Went to a grazing conference

on Thursday and this guy was the main speaker there. Ray Archuleta. Here is his message on You tube if you want to see it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-O5xKgITeV0 There are three parts and I wish he spoke more about the results some farmers are seeing.

There are (according to Ray) several farmers using no till and and getting 190- 200 bu/ acre corn without any fertilizers and very little spraying. One of those guys is in North Dakota where they have a pretty short corn growing season. You may not agree with him but, some of what he says makes a lot of sense. I am not sure just how I can incorporate no till on a couple acres of vegetable garden. I see some doing it on a few square feet but how on two acres? What are you folks doing?
No tilled soil

He is talking about Gabe Brown, those guys are flat interesting.

We had a guy here in Iowa that was getting over 300 bu to the acre 20 years ago.

Then he and his wife divorced and the truth came out from the disgruntled wife. He never won a corn growing contest after that.

Not sure what you are saying unless you are doubting these claims.

These guys are claiming to be able to do this without chemical fertilizers and with very little pesticides or none at all. There are always skeptics of these claims and I certainly cannot prove they are true or false.

I would like to try their methods though and see for myself as, if there is any truth to it, they are making better money then the guy who is stuck sucking hind teat to the chemical pushers. The chemical companies tell everyone to feed the plant, not the soil. These guys are feeding the soil and building the fertility of that soil. Nothing more. If the soil is healthy, it makes sense that the plants will find what they need to grow. The trick is keep the soil healthy. You cannot do that with conventional methods.

We better hope that at least some of what these guys are saying is true because someday the input cost just outweighs the ability to produce for everyone trying the conventional methods. That is happening over and over for farmers all over the country every year.

Looked at a couple talks that Gabe has on Youtube. Pretty interesting stuff.

On a normal moisture year I can triple crop my corn land, oats, red clover and rygrass in october, graze from Dec. 1st to mid february, fertilize immediately, chop no later than March 25, no-till 96 day corn in stubble immediately or no later than April 1st, chop last week of june, immediately plant sweet sudan grass with either forage soybeans or sweet clover, bale or chop in September. 2011, drouth, combined the corn in July, did not plant fall grazing until mid October, no grazing, had winter rain and got a stand, chopped it Feb. 27 and planted corn March 2nd. Normal years fertilizer total is 500 pounds per acre 0-12-12 fall applied, 150 pounds per acre urea when calves come off.

Up here in MN our grazing season is waaay too short for that. One neighbor gets corn silage, plants rye, takes grass silage in spring, aqpplies manure, and plants corn silage again, but has a terrible time with the timing is spring, too busy with other stuff and it's typically too wet to do harvest, even silage harvest. No way could we get a 95 day corn harvested and a 2nd crop.

--->Paul

Go to bcscd.org which is a North Dakota soil conservation district that has been doing alot of trials of continuous no-till, continuous cover crops with grazing incorporated in the process. They have videos of this year's soil conference, last year's, and some others. Really interesting, though you have to translate from their situation with very sandy loams and 16 inches precip per year.

Sometimes these high yeilds are not what they seem is my point.

Every time you remove a crop from a field the crop removes fertility. There are two ways to replace the fertility.

Boughten fertilizers and manure.


Either way will work. So if you have hundreds of acres of corn and want to use manure you will need hundreds of livestock.

So if everyone went to this method of farming meat would be worthless and we would not have enough feed to feed all the livestock. A farm can sustain itself for fertility by useing this method but we all can't do it that way.

I have a neighbor that uses little to none boughten fertilizers and he has the worst corn in the area.He has 360 acres. 50 cows,100 acres of hay and pasture and the rest is corn and beans.

He spreads his fertilizer thin and does not have enough to cover all his acres. His soils are getting depleated and will be worthless in 25 or more years. He could add cattle and have more hay and pasture to get more manure but like I said if we all did it that way???

No fertilizer will work on a small scale but not world wide.

Gary

The cover crop thing is what I am doing on my farm, I have talked to Ray, Dave Brandt and Gabe Brown one on one and they have me convinced. I really get more information that I can use from Dave because his ground and their rainfalls and climate are real close to what I have to deal with.

You obviously did not watch the video or see what these farmers are claiming. They are using cover crops and many hundreds of animals to fertilize the ground. No tilling is used. They are then rolling down the cover crops prior to planting or no till planting after the ground has been heavily grazed. They leave at least 50% of the cover crop there to feed the soil and the microbes in the soil. You will not find these microbes in any numbers in tilled soil, much less in soils being chemically fertilized.

They are putting plenty back into the soil. In fact, I would bet they are putting far more of the right things back into the soil in comparison to the heavily salted fertilizers that the conventional farmer is using. They are not feeding the plant like a conventional rational is doing. They are feeding the soil.

I kinda like thre natural ways, and am not against them at all.

But, perhaps you didn't quite read what Iagary wrote either?

If you haul away grains, or hay, or meat, or milk from a farm, you need to replace those things. How do you do that?

Manure is wonderful, but you always lose some by exporting the meat or milk. If you feed 100 acres of crops into cattle, you probably end up with 70 acres worth of manure - how will you make up the 30 acres worth of nutrients lost?

Cover crops are really good, dad used them, i do too. They can grow nitrogen take it out of the air; but they need time to do it, so you are losing out on other crops you could be growing. There is a cost to doing this, you lose yield simeply by growing the covercrop instead of a saleable crop.

Then, the cover crops cannot create P or K or micro nutrients. They can add tilth and organic matter, but not the raw minerals. Some such as tillage radishes will send deep tap roots, and pull some of those minerals up from 2-4 feet deep, but even so you are mining these items out of your soil, the cover crop is not creating them.

So over 25years, you end up with a little less crop as you spend resources growing cover crops, and thenyou still end up short on P & K and micro nutrients. They got exported with the meat or milk or grains or hay.

Myself, I grow 5-10 acres of oats, I put a mix of 4-5 different things in the drill as a cover crop with the oats. I swath and combine the oats, I rake and bale the straw, then I let the cattle graze on the regrowth of oats, clover, alfalfa, and turnips. The cattle leave manure, and get some N from the clover and alfalfa in the mix. I even use this ground to spread manure from the barn.

It works great, but still and all, that is some of my lower testing soil, very low in P especially, really have had to add a lot of fertilizer to it.

The cattle and cover crops just don't balance it out.

So, in 25 years - you still have less nutrition in the soil.

It can't be any other way.

Sort of a laws of physics, really. These guys are doing some tricks that aren't really honest about the operation. They are robbing some land someplace to build up the land they are building up. Doesn't work any other way.

Now, if you hauled back poop from the city wastewater treatmrent plants, you could get closer to a full circle. But, that isn't allowed under organic rules, and with how wastewater is co-mingled with industrieal streams I get that. But, all that goo going down the city sewers needs to be replaced somehow, and cover crops just can't do it all by themselves. These guys are either robbing their soil, or importing N,P,K from other land to keep these plots built up.

Doesn't mean I don't like what that are doing, or that it would be wrong to follow and learn from them.

But there needs to be a dose of reality as well, that something is being added to keep their soils up.

--->Paul

--->Paul

Yep exactly what I mean. I agree.

I have nothing against organic but it is the same way. It is not self sustaining.

They will deplete the soil over time.

Gary

Might's well give it up Gary. You're arguing two things when it comes to this subject. Religion based in politics. I've had this argument on here too many times. I won't even try anymore. Might as well be talking about global warming.

I have no shortage of bragging neighbors who have either a smaller bushel basket, or smaller acres, to get the big yields. Over a decade ago, one claimed 210 bpa corn over 800+ acres. Interesting when looking at the bins on the farm....they simply couldn"t hold that much, and no, nothing gets sold at harvest time. I"m of the belief to be skeptical of outlandish yields with little or no inputs. I figure that any product (crop/livestock) leaving the farm, removes NPK from that farm, and the animals that support that farm can not replace nutrients that head down the driveway via the crop/livestock being produced there.

To the always thoughtful paul, and IaGary, and rrlund......AIRBORNE! just this old paratroopers salute to stuff that makes sense. what you take off the land, needs to be replaced. and cs/bs doesn"t cover it all! I"m thinking of getting some bumper stickers printed- for the vegans: MY food poops on YOUR food!.

Maybe there is some supreme being that just likes those guys more than he likes other farmers. Perhaps they are lying / perhaps not. I would like to try what they are doing on some acreage to find out for myself.

As to arguing religion, I feel like that is what I am trying too. Some of you are so religious about what you "know" that you are absolutely sure you have it all down and no place to learn or try anything new. You are zealots of the old school. Good luck with that.

As to not putting back for the soil. They are but, you refuse to see it. Suit yourselves.

Dad was basically too cheap to buy much fertilizer, and he had me to hoe weeds so he didn't need to waste money on herbicides. So, I've been down the 'almost' organic path.

It's a very different way of doing things, for sure, esp in a short growing season like MN. But it can work out well.

I still do lots of things like it, there are many good parts to it.

Incorporating livestock onto your farm and being a bit more diversified, as organics tend to be, is a good thing.

Lots of good to the system.

You mentioned salt in 'regular' fertilizer. Lot of organic fellas promote kelp, or fish emulsions from the sea - which has some salt residues in them, as well.

Feeding the soil, or feeding the crop - I think the difference is more blurry, you see it as a big difference. You are speaking of activating soil microbes and so forth - more earthworms and the like. Most of that has to do more with tillage, than herbicides or fertilizer.

Also, northern farming is different than southern farming - up here in the north our soil is typically all froze up and covered with snow for 6 months of the year. Southern soil continues to break down all year around, active all year around. Gotta treat it different when it is active 6 months vs 12 months of the year. Much of the soil health you talk about is actually the soil brwaking down - takes good soil to start with with high ogranic matter and you are set. But not everyone is blessed with that good soil.

But all in all, your ways are good. Nothing against them. Kinda like some of it.

Just bothers me that a certain portion of 'your side' won't come around and be honest about it - if you export crops, meat, or milk off the land, you need to bring the P & K back onto the land - it is no more sustainable than any other type of farming. That's really the only complaint. Urban folk are beig misled by that.

Farming is easy - throw seed in the ground, wait, and harvest after nature does it's thing.

Learning the details of how to better your small part in that, is a life's work.

I learn something new, try some new stuff every year. Farming is a constant evolution of learning. I look back at what I used to do - oh my. I look back at things I thought would work - oh my! Takes a lifetime of experience.

We're all in this farming game together. We all learn from each other. Better to celebrate the similarities, than to get worked up on the differences.

--->Paul

Nowhere in my post was I talking about organic. The video I linked to had to do with tillage vs no till and the microbes in the soil. The gentleman that Animal eluded to (Gabe Brown) has some very interesting things to say about the same things (soil health through no till and the use of cover crops). Gabe even mentions in one of his videos that according to his soil test the N value in his soil is 10 so he shouldn't be able to grow much if any corn at all but, he had gotten 159 bu/acre that year. As to whether they are adding P or K into the ground, I don't know or even what P and K they have according to his soil tests. Gabe is in ND by the way. Very much up North.

Ray (in the video I linked to) talks about having to relearn all he was taught in college regarding soil health and that it is the worms and microbes that hold the soil together, help it retain high moisture in dry times, prevent run off during high rains etc.

I am not going to argue for it or against what they are saying. I posted it to give food for thought to others and maybe just maybe there would be some bit of info there that would help someone else who was willing to try it. Some on here are so set in their ways they wouldn't think of trying something new because it would be effort on their part to learn something new.

I am glad you are trying different things, that is what we will all have to do because to keep doing things the way the old status-quot has said we should will only lead to a whole lot more farmers going out of business.

I've been watching this thread develop and thought I'd jump in here.

Dieselrider, if you're not familiar with a couple of these guys in this conversation, I'd suggest you take a look at a couple sites like

http://allaboutfarming.proboards.com/index.cgi

And

http://talk.newagtalk.com/category-view.asp

and a few others you'll find referenced there. Now granted these are the BTO boards, but I've always been welcomed and treated like a real human bean, in spite of my ignorance.What I think you'll find, is that excluding the organic side, a few of these guys have been writing the same book as your seminar speaker did, but they're doing it online, in real time.

Over the past 8-10 years, I've learned sooo much about cover crops, no till, and even tillage crops, that I've not been able to use as submitted, but have been able to modify it to fit our couple hundred acres of mostly stone.

To the midwest guys, having spent too many years driving truck, I've seen your operations and I'm awed. I suspect you folks may well have a problem understanding the kind of farming we do here in the Allegheny mountains of PA. A large number of folks still farm less than 100 acres, and actually intend to turn a profit, but on our scale, it's hard to justify the large investment in no till equipment. It's also a whole different breed of critter when you look at your grain elevators, and we still deal with small feed mills with a few bins, but continue to accept our ear corn, and custom grind feed for us by the bag.



No dog in the fight, just sayin.

Attended an auction yesterday, my coop auctioned off a feed mill/ elevator in a small town. My coop elevator has expanded a lot the past decade, into many towns.

This elevator was on a 1/2 block in town with a RR tack running though the middle, the rr is upgrading to 40mph and can't use the old elevator bins so close to the track.

So they aucioned off everything, conduit off the walls, everything. There was still a trap door & small scale for the ear corn. Don't remember any elevator taking ear corn im my lifetime. I still pick some for my own use, but I'm a rare bird.

Every region has different conditions, what works in one area could be a disaster in another area....

I'll likely be the last bastion of full tillage in the midwest. Heavy, wet, deep clay soils, lots of rainfall in spring, very cold winters with deep snow. Need to dry out & heat up the soil fast to get a corn crop in. I hope some day strip tillage comes around to work here, but even that doesn't work yet in my county. The wet clay....

--->Paul

This strange spring not withstanding, cover crops are just so hard to do up here in the north country. We typically can plant corn with frost still in the ground; and we are harvesting beans and corn after the first frost. Our summers are so short.

And small grains are no longer profitable, again I'm a rare bird that plants a little oats and that's only a small amount.

Even soybeans are fading around here, corn is the money maker, it's getting to be all corn all the time.

So there is no time to put cover crops on. I'veheard of people flying them on, but the arial applicators 'here' aren't into that from what I've heard; and even if, the corn is thick and full and tall and then it freezes, so the cover crop just won't do much.

Those of you south of here have some oppertunities. But then, your soil burns up more, so you need to do such things much more.

This farm of mine has been full tillage since the 1940's, really the drier parts of it since the 1850's. The poorer ground is 3.6% organic matter. The bottoms will push 8%. My microbes and worms catch heck from the spring flooding, the plow doesn't boher them as much as the waterlogged springs.

--->Paul

Just keep us abreast of how things are working for you and I will do the same. As for me I am not going to give all my money to the fertilizer companies or the oil barrons.

Our problem is that we're just too small and too old to change our world now. We're farming less than 150 tillable acres. I'm 59 and my brother is 71. For us to try to justify no till equipment at this stage of the game, and for our size operation, would be fiscal idiocy. We can still buy some older, small scale equipment for tilled ground so it's what we're kind of stuck with.

We're also boasting some of the worst ground in the state of Pennsylvania and have even rented a couple fields out over the years to neighbors who did no till and they were screaming about equipment abuse.

Here's a pic of a very honest random shot of our ground in our south fields, (where I live) and what we end up with as a seed bed.


I absolutely need to turn that ground each year to bring some decent material to the surface just to plant corn.

With growing mostly corn and hay, along with 5-7 acres of oats a year, it's very hard to maintain any kind of cover crop program. We could down size, and go to more of a fallow ground rotation, but with so many variants of invasive plants being so prevalent in the area, it's almost a losing battle just to do that.

Maybe we should just buy a couple new mowers and rent out hunting squares for deer season.

Man, is this thread getting long! Any old who, I, as many others here in Maryland, have been fortunate enuf to be getting a state funded cost-share for cover crops as a part of the Save the Bay initiative. The state gives us up to close to $100 per acre to plant and then destroy the cover come spring in an effort to decrease nutrient runoff into the Chesapeake. The past two years, the amount has be modified to allow harvest of crops like winter wheat rather than burning it off, and acreage has increased each year for the past 5 or 6 years.

Year before last I planted a mix of rye and wheat into a 6 acre piece because I ran out of enough wheat or rye seed to cover it in one crop. Last spring, it got away and started to head before I got the planter into it, so I just burned it with Gramoxone and 75# of N. Hay got behind, and it got no other nutrients other than manure from the previous year. It still turned out some of the best corn that I chopped, even though it was dry as all hail when it was planted, and recieved only .4" of rain while it was actively growing. It was one heck of a dry year last year, and most of the rest of our corn was in by early May- this piece wasn't planted until almost the first of June, and chopped in mid September.

When I started to plant the cover, I discovered that there was already a green grass emerging, and went ahead and overseeded it with rye and a no till drill. It's thick as all hail now, and I'm gonna try a cultimulcher on it with the springs up to roll it down for the cover and notill it again this year, with corn for the sixth year running. It will likely get some manure this fall or next year again. But I am interested in trying it just to see how it works. I also want to try some tillage radishes in it this fall to see what happens. I'll try to remember to get a few pics and let you know how it works.

By the way, most of my acreage has been in a corn on corn rotation for 10+ years in a no till envirionment, and, with the exception of last year, has been averaging close to 175 bu over the last five. Even as dry as it was last year, we hit 104 bu on combined corn, and a lot of this was because of no till. There are a lot of the heavy frames and units on the market that can be rebuilt or are in great shape and not expensive. It's hard to justify full tillage when no till costs are equal to or less than maximum tillage, and can be done with a lot less horsepower and a lot more speed. Most of my ground here is pretty stony- not like the shales of west Pa., but a lot of flint stone. And the no till coulters just work up a strip for the planter openers to follow in. The rest of the ground is undisturbed and left in cover debris. It does work!

Paul try this on a few acres this fall. After you combine, go right behind the combine with 2-3 bushels of rye either spun on or no till drilled, then mow the stalks with a rotary, even after first frost. It will start to grow until a good hard freeze, and be a nice cover to plant in come spring. Burn it off then. It acts as a shade for the young corn until it gets going, and then helps to control weed growth. You might just like it...