NW Kansas (Wallace County) | I live in NW KS along the Colorado border. There is definitely more tillage than no-till in my area. I'd say it is primarily because of a lack of progressive farmers. These "drier" areas tend to be where low cost farmers first moved to. There is starting to be a slow trend toward no-till, but until more of the "older" farmers die or transfer land, we will still see tillage for the time being.
We are all no-till, and I'd say nobody in this area works the ground to control RR corn. Most people think they need to work the ground to get a good stand of wheat. There's plenty of research at the Tribune research station that shows that no matter how dry and hard the ground is, no-tilling your wheat into summer fallow is as good or better than working the ground and drilling. We've left quite a bit of volunteer RR corn in summer fallow fields and it doesn't appear to affect the yield of the following wheat crop. There's a point where it will, but I think it has to be in the 4,000 to 5,000 plants per acre range. Tribune has the data on that, so I could have gotten my numbers mixed up. |
Tillage Question for Eastern Colorado and Western Kansas Farmers
