay works seems to be mostly new & at more than off the shelf new cost.
But we can get past that. Cost it out for 20 years & likely diesel & hp will cost more than extra spray. Tho you never know what the chemical companies will start charging.... Bt corn isn't so needed if you are full tillage, and other 'little' expenses.....
Problems come in with ecconomy of scale. A lot of good used smaller equipment is out there for pennies. You can run a smaller farm with this stuff, and make a few bucks. The notill or even strip till stuff is pretty expensive, and just is geared to a larger operation in many cases.
I can buy a plow, field cultivator, and planter here for $7,000 total, and be field ready. Add 2 tractors and a pull sprayer for $20,000 total, and you are farming conventionally for $27,000. Running an 8 row setup for a 1000 acre or so farm. I'd need a bigger tractor with far better hydrailics to pull a notill planter than what I own for the full-tillage stuff I do. There seems to be a huge startup cost in notill.
That wouldn't buy the spayer alone for many no-tillers, never mind a planter? But even the small ecconomy size farms can see an advantage of notill - they just can't afford it. :) But they can see it, for their bigger neighbors.....
The bigger problem is results. In very wet, very heavy soils, with a short growing season, time of planting is critical. If you need to get rid of water, rather than save it, full notill is a very hard thing to make work. The cost to some of us is the greatly reduced yield at least 2 out of 5 years that it would cause. You have to grow a crop, or it isn't farming.
--->Paul |
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Fairbury, NE (Southeast) | Don't no-till to save money. Do it to get high yields and save dirt. If you aren't going to have erosion or extra yield don't do it.
The tillage zealots around here are the high cost producers...your area may be different. If you believe it has to be done like granddaddy did it, no reason to change if you are paying the bills.
No-till has made farming much easier on us and the environment we live in.
Good luck. |
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Pollock SD | We have never had trouble with not being able to get a crop to come up b/c of ground being to hard or dry, and where I live we have plenty of dry conditions. Part of the problem may be with weed control, I have seen neighbors letting the weeds get away on them which sucks the moisture out of the top couple of inches and then they have trouble with good stands, but if you keep your fields clean shouldn't have trouble. As to ground being to wet, after a couple of years of no-till your ground will absorb moisture faster than a tilled field, the trouble is that it takes 3-5 years before you start seeing results and you won't see full benafit till 5-7 years. The reason for this is that with out tillage the roots start breaking up the hardpan, the residue on top will keep the water from running down the waterways, and the old roots after decaying leaves channels for water to soak into the soil. It is hard to believe but we have seen no-till fields beside conventional and after big rains the no-till fields will be farmed before tilled fields. The one problem is damp conditions in no-till where the residue gets damp and you have to quit b/c you will hair pin and won't get good seed to soil contact which can hurt your stands, but in conventional you can keep going. Another thing to try in real wet areas is planting cover crops once the beans or wheat are combined, it will suck up extra moisture and improve soil health for next years crop. I have seen bean fields blow after seeding with no-till drill but with proper rotation of crops you should be able to keep enough residue which will prevent that. |
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Concordia, KS | From your mapdot, it looks like your yields will still be limited by a lack of water. I am from NCKS and we would not want to plant any of our spring crops without no tilling. We plant corn or grain sorghum into wheat stubble, follow those with soybeans, and then back to wheat for two years. We have experimented with wheat on wheat in a no till situation and it can work! We still tend to work our 2nd year wheat ground, but are slowly moving away from that. Cost wise, the no-till is more expensive but the returns we get greatly outweigh the costs.
If you farm sandier soils that don't store as much water, keeping residue on top of the soil is extremely important. One of the advantages to no till is reduced evaporation. We have had a relatively dry winter here. We farm some sandier river bottom ground and had a field of doublecrop beans that was in continuous no till for 4 years and had lots of residue. Next to that field, we had no tilled soybeans into sorghum stubble. That field was planted to wheat this fall. Before planting the wheat, we disked the field (not my choice) and planted wheat. The wheat hasn't used much water at all and the top 6-8 inches of the soil was dry. 6 feet away from the wheat I scraped away the residue and could still make a ball out of the damp soil. KSU reseachers have shown that each 4" deep tillage pass can cost as much as .5 inch of available soil water. An inch of water is worth 4 bu with soybeans, 5-6 bu with wheat, 10 bu with sorghum, and close to 15 bushels with corn, assuming that you have enough water to get the plant to a reproductive stage.
No till easily saves enough moisture to pay for the added costs. It greatly reduces evaporation and gives the plants a chance. Most planters and drills are capable of planting into our conditions without much modification or extra attachments. Get a planter that will cut through residue and keep it in top shape. Worn openers and closing wheels will cost you! Spread residue well behind the combine to give more conistent soil conditions when planting the next crop to make setting the planter much easier.
In our area, adding soybeans to our rotation lets us control some of the weeds that are harder to control in other crops. It also gives you more herbicide options.
If you want no til to work it can, if you don't want it to, it won't. |
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Concordia, KS | Paul,
It doesn't take an expensive planter to plant no till with. You talk about the hydraulics needed for a no till planter and I don't understand that. It takes x amout of hydraulics to run a planter vac motor in both conventional and no till situations. Not anything extra for no till.
I have successfully planted corn, soybeans, and grain sorghum in anything from corn, sorghum, wheat, soybeans, and rice(a research project) residue with great results. This has been done with a Case 800, a John Deere 7100, and a White 6100 planter without much extra no till attachments on it. The Deere had the factory coulters on it and we got along fine. The Case was stock and the White had some notched disks that we kept out of the way for the most part. They all worked well. Take some time to set the planter, keep good opening disks on it and you can make it work. I truly believe that almost any of the planters out there will work in Our conditions, yours might be different. |
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| i don't know but the arguement that i restle with is the om and the soil structure.
so it depends on what you want or what you beleive is best for your soil structure and the microbs/bacteria etc and this list goes on and on.
in my beleifs {being practacly a nobody my self so grain of salt} it depends on your soil type and its capabilitites and its structure.
i think it boils back to the basics of soil temp and basic seed comfort and giving all it potential you can. but i beleive if your not giving its potential especialy in key growing points its up hill aka old hat but if your no tilling in hard pan and or slabby conditions then whats the point.
bad part is it prob takes 5 yrs of no till to make that optimal change and even then its just beginning. so basic cost aside i'd say whats your soil and whats its capabilitys.
edit= all depends on crop and what push come to shove is doing.
Edited by robaer1 3/2/2009 05:40
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| I'm not sure just where you are located in SC Kansas, but it looks like I am not far away. There are a few no-till farmers here in Sumner County. I have been full no-till for about 5 years, and experimented with one field for about 3-5 years before that, so that field is about 8-10 years. No-till doesn't really save all that much money. There is a trade-off in chemicals vs. fuel,time,etc. A couple of the big things I have noticed: 1. I only have one tractor for 1500+ acres, and except for harvest, I am a one man show. 2. It was sure nice the last month or so driving around looking at the ground blowing out the wheat, and knowing that I didn't have that problem. Soil erosion from water is also almost gone. 3. The wet harvest last summer didn't bother me. The soil structure has improved so much, that I never even backed out of a mudhole. It took a few years to reach that point, but it is a big deal, as it seems like June is always wet. I did leave a few small tracks, but a VERY light pass with a disk just in those spots fixed them. Took about 3 hours for the year. That has been my total tillage.
As far as the equipment goes, I traded in a pretty good 4WD tractor on a pair of 1590 drills, sold my big disk, chisel, and field cultivator, and just got a bigger sprayer. At this point, I don't see any yield hit, and haven't increased my fertilizer, except that I am looking for a higher yield goal. I certainly don't see any reason at this point to go back.
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Saronville NE | I agree, and thats what I was thinking also. We just have sunco tiger tooth openers for the front of our 7300. Only hyds are for the markers, vacum, and lift assist wheels, but that is hooked into the 3pt so it lifts at the same time, so only need 2 hyd outlets on mine. Starter is run off a 12 volt pump. Simple, dont have alot of money in it and dont need to to do a good job. Just keep the planter up in good shape, and you dont need all this fancy stuff they sell for planters to notill. |
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| Thanks for your honest, objective outlook. Its good to hear from folks like you that are willing to use aspects of any system to best make a crop. |
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Eastern Iowa | We will typically no-till two years out of three.
No-till beans into the corn stubble, corn into the bean stubble, and then one year where we deep rip in the fall (chisel it if we need to incorporate manure) followed only by a pass with the field finisher in the spring.
Utilizing manure is not possible with a pure no-till approach, but we have found that a hybrid system like this enables us to have the best of both worlds.
We live in E Central Iowa, and as many of you know the rainfall last spring/summer was unbelievable--and the string of torrents started the day after we finished planting corn. I have never seen no-till corn erode so badly. Now, the conventional tillage stuff had about a week to mellow out before the rains came, and the no-till, planted last, did not. But as a county soil and water commissioner, I just could not wait for the end of July to come so I did not have too look at it any more once the rows canopied.
This spring I will be out "repairing" many of the washes with my disk. That can quickly become a spiral of soil loss if the weather doesn't cooperate in getting grass waterways established.
Edited by GangGreen 3/2/2009 08:48
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SW KS, near Dodge City | I'm 100% notill. Have been for about 7 years. Except for strip till for corn. It's not cheaper. When r-up was 10 bucks a gallon it was much more competitive, but it's not a massive cost savings that some want to sell you.
For me the return in notill is the moisture savings and subsequent crop yield increases.
Edit: I just read Mutt's post. He's dead on with it. If I didn't get a good stand of wheat this year w/ my notill setup, I was going back to running the sweeps on the fallow ground.
Edited by pknoeber 3/2/2009 08:56
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| I will agree with the other posters here in Kansas. I would not plant a
spring crop other than no till. Our continuous wheat on wheat can be
a challenge in no till, so a good rotation is the key. I don't need a 400
hp 4WD to cover my acres. A good dependable FWA with pull anything
around here. I started with a pull type sprayer too, not a $200K rig.
My chemical program is nothing in cost compared to new machinery costs.
Try a few acres and get your feet. (no tillers have more moisture!!)
Duane |
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Macon, IL | Paul
Good honset discussion so far but I gotta dispute you on the equipment costs.
You said: "I'd need a bigger tractor with far better hydrailics to pull a notill planter than what I own for the full-tillage stuff" You are the first one I have ever heard say that you need more power for no-till.
What kind of tractor for 10k are you using to plow 1000 acres in your example?
Costs of equipment is actually what got me started no-tilling. I was only doing no-till until I could afford a bigger tractor and my tillage implements. But after I saw it working I kept with it.
On small scale: I set up a completely rebuild 7000 6-row with all the latest no-till "gadgets" for about 10k and pulled it with a 52hp tractor for I paid 7k. Probably could have got the planter a lot cheaper but I was being a perfectionist about it.
But with no-till I could get by with 1 smaller tractor-not two-and certainly not two larger ones.
I have a buddy farming over 5000 acres no-till with 2 16-row planters and 2 anhydrous bars with row cleaners. (technically I guess they strip till their corn) They don't even own a 4wd tractor. I would put there costs per acre put against anyone.
I won't dispute results as you know what works on your farm but on equipment costs there is really no comparison if you look at the whole picture.
Paul |
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| My old 4840 dont like the hydraulic remote in the detent position to hold the JD 1590 drill in the ground. I would'nt even think of using it on a air drill with the fan. The hydraulics would break down in less than a day. Buying that used drill with quite a lot of worn out parts on it, cost time and a half Paul's entire conventional list. After adding the performance parts to make it work "here", the equipment costs for my no-till transition is way steep. But,.......hadd'a start somewhere I guess. |
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Thumb of Michigan |
This is all HERE stuff- you're a long way from me, but we heard many of the same concerns as you mentioned.
1. We found that more times than not, yields have been enhanced with no-till. We never saw the big yield hit we were supposed to after 3 years, but at the time we were planting 4 to 5 different crops. We think that negated the yield hit some have experianced in a one or 2 crop rotation.A lot of times, theres a key element that gets left out when transistioning to no-till that trips guys up. Might be different fertilizing methods need to be used. Might be not using the correct planter set up. Might be poor residue management the previous year. Might be a lot of different little things, but the info is out there.
2. Are chem suppliers were quite excited about us going no-till. They knew we were going to have to use more chems to replace tillage. Originally, that was true. Eventually (and this was before GMO crops) we were able to trim our herb bills quite substantially and still get pretty good weed control. No different control than conventional neighbors anyway. Our chem suppliers have told us that our cost per acre for weed is lower than normal for the area.
3. Timely planting was always something we heard was going to be a problem with no-till. Seems like I always read somehwere that you have to wait 3 or 4 days after the conventional planters are rolling to no-till. I've NEVER seen that. Must be a corn belt thing. After a few years of CONTINUOUS (vs rotational) no-till, we have been able to plant from 1-5 days quicker than conventional. Both corn and soys. And, we think we're pretty anal about not dicking ground up by planting it wet. Wet soil is the general issue here, we don't wait for the ground to get to a certain temperature to plant. If its dry enough, we plant.
4. I have never felt I had a net savings in my time by no-tilling. It certainly helps from a management stand point in the spring in particular, but I spend much more time scouting than I had to when we were conventional till. I spend as much time as I ever did, its just spread out more over the growing season.
5. I have no good recent data to back me up as to whether we actually save money no-tilling vs conventional. Last time we did any side by sides was in the early 90's. We were saving money by no-tilling then, but that wasn't my goal. My goal was to increase profits. I believe we're more profitable more years than we're not by no-tilling vs conventional.
6. Everything I mentioned so far is something thats measurable. I didn't once mention any of the feel good stuff like soil health, less erosion, etc. Each of us will put a different value on that. Has to be worth something, though. |
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| Could you eliminate a tractor by going no-till? Could you cover more acres? I understand the custom rate takes the tractor cost somewhat into account, but being able to free up some capital and labor has other advantages. Also, would no-till conserve moisture and cut irrigation costs some. These advantages would have to be weighed against any possible yield decline.
Brandon |
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| I would agree with others that it takes a bigger tractor to do tillage than to no-till. That's one of the big reasons I no-till. I would say that it even takes more tractor to pull a planter in tilled soil than no-tilled.
Brandon |
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| My 7000 planter notills just fine. It has straight coulters out on the fertilizer bar and Dawn trash whippers on the row units. After a few years of notill, the ground gets mellow and it doesn't take a chisel plow to break the surface, nor extra heavy down pressure springs. So an ordinary planter works pretty good.
I've seen a yield increase while doing notill.
A bigger sprayer is always handy so long it fits between the trees and power poles. But many sprayers run at 16+ mph and cultivation runs a 3 mph or less. That and a sprayer boom a few times wider than the planter or cultivator bar really increases productivity. And your tillage operation still uses sprays for the weeds, just it abuses the soil and makes it washable by the chisel, disk, and field cultivator.
A good earthworm population will pull that surface residue into the soil during the summer and the nutrients will become available. Its nice in notill to knife in the N for the corn so its most available to the crop. That's one function of the coulters on my planter besides them cutting the surface residue so the trash whippers can separate it.
Notill works good for me.
But the new tenant will be strip tilling. With last year's cold wet spring, I couldn't plant beans until mid June and that hurt. A cleaner surface would have dried and warmed sooner, but 2008 was an unusual year. Some of the fill in beans planted mid July drowned out.
Gerald J. |
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Gettysburg, PA | "Utilizing manure is not possible with a pure no-till approach" I think there are many on this board that would disagree with that GG. It is being done quite successfully. |
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Eastern Iowa | I have been a no-till grower since I started, so making the change back to conservation tillage wasn't all that easy. I didn't even have a mulch chisel for 15 years. I have tried both ways when it comes to working with manure, and have found that even "no-till" applicators disturb the seedbed quite a bit and require a "clean-up" tillage pass before planting, particularly on endrows and dragline turnabouts.
Not trying to start a wide ranging dispute, just saying what works for us. |
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| I've been planting notill 4 row with my MF-135 and running it at barely a fast idle. Its not working hard. And it hardly takes any gasoline.
Gerald J.
Edited by Gerald J. 3/2/2009 12:12
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Gettysburg, PA | Sorry, didn't mean to sound like I was trying to cause a dispute. I was just wondering where/why you were having problems. I take it you mean injector type of equipment when you say no-till applicators? You're not comfortable with just surface applied manure? |
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Massachusetts | Gerald J. - 3/2/2009 00:11
I've been planting notill 4 row with my MF-135 and running it at barely a fast idle. Its not working hard. And it hardly takes any gasoline.
Gerald J.
Cool!
Got any pictures?
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Aberdeen MS | In some areas, depending on, NMP's won't allow surface application of manure. It has to be injected or incorporated within a set time frame. |
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Massachusetts | I see you posted a pic over in crop talk.
That's pretty neat. How many acres do you plant that way? |
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| I just jumped in whole hog and went 100 percent no till in 1995, have never hooked to a plow since, we grow cotton as main crop but our yrilds have done nothing but go up everone has a differnt situation but this works best for us on red ground |
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| Two pictures over on that thread. I did 23.3 acres in a day. Figures 5 acres an hour neglecting filling time which was significant with the 32% at 17 gallons to the acre. Beans took longer because of the time applying seed treatments. I had to put the beans in the hoppers half a sack at a time because they were too fragile to allow stirring for mixing.
Gerald J. |
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Eastern Iowa | Surface application is no longer permitted according to our DNR approved MMP. Tried it once, but was suddenly the neighborhood "bad guy" when the wind was blowing the wrong direction. Got .75 inches of rain that night and vowed to never do it again. |
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West Point, NE | have you ever seen the deitrick (sp) injector shankworks really well around HERE and cant even see where it ran in cornstalks no worse than an anhyrdous shank |
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West Michigan | Michigan CNMP's do not allow for surface applied manure. No no-till if your putting manure down. If spread on top must be tilled in with in 24 hours. |
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| I have not read any of the other posts yet so this may well have been written already. On our farm we raise winter wheat spring wheat and barley. The question for us is not what is cheaper but rather what has the best net return at the end of the year. Our answer is no till has the best net return.
Another question that I ask myself is; When I have farmed this ground for 50 years and it is time to pass it on or sell it what method of farming will have helped to maintain, or better yet improved my soil? Again my answer on our farm is no till gives the best chance of improving my ground.
That is for my farm anyway and I am about in the middle of my 50 year run at things. Dad who farmed some of my ground before me lived to see a lot of this ground broke and conventional tilled and then chem. fallowed agreed. He felt that chem. fallow was going to build the soil about as fast as conventional had destroyed it. I am not sure of the rate of improvement but soil tests and yield results and net return show that we are headed in the right direction.
Sorry it was so long.
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Martinsville, Ohio | Wish I could take credit for that but I can't. That was on our county soil and water signs in the 70's here.
Kinda like Don't Guess, Soil Test(and follow it up with a tissue test!)
I think I did invent Don't Speculate, Inoculate.
Whoever mentioned the wear and tear on a no-till planter or drill is right. That is your cutting edge like disk blades, plow shears and chisel points used to be.
Replace them often!
I get a kick out of those guys who ask on Machinery Talk should I replace my double disk openers? They are still 14.5 inches. LOL You realize how much your missing per RPM of that blade and how thin it is on the remaining blade? One rock and she is shot!
I almost gave up on no-till until I took the coulters off, then the system worked like I envisioned it could. I couldn't understand why anyone would take the coulter off a new planter until I saw how it worked.
I credit no-till for allowing me to farm all these years and expand my operation.
Now the money is behind the scratch sheet and keyboard, farm management.
Hope you enjoy my story on no-till:
http://hymark.blogspot.com/2009/01/my-no-till-experience.html
Ed |
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| I love that line....
I seem to be able to make no-till work good here but it is a challenge in extremely wet springs. |
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Is No-Till really cheaper?
