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Thumb of Michigan | Started getting serious about no-till in the mid 80's, been continuous no till since 1990. I'll echo what everyone else has said, I can't imagine any advantage to tipping anything over now.
When we started no-till, we were growing a number of crops. Corn, soys, dry beans, sugar beets, and wheat. Currently only corn/soy. We felt we weren't giving up anything on any of the crops by no-tilling, but some were a little tougher to make work. Out of all of those mentioned, I'd say we never were very happy with our dry bean results. Market went away, and so did our dry bean acres. I think that we misssed the big yield puke so many have experianced because of rotations. Since we've pared down to a corn/soy rotation, we think that the addition of cover crops has been an asset. Kind of sort of emulate a multiple crop rotation by using some different covers. I'm by know means an expert on covers in any area of the country, but I do enjoy adding them to our rotations. And, the more I know, I find the less I know about any particular covers. Reason I bring covers up is that I know a lot of successful no-tillers are having some positive results by adding them to their farming practices. In a lot of cases, we've replaced an awful lot of urges to do some tillage that can be fixed with a cover crop.
In Michigan, I'm not sure who would be have the longest term no-till fields. I doubt that I'd get many arguments that Ray Rawson has probably planted by far the most acres. I know he has one field near his home that has been in continuous corn for almost 40 years. I'm always very impressed when I visit the Rawsons farms, they do some very remarkable things with some ground that some would consider less than desirable.
Almost forgot- if you've never attended the National No-till Conference, I'd say thats a must do. If you get into a session with a hundred corn growers, you'll have a hundred different ways to no-till corn. All you have to do is sort out which ones apply to your farm. I've never came home from a NNTC without an idea or 10 that I couldn't use here. | |
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any long term no-tillers?
