Oswald No-Till Farm Cleghorn, IA | Reading your post Greywolf was like seeing my own thoughts.
You really nailed it on the topic of "pre-farming" soils vs. the crops we attempt to grow today. I would argue that we are really screwy in trying to grow a warm season grass by planting in the cool season (spring) on wet soils that can/will dry out during the reproductive phase of the crop. We then sometimes are trying to harvest that crop during a cool/wet season (fall 2009).
The evolution of the crops we grow is a function of the commodity programs and non-agronomic market forces with technology such as breeding seed products thus allowing the crop to be grown in areas in some cases marginally suited for that crop. It's still tough to grow corn in 60 frost free days even if there were a seed product in the catalog.
If memory serves, Dwayne Beck once made a comment about the new "drought resistance" GMO lines of corn...... maybe instead of spending serious bucks for technology to try to make corn grow in dry arid climates we should look at better using crops we have like milo? Of course, I don't know the tech fee structure of milo but I doubt it is that great.
If we are going to use land for energy crop production using the solar collector known as leaf area as the primary factory, I have to wonder if it will cause us to look to alternative crops rather than ones requiring high input of cash for seed technology, herbicides, tillage, and to some degree fertilizers.
On strip till and tillage in general, you are hitting the nail on the head. |
No till troubles in heavy clay (gumbo) Solil Life and others
