The 2018 North Jersey Resource Conservation and Development
winter conference focused on no-till planting and the need for cover crops.
Presenter Eric Rosenbaum of Rosetree Consulting LLC, asked
the questions he always asks farmers: what three things are they going to try
in order to have a more successful farm next season.
It could be something simple or complicated, but the
exercise helps farms think logically as they figure out where they are going to
have the most success.
“Maximum yield may not be the economically optimal yield,”
Rosenbaum said, noting reaching one’s economic goals is a slow process. That’s
especially true of the no-till planting movement which was first introduced in
1962, but took 30 years to become widespread.
Rosenbaum said about 85 percent of the farmers he works with
use no-till practices and they all faced challenges requiring trial and error
as well as education in fields such as seed genetics, herbicides and fungicides.
The transition to no-till requires what Rosenbaum called “a
logical, metered approach.”
No till is rewarding for many reasons, he said, citing some
corn statistics showing the best yields coming from no-till fields because they
have the best soil health.
Soil health is a big reason. That term was coined by the
North Dakota Natural Resources Conservation Service, Rosenbaum said, and it
caught on as an accurate distillation of the problems and needs of the soil.
Because no-till’s benefits are amplified by cover crops,
Rosenbaum talked about some of the farmer’s need to increase soil organic
matter, reduce the loss of surface-applied nutrients, improve soil
characteristics, agronomic resiliency and soil microbial interaction. Cover
crops help with all of these goals, Rosenbaum said, but farmers need “tinkering
time” to choose the best covers and the best planting time. They need to pay
attention to the details of nitrogen application and find the right tools. They
can also use models to predict the results of nitrogen application by various
methods.
None of this is simple, Rosenbaum emphasized, since farmers
need to predict the maturity dates of their cash crop before they decide on a
cover crop. They must make choices of herbicides and planting equipment. A
termination schedule needs to be set up for winter kill, which varies based on
the species of cover crop used. Covers like winter wheat can regrow after
harvest, so an herbicide application may be necessary.
“There aren’t many choices,” Rosenbaum said. A glyphosate
will probably be necessary and that means tricky conditions for spraying and
the necessity for testing water. Glyphosates may only be applied with a daytime
temperature of more than 50 degrees Fahrenheit and a night temperature of more
than 35 degrees.
Nozzles and pressure can guarantee full coverage, he said.
He cautioned that even annual rye grass can become a weed, so careful
application is essential.
