There's a buzz — some of it positive, some not — coming out of southeastern Minnesota about a new strip-tilling machine. The chatter focuses on Mark Bauer’s Soil Warrior, which he says provides an unprecedented balance between conventional tillage and no-till.
Anyone who heard me talk about my operation at the 2006 National No-Tillage Conference in St. Louis knows that I'm as close to paranoid about soil loss as a person can get.
Talk to 10 no-tillers and you’ll probably hear 10 slightly different viewpoints on why it pays to quit disturbing and start building the soil. At Sheridan Farms, we’ve got our list, too. We’ve been able to drop from five marketed crops to two or three without any loss in productivity or farm income.
While most Corn Belt no-tillers grow only corn and soybeans, Charlie Hammer prefers a three-way rotation. The operator of Hammer & Kavazanjian Farms with his wife Nancy Kavazanjian at Beaver Dam, Wis., prefers a no-till rotation evenly split between corn, soybeans and wheat in the farm’s 2,300-acre operation.
While U.S. Department of Agriculture officials have been bragging about funding nearly $290 million in renewable energy efforts since the start of the Bush administration, most of the investment has gone to bioenergy and biomass ventures. In fact, much of their comprehensive energy strategy to help farmers reduce high energy costs is simply being promoted without offering any new economic incentives.
Even with a cold and wet spring in 2004, Tim Goodenough readily saw the many benefits of no-tilling with corn yielding as high as 265 bushels and soybeans reaching 67 bushels per acre.
With nearly 650 leading-edge farmers, researchers and suppliers on hand for the 13th annual National No-Tillage Conference, the event again revealed what’s coming on strong in the no-tilling industry.
No-tillers considering moving into a corn-after-corn cropping system can look to Kelly Cheesewright and Randy Hathaway for encouragement and advice. Cheesewright and Hathaway have made corn on corn work for them in western Indiana and offer tips based on their experience.
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On this edition of Conservation Ag Update, brought to you by CultivAce, No-Till Farmer’s Conservation Ag Operator Fellow, Ray McCormick, showcases how he’s taking conservation ag to the next level in Vincennes, Ind., with ponds, solar panels, duck hunting and more.
Needham Ag understands the role of technology in making better use of limited resources within a specific environment by drawing on a wealth of global experience to overcome the challenges facing today's farmers, manufacturers and dealers.
The Andersons grows enduring relationships through extraordinary service, a deep knowledge of the market, and a knack for finding new ways to add value as we have done for nearly 70 years.