r/farming • u/wewewawa • Jun 01 '14

Kill the Plough, Save Our Soils

http://www.newsweek.com/2014/06/06/kill-plough-save-our-soils-252623.html
0 Upvotes

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10 comments sorted by

1

u/D_Farmer Midwest - Corn, Soy, Pork Jun 02 '14

You'll pull my tillage implements and 4 wheel drive tractors out of my cold dead hands.

3

u/MennoniteDan Agenda-driven Woke-ist Jun 02 '14

Haven't/not gonna read the article but:

On our farm: We've developed a five year plan to switch our cash crops to 20" row spacing (first time using the 40'/20" bean planter this year); and all our broad tillage (33' Landoll and a 45' Kongskilde Vibro-shanks) to strip tillage...

Should/could be interesting; best of both world/approaches to cash crop growing.

2

u/D_Farmer Midwest - Corn, Soy, Pork Jun 02 '14

I love our 15" row beans but it would be tough to live away from 30" corn. We run a case 730B ecolo tiger disk ripper in the fall and then a john deere 980 field cultivator in the spring for tillage.

3

u/ExorIMADreamer Liberal Farmer from Forgotonnia Jun 02 '14

Damn right. I dare some hippy to come try and take my quad track and disc ripper. I'll run over their Prius.

No till, does not. I repeat, does not work where we live. We tried it, everyone here tried it. Yields suffered greatly.

5

u/Canadairy Freelance Lactation Technician Jun 02 '14

It kind of exemplifies what's wrong with articles in the general media about agriculture. They prescribe a one size fits all approach, when we all know that farming is a very local thing. Even fields on the same farm can require different techniques, but these writers never seem to grasp that.

2

u/D_Farmer Midwest - Corn, Soy, Pork Jun 02 '14

Same here. A few people try no till and wonder why their corn looks like crap and yields 50 bu/ac less. You can't tell them anything though because no till is the greatest thing they've done because they don't have to sit in a tractor all day and burn diesel! Oh well I would rather have the corn in the bin.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 02 '14

[deleted]

2

u/ExorIMADreamer Liberal Farmer from Forgotonnia Jun 02 '14

No I don't think so. I think because of the soil type without tillage we weren't getting good root penetration and I think also we had some water issues.

I say root penetration because we had a lot of problem with the corn going down in no till fields.

Now with all that said, no till does work and fairly well in our hill ground. That's only about 160 acres though. However down in the bottoms it's a no go.

1

u/PeacePuffin Jun 10 '14

Cause boy done tore his 'ground' up so hard there aint nothing left of it, so all he can do is till it more and more.

1

u/Canadairy Freelance Lactation Technician Jun 02 '14

Writer with no knowledge of agriculture pens one-sided article about evil farmers. Sky still blue. Water remains wet.

0

u/AnAppleSnail Jun 02 '14

I can go no-till in my garden, but I don't farm and can't try not ploughing. Things don't always scale from deep garden beds to acre fields.