2013 Mistakes Addressed

The definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results.  Change is a necessary evil of progress and 2013 taught me some tough lessons about strip till that I wanted to share and elaborate on what I'm doing to address those challenges for 2014.

Nitrogen Management

Last year we had nearly 75% of our corn acres in Corn on Corn and our nitrogen management plan was to have about 60 units of N between my fall dry AMS and MAP, starter and 0x2 placement of UAN and ATS and then follow with the remaining 100-120 units with side dressed UAN and ATS.  The thought behind this plan was that we would limit the early spring losses and apply the heavy load of N right when the corn plant was taking off on its exponential growth curve between V5 and V8.  It sounded good last winter when we were making our plans.  Then after planting we received about a foot of rain with cold temperatures which made timely side dressing nearly impossible with the exception of our pattern tiled ground.  The farms that we couldn't side dress because of the wet and cold conditions likely lost some of the surface applied N to excess runoff and looked nitrogen deficient.  The farms that we had pattern tiled we were able to side dress around V4 and received a rain immediately after which helped move the nitrogen to the root zone and we raised very good corn on corn on those farms.  

The farms that remained wet we had to wait til nearly V8 before they were dry enough to get across.  To complicate things further, once we were able to side dress, we didn't receive another rain to move the nitrogen to the roots for about 2 weeks.  The corn stood still with a crappy yellow color until that next rain came along.  It was too late as the yield potential had been set in a nitrogen deficient status and those farms were significantly less in yield than the farms we had applied nitrogen at the critical time.  We knew this specifically as one farm we had pulled in and tried to side dress through the mud in about 3 different rounds in various spots of the field to try to find a dry spot to work.  You could see the difference in those 3 strips in the field the rest of the year as they were greener and taller.  When we combined it, we could tell to the row where those strips were as the weight on the grain cart and yield monitor shot up about 20 bu/A.  It was all about timing and availability in 2013.   

So how do I fix it?  Well my thought is that I'm going to increase my at planting nitrogen application by 2X and consider options to apply it into the soil rather than dribble it on to the surface.  Benefits to this would be to limit nitrogen losses due to volatilization and surface runoff in the event of a heavy rain like I had last year. Disadvantages include that I am still subject to leaching losses with a more significant portion applied up front however this could be overcome by using nitrification inhibitors like Instinct.  

The problem with injecting fertilizer with a coulter on the planter has always been the risk of compacting the seed trench in wet conditions.  My Dad has warned me about issues he used to have in the 80's trying to do 2x2 placements with his dry starter in front of the disc openers.  For that reason, I want the coulter injection system to be behind my gauge wheels to limit the risk of pulling up wet sticky soil that would potentially build up on the gauge wheels.  I found a system online here that I'm inquiring about that I think will do what I'm looking for.  The system is a double coulter split injection about 3" away from the middle of the seed furrow.  It was invented by a farmer out in Illinois named Jeff Garman.  Here's a pic of it of what it looks like.

There will still be a risk of sidewall smearing but that could be mitigated by utilizing spaded closing wheels as shown in the photo in wet conditions which is something that I've been wanting to add to the planter as well. 

Hopefully if I can can implement these changes I can safe guard the nitrogen shortfalls I had last season early from cold wet soils in my corn on corn strip till. I'll follow up this application with a side dressed application to finish out my nitrogen program hopefully again during that V4-V8 window with less pressure of getting the N on at that point.  My end game is to try to get to a point where I have a nitrogen management system that limits and balances both environmental and economic losses of this key input within my cropping system.

More to come next week of things I'm considering changing as the snow melts and planting season draws near.  Cheers.

PS-I wanted to share a Ted Talk I watched this week that discussed the value of carbon retention within soils and how that plays into the discussion around controlling global CO2 with smarter agriculture systems. Really enjoyed it. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgmssrVInP0

2014 Planting Season is 8 Weeks Away!!!

It's been a long while since my last post as I had dropped the blog after the craziness of the 2013 consumed me with trying to rectify a bad cropping year riddled with stress and the unknown.  I will pontificate in future posts about some of the struggles and things I learned about from 2013. Thankfully, things worked out and we were able to emerge well from the damage of the spring floods with the help of our crop insurance and are excited to start a new year in 2014.  Eternal optimism is a job requirement in farming!

Some other big changes have occurred with our operation as well as my parents decided to retire and make 2013 their last year in farming.  My wife and I have decided to begin the process of taking over the operation while I continue to work full time.  2014 will be a busy time but I'm excited about the challenge and ready for things to warm up so we can get to work.

I've been wanting to get back into the blog business to share my experiences with strip-till and other farming practices that I'm interested in for a while now but have had a case of the winter blahs that limited my motivation to do so.  That changed this past week when I attended the Conservation Tillage Conference in St. Cloud, Mn with a couple other of my strip-tiller confidants.  The CTC is something I've been attending for the last 4 years and is a great gathering for farmers who are interested primarily in strip till or no till farming practices in the upper Midwest.  It's a 2-day conference that features keynote speakers on big picture topics, smaller breakout sessions focusing on more specialized topics within conservation tillage, and the infamous Beer and Bull session where we fill our bellies with hors d'oeuvres and drink a few kegs of beer while discussing earthworms, mycorrhizae, organic matter, cover crops and carbon sinks.  I usually am pretty intelligent by 10:30 PM on those nights...just ask me.  The University of Minnesota has been organizing this conference and it's one of the most enjoyable meetings I go to throughout the year filled with lots of really talented, prosperous and thoughtful producers who aren't afraid to get outside the box of conventional farming practices.

I came away with a lot of energy and enthusiasm from the conference and have some things I'd like to incorporate more into my operation for 2014.  Here's a listing and description of some of those things:

1.  Tile.  No matter what your operation's tillage practices are, tile is huge asset that helps overcome production risk.  I learned last year that strip-tilled ground doesn't shed water like tilled ground does....it soaks it up like a sponge.  When you get 12 inches of rain in 10 days like I did last spring and you don't have a way to drain the sponge, you are going to get spanked.  My Dad has done a great job giving me a leg up by investing heavily in tiling his land the last 5 seasons but we're not 100% tiled yet. In that spirit, I am going to set yearly tiling goals for his farms that are not fully tiled.  This sentiment was spurred by the first session of the conference centered around climate change/shift spoken to by Mark Seely, U of MN State Climatologist.  We were told to get ready to weather proof our crops from more of both drought and floods in the future as climate change is here without a doubt.  Mark cited several different climatic trends that have veered drastically over the last 25 years from the previous century of patterns. Temperatures will continue to rise along with dew points and the intensity and frequency of severe weather events will continue to increase.  I feel that if I'm going to be successful at dealing with these types of weather extremes, I need to continue to reduce tillage and tile as much as possible early in my career to limit exposure to drought and flooding.

2.  Cover crops.  Last season with we chose to take prevent planting on one farm that we were unable to plant timely from the wet weather.  Dad chose to pattern tile a good share of the farm in early July and then we established a 6-way cover crop that I strip tilled into this fall.  This was the first time we had ever used a cover crop and we really like what we saw and want to know more about using them more often in the future.  The CTC was full of breakout sessions that talked about the benefits of feeding soil microbes after the crop has reached senescence with cover crops.  There were several producers who shared stories of how they've have raised organic matter levels significantly over a 10 year period and been able to reduce their commercial fertilizer use by utilizing cover crops in their cropping system every year...not just in situations of prevent plant.  This interests me greatly...especially  in a $4 corn market. In our climate, it's difficult to wait until after harvest to establish a cover crop so I'm going to pursue some different application timings and specific species to perhaps establish cover crops in the middle of the summer so that by harvest, I have a carpet of vegetation that is ready to thrive with the increased sunlight up until freeze up.  This carpet will help minimize erosion as well as take up any unused nitrogen or other available nutrients and hold them until the following year.  There are several programs through the NRCS office that help offset the cost of trying cover crops and I plan to take advantage of them this year to figure out how to utilize them more efficiently within my system.

3.  Erosion control.  The last session I attended at the CTC from a presentation by Dave Franzen who is a research scientist from NDSU.  Dave very effectively laid out the problem that American agriculture will face in the next 50 years....trying to feed the world on a diminishing resource, our topsoil.  We've lost nearly 1/2 of the prairies original top soil to different forms of erosion in the last 100 years.  He posed the question to the audience of what will we do in another 100 years if we continue to do little to address the issue while the severity of flooding and wind events increase?  As I drove home from St Cloud and saw field after field of full width tillage and saw how much soil has been transferred off of fields by the wind and deposited in ditches just this winter alone, I wonder if we will be able to change enough quick enough to limit our long term losses?  I guess I don't want my legacy to my grandchildren to be that I had this information and chose to continue to farm in a manner that limited their ability to grow food 50 years from now.  I don't think any farmer has that attitude or intent to do otherwise, we just need more of us to make production decisions with consideration for that perspective. I hope to be more of a resource to those growers who are interested in that way of thinking in the future.

These were the big take homes for me from the 2014 Conservation Tillage Conference.  I highly encourage anyone who's considering getting into reduced tillage farming practices to attend next winter.  I know it gave me some great ideas for changing my operation for the better and I'm excited to put those concepts to work here hopefully in the next 8-10 weeks as planting season rolls around.

I plan to update the blog at least on a weekly basis so please check back in and I will try not to take anymore 9 month hiatuses.  Next week, I'll discuss some of the biggest lessons I learned in 2013 and what I'm doing to address them.  Cheers!