New bone to chew on

It is universally agreed that corn and bean yields have over doubled in the past decade or two. Some is from sprays that keep weed competition down. Some are the advancements in hybrid seed. How much of a yield drop do you think would be seen if you still used the newer seed verities and tried to cultivate as we did years ago. Remember, the advancements in tractors and equipment also. You don't necessarily have to use a Farmall H to cultivate with. Something 4WD with cab and GPS. Would the money saved on sprays be eaten up by lower yields? This isn't a organic vers conventional debate. It is a how do you think this would pan out? So If 180-200 bu corn is common, what do you think a guy could do if done with all the same tools in his box, just no roundup? Al
 
I would say in dryer climates probably pretty close, especially if you could band something on the row. I think you will always loose some because cultivating late is supposed to damage the roots. I also think you would have a hard time getting it done for less cost than round-up. Where I live I would be very sceptical as just last month we had over 18" of rain, be pretty hard to get much cultivating done with that much rain and weeds really grow.
 
I'm only referencing organic because I do some custom organic farming for a neighbor. I farm my own with chemicals. That being said, I believe if the only element you're omitting is the herbicide I believe you could match any yield out there. For the neighbor he is taking away herbicide, seed technology, fertilizer and he still gets within 20 bpa corn as mine. Some years closer then that. If you remember back in the days befor herbicide we had to do more then just cultivate. You had to till the ground more before planting, then after planting it is dragging, rotary hoe twice, cultivate 3, sometimes 4 times. So return on investment would be less but as far as yield goes I think it would be the same.
 

And then there is the issue of row spacing. A long, long time ago I was row cropping in Southern Minnesota. I narrowed my planter all the way down from 40 inch rows to 38 inch rows. Could today's big tractors accommodate the narrower rows that guys use today?

Tom in TN
 
Let's remember,it would require a lot of pre plant tillage to bury the trash so you could cultivate. I think you'd have quite a time getting stalks from 200 bushel corn turned under so you could cultivate without just dragging them along. I've done a lot of cultivating in my younger days and I can tell you first hand,you need a clean field to start with.
 

I wonder how things would have panned out if herbicides never existed? Do you think someone would have developed a cultivator that could remove weeds no matter what condition the soil was in? Dry or overly wet.
 
on corn maybe, but beans would have required several trips over last month. And here that rain can start in May some years.
 
How are you going to do that If your axle deep in mud? And
stirring the weeds in mud just replants them.
 
I think more time and fuel would be used, yields would only be down a hair. Probably a cycle, the years weeds are bad yields would drop, other years yields would be comparable. Butthe cost per bu would be higher.

Insecticides, now there you might see a bigger yield drop; you only mentioned herbicides and weeds.....

I would not be happy about all the erosion. Back when we cultivated three times a year during our rainiest period, you just accepted it. Now looking back, all the topsoil that washed down the hills, that was a bad deal.

Paul
 
(quoted from post at 00:26:04 08/17/18) How are you going to do that If your axle deep in mud? And
stirring the weeds in mud just replants them.

If the field is that wet I doubt the crop would produce much, weeds or no weeds.
 
(quoted from post at 00:31:00 08/17/18) I think more time and fuel would be used, yields would only be down a hair. Probably a cycle, the years weeds are bad yields would drop, other years yields would be comparable. Butthe cost per bu would be higher.

Insecticides, now there you might see a bigger yield drop; you only mentioned herbicides and weeds.....

I would not be happy about all the erosion. Back when we cultivated three times a year during our rainiest period, you just accepted it. Now looking back, all the topsoil that washed down the hills, that was a bad deal.

Paul

Were the fields contour strips? That was the reason fields were planted following the contours of the hill.

Don't have an answer for the insects though.
 
Just looking at the cultivating angle it takes well drained loamy soil to make it effective. Specifically, drainage needs to readily respond to heavy rains to allow cultivation when needed. You can tile clay soil intensely but it still takes time to soak 2-3 inches of rain in where there is not a decided grade to run it off such as what I have. A few rain intense weather systems can keep you off the ground and it happens all through out the growing season here. A button of lambs quarters in 85 degree heat can be a 3 foot plus giant in a matter of days. Similar problem with drilling beans in 7.5 inch rows. Get 3-4 inches of rain after planting and then watch the temperature hit 80 less than a day afterward crusts the beans in and you can't get out to rotary hoe for several days. I've seen it where beans go in, rain, then crust, then heavy rain before emerge with intense heat shortly after re-establishing the crust. First drill got sold because of a couple years like that back to back and I do have another double disc drill now but primarily use 30 inch rows. The only way I would go less than 30 inches on most of my ground is with a modern planter that can meter space precisely and have enough depth control that if I set it at 5/8 inch deep that is where it runs regardless of soil type. Someday. The bottom line for me is I would rather experiment with none aggressive cover crops to establish a mat to block weeds. Cultivation also uses fuel and wears points plus can deplete organic matter levels at an accelerated rate. Only if I had a few million dollars so I could play extension agent without any of the drawbacks when a plan fails.
 
Your ground is significantly different. They use rice tires there to get down to the base and drive on that. Up here the frost breaks up that base and rice tires do very little to help. Plus your soils that I've seen are sandy. If you tried your ways of farming up here you would have a disaster, just as our ways won't work down there. And I would be surprised to find that no herbicides are used on your crops. Here we can cultivate too and some years might get along with just that. Its years like this one That would make relying on that alone a dangerous risk.
 
The yield would be just as good, maybe better from no herbicide drag. Like what was mentioned the erosion would be terrible and along with the eroding soil goes the fertilizer, right into the streams rivers and lakes. Chemical pollution from chem farming would pale in relation to nutrient pollution from erosion.
 
I would say we use some herbicides also.
Just not roundup.
And I thought this was a discussion of what would we do if there was no roundup.

Our soil is different?
In what ways other than maybe frost?
The area where they grow sugarcane is river silt.
Yes soil from Iowa; Mn; Ill; Wis; Ind; carried for hundereds of miles and deposited on the gulf floor.

And on top of that we do not use tile.

While it may not be as simple as today where you could apply roundup in one pass and then sit back and watch the crops grow I got to believe cultivating crops will work. I will base that belief on the fact that it work for hundreds of years before RRC were invented in the 70's.
 
Chemical weed control started in the 50's and was excessive by the 70's with many far more noxious chemicals than are allowed today. And if you go back to before chemicals your talking about yields that are a fraction of todays, in our area 50-70 hi corn compared to near 200 today. As for the soil, when we get rain like last month there is literally no base to drive on, tractors sink to the axle, so cultivating would be impossible. That would allow the weeds, which grow extra fast under those conditions to take over. This year there would be no crop if not for the chemical weed control. That is why I don't think this type plans could be sucessful here. In dryer areas where cultivating is more reliable, it may very well be a good plan. I've actually considered trying something like this on my farm in the future. We shall see if it ever comes about tho. I'm thinking along the lines of some type of herbicide handed on the row at planting with cultivating to clean the rows. Of course chemicals will always be available if things go south.
 
I think cultivation is going to be a thing of the past with it getting hotter and drier, need the cover provided by no till.

I do see organic herbicides replacing the chemical ones at some point.
 

I'm not a row cropper but I do raise a few acres for cattle feed.
When no-til started around here it was for reducing cultivation and helping to eliminate erosion, this required some type of herbicide to kill the cover crop and help control weeds.
The first few years of no-tiling dad had a set of small cutter disk on our cultivator to cut and throw dirt up around the corn stalks coving any grass near the roots.

Over 90% of the yield increases I've seen was from higher seed population and better nutrient management.
I remember playing 38" rows with 14000 per acre population, when we narrowed up the planter to 30" rows population jumped to 18-19000 with the same seed spacing, that extra 4-5000 ears of corn really picked up the yield.
Now we planting 24000 per and with proper nutrient applications yields have doubled from back in the day.
I heard that in good crop ground their putting out 28000 plus populations.
Weeds take up some of the nutrients that was intended for the crop so I can see a small percentage of yield lose due to weeds.
I think the bigger lose would be from dockage in the price due to foreign matter in the grain harvested from a weedy field.

Just my .02, like I said I'm not a grain farmer so I could be completely wrong.
Have been before.

John
 
There's no comparison in time required to spray corn or beans with a 120 foot boom at what seems like 15mph versus cultivating at 3-4 mph even twelve rows at a time. Sure, cultivators could grow with GPS control, but that means a bigger tractor to propel them, and there is a limit somewhere. Meanwhile, that sprayer just finished the field and is driving away at 30mph to the next. Timing is everything with either spraying or cultivating.
 
I tried cutting way back on herbicides in the early 90's. I could never get over all the ground at the right time for the best kill. I also had 2 big ragweed plants for every bean plant in the row at harvest. When I used banded herbicides in the row things worked out most years but not always. I have lake Huron to the west,Erie to the south,Ontario to the east and Georgian bay to the north. An afternoon shower 2 or 3 days a week is common for us. Cultivating crops just starts new weeds under those conditions or allows the roots to survive and set a new stem. All that being said weedy 30 bu soys were just as profitable as 45 bu RR beans but always a struggle.
 

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