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| Was out disk ripping today and had a phone call with a good farmer friend who proudly condemns “recreational tillage” (tillage) as nothing more than burning diesel and wearing out perfectly good iron to chase some imaginary compaction problem while he proudly owns and operates what amounts to a recreational corn drying amusement park.
Apparently burning fuel to run a tractor across a field is wasteful but burning propane and electricity to run corn through a rube goldberg contraption of bins, fans, dryers, augers, legs, and a half mile of conveyors is somehow a sound agricultural investment. I guess wearing out tillage equipment to address a suspected yield robbing problem is foolish but wearing out thousands of dollars worth of drying equipment to chase a few PHANTOM bushels of yield preservation is just good management. There's something almost comical about the recreational tillage crowd and the recreational corn drying crowd. They're essentially two sides of the same coin except one has figured out how to criticize the other's expensive hobbies without recognizing his own. Then he'll go home, turn on the lights that can be seen in 3 different counties, start the fans light the burners, and send 17 percent corn through his drying contraption that could have bought and paid for a quarter. The irony is that the recreational tillage critic demands evidence of a yield response before he'll acknowledge the value of tillage yet seems remarkably comfortable assigning a financial return to every “phantom” bushel he supposedly saves through drying. One practice is scrutinized down to the last gallon of diesel while the other gets a generous accounting exemption for propane electricity depreciation, auger flighting bearings, belts, motors and electrician service calls. The only meaningful distinction is that recreational tillage gets criticized for burning diesel to chase phantom compaction, while recreational corn drying gets applauded for burning propane to chase phantom yield. They’re both burning fuel and wearing out iron if were honest.
Maybe we ought to stop calling one recreational tillage and the other good grain management. They're both recreational agriculture when the operator becomes more emotionally invested in defending the machinery and the process than in demonstrating the economic return.
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Recreational Corn Drying
