Gage County
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Beatrice NE 68310
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News Column

Paul C Hay, Extension Educator

No-till Dakota Style - Part II

It was neat to see and hear "my boss" at the Dakota Fest farm show in Mitchell. Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman spoke to a packed tent just before our 1:30 p.m. departure. She is an excellent speaker and gave a nice overview of the administration's concerns and the approaches desired to assist producers and small town rural America. There was no new information, which we haven't seen in press. I guess I was impressed with the concept of using policy frameworks and objectives or "plans of action" to evaluate effects of farm program changes and focus areas for policy direction. These are my words to explain her concepts of planning and direction for the USDA.

The No-till stops in West Central South Dakota near Onida, and Pierre showed us an entirely new scale of cropping. When they talk about average farmers having 3000 to 5000 acres and moderate farmers being 8000 to 10,000 acres, it adjusts one's thinking. One operator said the aerial applicators give discounts for mile long fields. One block of fields we were in was 2 miles by 5 miles with only farm access lanes separating fields.

Common crop rotations for the no-till operators is spring wheat, winter wheat, corn, sunflowers or sometimes soybeans. If the spring is very wet and cold some corn acres get shifted to proso millet. One farmer had a sixty foot air seeder with hoe drill openers, a sixty foot 20" row corn planter, and 120 foot sprayer which followed tram line gaps, and a huge tractor. Despite a very dry summer the no-till corn fields were going to yield in the 80-100 bushel range. We passed several of his neighbors conventional fields which were likely going to yield in the 40-50 bushel range. One black quarter of summer fallow was being farmed according to the demands of the 20-year retired owner. The no-till neighbor was not even concerned. He said he was inheriting more of the farm with each windstorm.

Dwayne Becks, Manager of the South Dakota State University, Dakota Lakes Research Farm in Pierre will make you happy, or mad or both, but most of all he will make you think. Experiments with dryland rotations of spring wheat, winter wheat, corn, sunflowers, field peas, chick peas, flax, soybeans, proso millet, forage millets, and hairy vetch are intense and extremely interesting. Using his thinking our prime rotations here should be corn, soybeans, winter wheat, corn, soybeans and milo. We should also look to using opportunities for cover and forage crops to fit in the rotations. His irrigated corn, soybean, wheat, forage rotations were impressive. When you plant soybeans which will yield in the 65-70 bushels per acre and look at 210 bushel per acre corn residue which has been half composted by earthworms it is interesting. There were an average of 4-5 earthworms casts per square foot. Enough to give most homeowners a serious case of the shakes if they were mowing the area.

Dwayne also had several innovations to his planter - some of which will be offered as options by equipment manufacturers. This included using a second parallel link for the closing wheel and opening clean out options for the depth gauge wheel. Profitable farming in South Dakota is not any easier than it is here, but getting new ideas and sharing is worthwhile.

View other Gage County News Columns & News Letters: http://gage.unl.edu/news/news.htm

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