Canadian no-tiller David Rourke is trying not to use herbicides or tillage, and he is even thinking about eliminating using fossil fuels from his farming operation. His plan is certainly not a small-scale program, as each spring he no-tills 6,000 acres at Minto, Manitoba.

To achieve these goals, he developed a 20-year cropping plan a few years back that included using green manures, relay crops, cover crops and intercropping. At that time, the farm’s main crops were wheat, barley, peas, oats, canola, soybeans and flax.

How’s He Going to Accomplish This Dream?

It started with a 182-page book he wrote a few years back called A Road to Fossil Fuel Free Farming. In these pages, you’ll find detailed descriptions on how Rourke intended to plant, maintain and harvest a crop without herbicides, purchased fertilizer, tillage and fossil fuels.

Along with what others might see as seemingly an unattainable goal, he hopes to increase profits by 400%, boost carbon sequestration by 200%, increase grain quality, produce as much food per acre as possible, reduce fossil fuel use by at least 95% within 20 years and produce more nutrient-dense food as soil health increases.

To follow this impressive plan, Rourke starts with what he sees as the five principles of regenerative agriculture.

1. Try to maintain a living root system in the soil for as long as possible each year.

2. Include more diversity in crop selection.

3. Minimize soil disturbance.

4. Keep the soil surface covered with plant material as much as possible.

5. Add grazing into the cropping system.

To increase profits, Rourke hopes to avoid buying costly cropping inputs while improving yields. This includes producing green ammonia fertilizer, a nitrogen (N) source made by using renewable energy, and utilizing water and N from the air.

To attain a goal of increasing carbon sequestration by 4% per year, Rourke is going to continue to no-till — known as zero-tillage or direct seeding in western Canada — and include perennials for custom grazing in his 3-4-year crop rotation. He says agriculture has the added advantage of being able to sequester carbon, a concept he refers to as net positive farming.

Home-Grown Fuel

To avoid buying fossil fuels, he’ll run the diesel engines in his tractors, combines and other equipment with farm-produced vegetable oil extracted from his canola and soybean crops. Rourke anticipates that he’ll only need 5-10% of his land to grow enough canola or soybeans to power the farm’s entire lineup of diesel machinery. He also doesn’t see the need to convert canola or soybeans to biodiesel as he can crush the seeds and extract the oil on the farm with already available small-scale equipment.

35 Years of No-Till Success

Rourke and his wife Diane started farming in 1980 with 320 acres. At the time, he was working as a winter wheat agronomist, trying to convince farmers to seed winter wheat directly into crop stubble. Earning a master’s degree for his research with zero-tillage in 1981 convinced him to try zero-till on his farm, which has since grown to 6,000 acres.

While the Rourkes have zero-tilled for 35 years, they decided in 2017 to go further with reduced input farming when they shifted to organic cropping.

As a result of moving to organic, Rourke increased soil fertility and invested in a lot of mechanical weed control, which doubled the farm’s number of tractors and the amount of needed manpower.

Rourke realizes the organic system was saving him money, as his yearly bill of $750,000 for fertilizer, pesticides and GMO seeds dropped to nearly zero. While he added more equipment and people, the idea was to integrate custom grazing of green manure crops in order to save additional costs and provide soil health benefits with livestock manure.

But organic farming wasn’t all roses for Rourke. In 2022, he decided large- scale organic grain farming couldn’t produce sufficient yields with western Canada’s dryland climate and moved back 100% to a no-till system.

Cover Crop Concerns with Limited Moisture

Rourke has seen the benefits of seeding cover crops to improve soil fertility and keep plants growing for most days of the year. But in the cool and dry climate of western Canada, he says seeding post-harvest cover crops in the fall and expecting significant growth is probably not the best approach. He says the biggest challenge is the short growing season and a narrow harvesting window that discourages growers from having time to seed a cover crop while harvesting.

“Sowing a cover crop while combining, taking $30-70 per acre out of your pocket and hoping sometime in the future to get a return on your investment is not realistic in our dry area,” he says.

Instead, Rourke wonders if it would be feasible to seed a cover crop in the spring at the same time as planting cash crops. He speculates that if coated cover crop seed could delay germination for 80 days, meaning growers would not have to seed during the critical fall harvest as the cover crop would already be growing.

Rourke believes farmers have the responsibility to feed a certain number of people and produce at least a portion of their own fuel needs. He believes farmers also have a responsibility to fix the harm to the Earth that’s already been done by modern-day agriculture.

A no-till dreamer and innovator, Rourke has a history of turning his farming ambitions into reality. With all the technology readily available today to make regenerative farming successful, he sees no need to invent anything else to make farming more profitable. Instead, he believes the biggest limitation to change is likely the “nut” sitting behind the tractor steering wheel.