Challenges and Opportunities in No-Till
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EmailMarch 6, 2025
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What happens when you take away tillage? Christine Charles, MSU Extension educator, will share some lessons learned from farmers’ experiences in transitioning to no-till.
The 2025 MI Ag Ideas to Grow With conference was held virtually, February 24 - March 7, 2024. This two-week program encompassed many aspects of the agricultural industry and offered a full array of educational sessions for farmers and homeowners interested in food production and other agricultural endeavors. More information can be found at: https://www.canr.msu.edu/miagideas/
Video Transcript
All right. Hi there, everyone. Good to be with you all today. We'll be going into some challenges and opportunities with no till and talking about some ways to troubleshoot common issues that we see out there. We do have a reason to till. We didn't come upon tillage and some random reason. We tell to prepare an adequate seed bed. We're using it as a weed, a way to address weeds and pests and manage crop residue. However, tillage can change our soil chemistry or biology and other physical properties so that we're more at risk for nutrient loss potentially. Erosion, compaction can be a compounding effect and decreasing that biological community in organic matter, accumulation that can also help with our soil properties. And so when we're considering whether or not to reduce tillage, there are some pros and cons to weigh. It's all about figuring out what is worth the wait and how to address some of these cons. So we'll get more in the weeds of that, but I do want to go over an example of where a no till field might have struggled, and whether or not we can say that this is really because it was no till or because of other circumstances, we can talk about. So We're going to be getting into the mystery of the missing beans. This is from 2023. The fields were planted in late May here, and I went out there late June to see why we weren't seeing really many soiling plants at all. If you don't remember 2023, we had a weird year on our hands. This is rainfall accumulation that we see on average in near Hastings, Michigan. This farm was in Barry County. We started off with a wetter than usual spring season. This red line is what our average precipitation accumulation is. And then by the time he was out there planting, we were getting a little less than average in terms of precipitation accumulation, which would have been fine, but we were starting to also see that it was getting warmer, so we were losing that spring moisture. The question at this time was whether or not to replant. End of June, We're still in the window for that insurance replant time frame. But his ecroomist had checked earlier in that month, June 12th, and most of those seeds were still viable seeds, meaning that we weren't seeing that swelling that typically soybean seeds will have if they're out in wet soils for long enough or seed predation, so those poles. Most of the seeds out there were pretty fine and to be In their furrow just fine. But there was super low emergence. The idea was that later in the month, would there be a potential for emergence once we got more rain? Now, this isn't an easy issue to tackle and really weighing what would make sense economically is what it came down to. By the time we were out there, about ten days later, similar weather conditions, we didn't have that moisture and we had more seed predation. We had more of those non viable seeds, as you can see here. We're seeing some things munching on the seeds, we're seeing seeds swelling, and then even the viable seeds was more of an asterisk potentially viable because we did see some swelling there. So That late planting window for soybeans in Michigan is June 15th and you have about 25 days after it. We're really cutting into whether or not it's worth replanting or is there enough viable seed out there to grow and you know, still claim some damage on, but it was really a conversation with the insurance company to make this ultimate decision. So he ended up not replanting and going with what was out there. There was a lot of other work that he needed to get done on his farm. So in terms of just capacity to get all the fields replanted for the beans, it just wasn't there, right? And that's a hard decision that you have to make year on year that farmers are making. So going back to what the rainfall looks like in 2023 in Barry County, We saw that we ended up getting a half an inch by July 3rd, 3 " by July 15th. That did help with emergence on some of the beans out there and helped progress some of the plants that had already started to come up. That rate of about two per 10,000 plants planted per acre. Those started to mature. But his yields were way down and he had a big concern as to whether or not No till was making his ground more difficult to plant. This was his third year of No till and did that exacerbate the issue of drought? So I don't know if 2023 was the year for anybody in terms of record yields. In Barry County, we saw in 2023 yield averages. Were way lower than typical where we hit in the 50 bushels per acre range, but we were more so in the 41 40 bushel per acre range in the county. I say this and bring this up to say that I don't know if it was necessarily no till, but I don't think it helped. Brooke just talked recently about canola in the long term agroecological research site, and looking at the beans from that site that year, In 2022, we had a lower yield than the business as usual, but still able to keep up. We had about 70. Six bushels per acre in the business as usual. This is corn and soybean rotation in case you didn't hear his talk with tillage and no cover crops. The aspirational system, however, has five crops, corn, soybeans, wheat, canola and forages, in addition to cover crops, reduced no tillage at all, things like that. Now, in 2023, when we saw this drought issue, both types of cropping systems took a hit on that overall yield. I think it was just a challenge of the season more than anything. What are those challenges with not? There are reduced tillage systems. Maybe those equipment adjustments or specializations, nutrient stratification. We don't have tillage as a way to incorporate nutrients. Cooler soils in the spring, we're using tillage to warm it up. We don't have that as a weed management tool, and there are potentially some short term yield hits as our biology isn't built up yet to help us cycle and address. Nutrients help build up that soil structure that would be helpful to get us back to typical yields. When talking to a farmer in Barry County, one of the things that did come up was equipment adjustments. He was planting at 1.5 " for his beans, which is pretty typical, but that wasn't necessarily a consistent down pressure. As we dug up, we saw a lot of bouncing around a lot of seeds on the surface still, especially in a reduced tillage system, making sure to have that even depth and planting is going to be vital. We'll talk about other ways to help and address those challenges. This is hugely important in the spring before going into a reduced tillage system or in the fall before going to a reduced tillage system in the spring. We'll get into the bits and bobs here. One of the first things to do before going into a no till system Spring is managing that residue at harvest. The residue distribution can really make or break yields. When we are planting at a certain depth and we're not able to break through too much of a thick residue mat, we can get germination issues, et cetera We can improve uniform distribution with how we set up our spreader on the back. But this also helps with things like nutrient distribution in use, soil temperature and soil moisture. Two ways to manage residue. Limit how much you're taking in and then distribute more evenly. We can limit how much residue is taken in by raising that combine height. The head height and leave more stocks out on the field so that we're not having to spread so much or manage so much in the back or distribute evenly so that we can do that by increasing that spreader width, which can be difficult because our headers on the combine are way larger, we're more than what our spreader is. We're not going to get a one to one, we're not going to get the same width that we do on the header, but as much as possible, really spreading that out. Second thing we want to do when we're thinking about reducing tillage and really working out some of these kinks is working in the proper field. This is probably not the field. We want to start in a reduced tilled system. We are dealing with horseweed like crazy out here, making sure that we have that lower weed pressure and that we are addressing perennial weeds and have a management plan so that they're not inhibiting the rest of our plants growth is going to be critical when picking a field. Also, fields that have more well drained soils that are have the adequate nutrient levels and fields with living roots history. Fields that have been in forages are great candidates for going into a reduced tillage system or fields that have had cover crops or a winter rain can help. Those roots really help mellow out that soil and bring the particles together so it's easier to plant into and we can build up the structure. Another thing to do in the fall before doing no till in the spring is addressing existing compaction issues. Compaction issues aren't going to go away overnight. We can reduce the potential for getting compacted when we do things like no tilling and using cover crops. But when we're dealing with those deeper plow pans or deeper restrictive layers, that's either going to take time or just need direct remediation, with deep tillage or subsoling. Then we can keep that work that we did by not driving on it and really making sure that that stabilizes. When we fluff up the soil with a subsoiler, we have this more aerated bit underneath. If we go on top and drive across that too soon, we've just compressed it even more and moved that compaction deeper. The timing of when we're subsoiling and doing deep tillage in the fall and when we're doing other work and really shouldn't be doing other work after doing that. Helps in addressing the compaction long term, leveling fields out. If you had ruts in a field or anything like that, making sure those are addressed before we get into a nose till scenario where it's just going to take a lot longer, it's going to be a lot harder for plants alone to work through the ruts. We want to make sure we start well. Again, cover crops are so helpful with transitioning into that reduced tilt system. Managing nutrients in soil pH are big to dos in the fall before taking away or reducing that tillage. Lime and phosphorus are pretty immobile in the soil, pH and lime adjustments, adding your lime beforehand as you work it into the soil is going to be important to consider and something you might want to do before you transition into a reduced tillage. System so that you can work that line in. No till soils are a little different. We're broadcasting, we don't have the tillage as a way to work the nutrients in, nutrients on the surface are more at risk for loss. When we're in a no till soil, injecting if possible, or doing a two by two or a starter is going to be really helpful to reduce that loss or making sure that we're applying as the plant needs it, so that we're not introducing more opportunity for nutrient loss because our soil is going to be a little bit different. Nitrogen tie up is potentially a factor, especially in these early times when you're getting into a reduced till system. Why does that happen? Well, we have more residue out there that we're not addressing and so that carbon, the microbes are using up the nitrogen to break down the carbon more than the plant has access to it. If we're working in a reduced tillage system early on or transitioning a new field, putting on a little extra nitrogen to help with either breaking down more residue or to help the plant overcome some of that competition, it's going to be helpful. I think a big thing to consider are these cover crops. I've mentioned this before when we're taking away tillage, that we don't have tools for working up the soil in the spring, but cover crop roots can serve as our biological tillage tool. As you can see here, all sorts of varieties have various roles that they play in our systems, but their different roots are a big factor. Our grasses have really fibrous, long roots. And can help with that biological tillage and getting deep. That Barry County farmer didn't have cover crops in the system. I don't know if 2023, that would have made a difference just because of how dry the conditions were by the time he was getting into the field. But in terms of that wet spring, being able to get some of that moisture out and get in a little early, there could have been potential for that. But you always say would have could have should have with those things. Hey, Christine. I've got a question in the chat in the Q&A here for you. What is the best way to no till falllowfld into cash crops without herbicides? I think the first thing that you're going to want to look at is what you're going to do to either burn down or address what's growing there right now? You're wanting to think about what you're planting and then what your herbicide program is going to be, or if it's not a concern to you, you don't have any perennial weeds or anything like that, then maybe you can get away with just planting that cover crop that you know will winter kill and then out compete the weeds. I think when you're transitioning a fallow field, you want to make sure that you're not running into competition immediately. I think getting those cover crops in either something that can grow in the summer and you know will die over the winter. It's shading out some of that competition for the weeds. Then if you can no till into that in the following year, that might be your best bet. You're also going to want to check compaction in the field. A lot of fallow fields have a history of being pasture. I pasture scenarios, we do see more compaction, especially if we don't know how it's managed and so It might be worth it just to take out a probe or take out a shovel and see what kind of compaction issues you may be dealing with or may not be dealing with because that'll give you a lot of problems if you're just trying to till straight into a follow field that maybe was a pasture, something else was going on and there's a ton of compaction underneath the surface that you didn't really know about. My approach to that would be planting in a cover crop this spring really summer or some crop that's going to mellow out the soil for you, that it's going to terminate and shade out everything else so that you have a little bit of a reduced risk of weeds doing an assessment on what's out there and building up a herbicide plant so that in the next year you can plant into a better scenario. It helps. Okay. What are some management considerations when it comes to reduced tillage? What we're looking for with equipment in a reduced tillage system or no till system is something that manages or really managing residue in general. There's more residue out there that we need to clear and cut in order to get in. What are some issues when we don't manage that residue? If you were here earlier in the day or you can see a recording of this later, Slugs can be a major problem when we have too much residue out there. And you know, we just have created a more moist and hospitable environment for them to be in. Another thing with equipment and not managing that residue well is hair pinning. If you can see here, that residue is and it's going to happen in a tilled system, a hair pinning issue, but because we have more residue in a till in a no till system, it's more likely. This residue is blocking right where that seed is. It's getting in the way. Why did the planter or the coulter not get through this? Because that residue was still wet. When we're not able to cut through, the residue bends instead of cutting through and that's where we get a hairpin situation. What can help again, managing that residue after harvest, so we don't get these thick bands that we're just planting through. We can help ourselves out a little bit by thinning out the density of the residue, waiting for those residues to dry out a little bit so that we're in better conditions, we're not bending the residue or breaking it. Then road cleaners might be helpful if you're really concerned about the residue getting too close to that see trends and where the plant is, especially when you're wanting to overcome some pest issues. Caring out the way near the plant might be helpful. Some things like slugs might just take a little extra effort and management if it's a recurring problem. Another thing that we're looking for equipment wise, in general with any planter is that good seed to soil contact. But we can run into some issues with this in a no till system. We can get seeds on the surface or uneven depth. Again, really making sure that we are consistent with the planting depth with more residue situation is a problem. What can help? Increasing that down pressure, so we can get consistent depth across the field and that we're pushing through the residue, and that was the issue that we're seeing in the Barry county field. This bouncing potentially could have helped, but even then when we had seeds at the right depth, they were still struggling in the drought scenario. Landing at a slower speed can make sure that reducing the balancing and getting even depth and then addressing those compacted soils earlier on so that we're not dealing with ruts that we're planting in through and seed doesn't even have a chance that we're trying to overcome some deeper compaction. We talked a lot about challenges with no till. But we do have some opportunities here and there are you know, some benefits with thinking about a reduced tillage system and no till system. What happens when we reduce our tillage, there's opportunity for reducing labor and fuel costs. We don't have to make that extra pass across the field, reducing the risk for erosion and compaction, improving that infiltration, addressing yield variability. This can happen over time, and then that soil carbon and organic matter can increase. The situation I'm going to pull from is the long term ecological research site at the Kellogg Biological Center, and it was established in 1988, and they've been collecting research on this field for over 30 years. So they have seven different management variations. We have conventional and a corn soy wheat rotation, no till, and there's no cover crops in the no till field, a third of inputs. So it's getting a third of the chemical inputs of the conventional system, that's pesticides and, um fertility and then biologically based. There's no chemical inputs, they just use to cover crops and manage weeds with tillage. Then they have some perennial systems. I'm going to focus then on that no till and conventional comparison. These are the yields from the past 30 some years. What we saw over time is that at some point we do see no till fields consistently out yielding our conventionally tilled yells. When does that happen? On this site, We saw that in year eight, soybean yields is when that diverged. We saw that earlier on and that's pretty commonly said that soybeans, no till beans is more manageable and that they overcome the soil conditions more easily than corn. We saw that out yielding happen in year eight. Now, in corn, this didn't happen until about year 16 is where we out yielded. But as you can see, we're seeing that the yields keep up the entire time. In addition to the other benefits and building up, we're able to maintain those yields in the meantime, and then we out yield at year eight and 2016. We really haven't seen a consistent out yielding in our wheat. But again, we're keeping up with those yields, we are able to maintain yields in and maintain conventional yields, if not out yield them in our no till system. Profitability. One thing that we eventually saw at this site was that the no till fields quickly started to become more or not quickly started, but got to a point where they began to become more profitable than the conventionally tilled system. When did that happen? Took a little bit of time to pay off that initial equipment. In 1988, you needed to have distinct no till equipment and for what we were doing. Nowadays, a lot of the planter setups and even in the past several years are made in such a way that you can handle the residue and get the down pressure without having to use more press specialized equipment. Maybe there are some adjustments that you want to make or additions, but it's not such a diverse cost. It took some time to pay off that equipment as soon as that happened. We got to a point in our fields where the corn and the beans were out yielding, the conventionally tilled corn and beans, equipment paid off, so we became much more profitable. But in a scenario where you're renting equipment, you're using cost shared equipment or sharing equipment with a neighbor, or if you don't need to buy new equipment, I think you can bring this price down, even the addition of cover crops, this system does not have cover crops. I think that can overcome some of maybe the yield we could have gotten higher yield sooner if we had more of an integrated system, but who knows. Another thing I want to bring up. In a reduced disturbance system, we build aggregates. Here we can see that soil carbon actually increases the larger our aggregates are because in an aggregate the soil clumps, we're just storing the organic matter inside and we're protecting it. When we look at over time, you're really interested in carbon and things like that, we were able to build up that soil carbon in comparison to a conventionally tilled field in our no till fields. This is our global warming impact. This is taking everything that's being done in the field and comparing it in conventional field and a no till field. What made the difference that soil carbon accumulation. Why? Because we're protecting the aggregates, we're not disturbing them and that's how we were able to build up that carbon over time. We also know that in really rainy situations, which is not what we saw in 2023, we're able to infiltrate and store that water more readily. These are the fields in the tilled scenario and the no tilled scenario, holding onto that water and pulling it down. We have seen in 2012, how no till fields have retained moisture for longer. We didn't get any soil moisture data on the fields in Barry County that I talked about earlier. But I would be curious about comparing those snow till fields to the conventional fields because they were both dry conditions, but it was there a little bit more moisture held on over time. In 2012, we saw that at our site. The till fields in this open white balls, they retained this moisture from that rainfall for longer than the conventionally tilled fields, which helped them overcome the several weeks that there was no rain. So we see. Sorry, I'm just going to jump in. We're really close on time. You do have a question in the chat as well. So if you want to wrap up. Sure. This is the last one. Okay. So just mentioning oftentimes we look at tillage and no till in a black and white scenario. You're either tilling or you don't till. When we think about the pros and cons, the potential benefits, and what is available to us as tools, there's a lot more gray in between. Does our system maybe need occasional tillage every five to ten years? Maybe to address some of the past issues that might build up, how can we see some of the pros from a reduced tillage scenario and incorporate that more as opposed to seeing things as a black and white. Another, I have one more slide. Other ways to reduce this tillage is with timing, intensity, intensity can be the depth, and then our number of passes. There's more than one way to think about a reduced tilt system and how do we roll some things back I really just want to emphasize that maybe we start the conversation by thinking of tillage as one tool of many tools. How can other solutions such as addressing plant canopy cover crops, crop rotations, equipment adjustments help with other issues that we're facing that we typically would just default to tillage. If tillage isn't our default, maybe we can address issues in a more holistic That's my time. I think I have time for the question. Yeah. What would be the best cover crop to use in chestnut and hazelnut trees? We have to consider the harvest problem of the burrs slash nuts dropping and retrieving. Yeah, I don't think I have a great recommendation off the top of my head, but I well, I have one book that I think you should check out. So and if you send your email, I can email it directly to you. There's a resource from California called cover crops and Walnut Trees. Obviously, California is not our same system whatsoever, but they go through prompts and questions on what to consider with a cover crop. How much work are you going out and doing? What's the timing of your different passes and harvesting and what's your equipment size? Those considerations are big ones when we're thinking about what cover crops to use. If a perennial cover crop makes sense, if a mix makes sense, and like you said, those receding or harvest losses. I don't have a great straightforward answer, but I know that there are a few resources out there that I'd be happy to dig up and send your way when we're thinking about cover crops in a perennial system. Great. Thanks, Christine.
