Improving Your Farm

 

This was adapted from a Randall Reeder article, Retired OSU Extension Engineer at Ohio State University.

Most farmers would like to leave their farm in better shape than when they started. The question is: What does that mean? You never hear a farmer brag about making their farm worse. What does it mean to make a farm better when you retire from farming?

For some farmers, that means passing on a farm that is actively operating and growing in size. For some that means keeping the buildings freshly painted and the homestead looking attractive. On older farms, sometimes that means getting rid of old barns and fences. Others might say getting higher crop yields.

For farms to remain sustainable, keeping soils healthy and productive is important. Are your soils getting darker or lighter in color? Dark colored soil indicate a gain in soil organic matter (SOM) and are more productive. Are the soils getting softer and is the water infiltrating? Often, farmers complain that their soils are getting harder, the water is not infiltrating and water is running off the land. When water runoff occurs, usually it takes soil, fertilizer, and nutrients with it. When you are farming for crops, improvements made below the soil surface are important for keeping your farm sustainable and for keeping the farm operation profitable.

Here are four questions Randall Reeder wants to ask about improving your soil. First, which of four choices is the best way to improve your soil? Your choices are shallow high-speed tillage, subsoil every 5 years to decrease compaction, organic farming, or no-tilling with a cover crop. As you might guess, tillage and disturbance does not improve your soil. Why do it? The quick answer is because, in the short-term it pays. You release nutrients and the next crop tends to thrive. However, long-term it decreases your SOM, makes your soil hard and fragile, and it washes or blows away. It can take some time (years even decades), but it’s productivity eventually declines. Subsoiling can help decrease compaction, but only if the soil is dry. It does nothing to add SOM. Organic farming usually requires some tillage to control weeds so long-term, is may be a slower decline, but soil quality still declines. No-till and cover crops mimic Mother Nature, so it’s the best way, however; it takes some time to work effectively.

Second question, what is the best destination for raindrops? Run off to a grass waterway, run to a wetland, infiltrate to drainage tile, or soak into the ground? Grass waterways are good for about 20 years, then they work a lot less effectively. They are expensive to build and maintain and they take land out of production. Wetlands are very similar. Drainage tile allow crops to grow productively, but again are expensive to put in. Unfortunately, when water exits tile lines quickly, it often takes suspended solids (soil) and nutrients with it. Most soil erosion (70%) on flat land that is well tiled comes from tile drainage. The best way is for rain drops to soak into the soil and stay there. That requires high levels of SOM which act like a sponge. No-till and cover crops maintain and increase SOM; making soils darker, softer, and more productive.

A USDA-ARS site was farmed with no-till and continuous corn for 40 years and had a 21% slope. How much soil was lost after a 5-inch rain. Your choices are 20 ton/acre, 10 ton/a, 5 ton/a, and 100 pounds/acre. Why would anyone farm a field with 21% slope is difficult for us flatlanders to image. How do you stay on the tractor without tipping over?? The correct answer is 100 pounds of soil after a 5-inch rain. We even get soil erosion and a lot of surface water runoff on flat ground.

A farmer has 2000 acres in a corn/soybeans rotation, 1000-acre chisel plowed soybeans going to corn, and soybeans no-till drilled into corn stalks. How many acres are no-till? This may seem like a trick question. Anything chiseled is considered tillage. But for true no-till, that means no tillage for multiple years. The 1000 acres that is no-till drilled is called rotational no-till, not true no-till. That is a common misconception about no-till, especially; made among agricultural research scientist. It takes time for the soil to heal itself.

Most above ground improvements to a farm can be made in 1-2 years. Below ground improvements may take 10-20 years. Unfortunately, these below ground improvements like building SOM can be wiped out quickly. It takes a much longer period of time to build up a soil than it does to tear it down or destroy it.