Pacific Northwest Direct Seed Association 2020 Cropping Systems Conference
January 6-8
Here are the notes I took. It was a valuable conference for me. I learned that many of the ideas I've been hearing about have been successfully tried in my bioregion.
1st
session. Innovative farmers told of their new projects.
Andy Juris has
upgraded his equipment and acres over the years until he’s running
a 620hp tractor and an industry best CrossSlot drill. 10K acres, much
is custom hire for others. Harvests with a stripper header to leave
maximum crop residue standing and less work for the combine to do
threshing. Grew 120 bu wheat in an 11 inch rainfall year! Has been
switching fields from grain production to annual hay production.
Mainly forage barley or forage triticale mixed with peas. Hay yields
have been good, one cutting a year, 1.5 ton/a Barley, 2.5 ton/a Trit,
1.8 ton/a dryland alfalfa.
Has ran into rattail fescue
infestation and glysophate resistant cheat grass. Had to start
tilling some badly infested fields, switched herbicide recipes, took
grass crops out of rotation there, and worked at better weed control
timing. Resistant cheat is a disaster that he and his neighbors are
working to get under control. It was caused by a previous farmer who
sprayed low rates of roundup and assumed the weeds wouldn't get used
to it.
Rob Dewald
9-12 inch rainfall
zones. Has tried all the planter types, has both. Using stripper
headers now. Is doing some grass seed now. Working at having living
roots in ground at all times. Sunflowers do improve the soil for next
crop.
Planted a 10 species cover crop mix, it really does
create its own moisture! Roots put carbon in the soil, and now
getting livestock to join the party. Didn’t use too much moisture
to hinder next years crop.
Now doing the cover
crop mix 25 lbs an acre, mixed with a cash crop, tried fields with CC
+ 60lbs wheat, CC + 90 lbs trit, CC+5 lbs canola. Fert at spring
planting was humics and molasses. Grazed 65 days, could have been
longer. Excellent gains, but could have been better as calves took a
while to calm down and learn to eat the cover crop. Fertilized with
solution32 in fall. The cover crops winter killed, the cash crops
that had been hiding out in the mix took off in the spring, and had a
decent grain crop.
Chris Eckhart
12-16in rainfall.
Also switching to hay production, doesn’t want to flood the local
market. With careful residue management, was able to use a tillage
style drill to do no-till at first. As a beginner, Chris discovered
the problem of ruts and ridges from previous year are there to
contend with. Chaff out the back of the combine wasn’t spread
evenly, leaving a chaff strip that the next crop didn’t like at
all. Really likes a well adjusted double disk drill. Main reason for
buying a proper no-till drill was the old one wouldn’t adjust to a
low enough rate for small canola seeds. Ended up getting a used,
mechanical feed corn planter from the mid-west for that. Row cleaners
are important for this style of machine. Since canola wants to be
planted shallow and moist, and you don’t always have the right
conditions, Chris tried putting down high rates of water with the
seed instead of fertilizer. It sort of worked, but takes a LOT of
water.
Fertilizer plan is all dry granules in spring.
Mycorhyzal fungi inoculents for wheat are producing good results.
Ordered wheat seed without the usual fungicide coating, and used
inoculent power instead. It worked great! No problems found. Good
fungus displaces bad.
Eric Orem
5-12in rainfall.
Flexicoil hoe drill with stealth openers.
He cut 800 lb/a
sunflowers with a wheat header! Yes they do get caught on the reel
and flip out. Had his kid walking along, tossing them back in. Bought
a corn header for next sunflower crop, that worked good. Tried
dryland corn, it didn’t work, but will try again. Also moving grain
acres to hay, trit/pea did 2.3 ton/a. Next year planning on expanding
crops to sunflowers, milo, sorgam, beans, corn, peas, and cover
crops.
Pat Purdy
All irrigated,
heavily depleted gravel soils in Idaho. Crops since 1883. Season is
such they can only grow annual spring crops. Growing hay, barley,
mustard, cows, hunting and fishing land. Not using pesticides because
bugs for fish are more valuable. Need to regenerate the soil with
natural carbon. Tried other drills, liked disk drill best. Even with
transport, its cheaper to find used drills in the midwest.
Roundup
Ready alfalfa was too hard to kill. Cheap alf in for 3 years is
better. Seeds 25lb/a alf with 50lb/a barley to boost first year
production.
Giving up tillage
means you can’t wipe slate clean. So plan each operation for its
long term effects, don’t make ruts! Bought a powercast tailboard
for better combine chaff spreading. Working on goal of no synthetic
fertilizer.
2nd
Session
Mike Nestor and Doug
Poole 6-9in rainfall.
Doug has bought into
all the regenerative agriculture concepts, but how to apply? The soil
is alive, work with nature, soil typically has 500-1000 years of
minerals available. Biology first. Natural vs synthetic chemistry.
Even poor soil has greater potential!
Tried 30 day covers, but
when terminated, moisture would leave. Have to find economically
viable solution when leasing land at 25/75 crop share. (Farmer gets
75%)
Tried mixed cover crop and cash crop. Triticale, turnip,
clover, pea, sunflower. Humic and molasses instead of fert. It grew
well, but it was a summer with no rain. Was looking bad in late
summer. The weed that wasn’t suppressed by mix was marestail. Will
have to adjust mix next time. Soil was hard. Roots in plates and
clumps of soil, but they were live. A quarter inch of rain in October
brought it back, soil was soft, crop was growing and
photosynthesizing despite the cold. Decided to fertilize, 20% less
than usual since other farmers who have gone down this path have said
it takes a while for soil to get used to all natural fert instead of
synthetic. As the snow melted, it didn’t run like usual. There was
less frost, soil had air bubbles, and the mud left this field first.
The roots looked great. In the spring, sprayed humics, molasses, with
24D for mustard. Way less weeds than usual. Other field with this mix
had a goat grass problem, but not enough of it grew to be worth
spraying. As the triticale crop matured, it grew great, the soil was
darker than ever, there was still moisture, soil testing showed no
deficiency. But the leaves did. The grain was slow to dry. Yield
wasn’t as great as it could be, but of the four fields the results
were:
May planted mix 1300 lb/a net profit -28
June planted
mix 2100 lb/a net profit 19
winter trit mono
3000 lb/a net profit 46
spring trit mono 1100 lb/a net profit
-2.5
(Long term average
grain yields in this area are 2040 lb/a)
The mixes had
additional advantages of way less weed spray, less equipment use,
better activity timing, and they were exciting and beautiful. Didn’t
get these grazed, but that would add an additional boost. The mix
fields were full of birds, bugs, deer, and ranchers were asking to
graze it, but none were able to pull off the logistics this time.
Version 2 of this trial this year had more cover crop species,
which all germinated. There was a 3 inch downpour that caused some
damage, not as much damage as the conventional fields suffered. And
more of the water was caught and held.
We learned that the
concept works, covers do suppress weeds, the roots look 2-3x better
than conventional with the same fert and seed variety. It definitely
works for triticale, a try as this mix with canola has room for
improvement. And we need to figure out how to graze it.
3rd
session
Microbes give you
25% yield increase
Tom Poole 6in
rainfall.
His big thing is applying liquid extracts of
composted manure.
Principles: 1 break
down residue. You can bail and till it, but its better to get that
carbon back in the soil.
2 moisture, 3
fertilizer, 4 water infiltration.
Adding Nitrogen burns up soil
carbon. Get your Carbon : Nitrogen ratio right with managing tillage,
environment, crops, fert and rotation.
Use these same factors
to manage your bacteria/fungal ratio.
Tillage benefits disease.
The future is microbes instead of trucked in N. No one sells carbon,
you have to do it yourself.
Applying compost
extracts has brought the soil biology from and assay of 50lbs N to
100 lbs N.
Counting protozoa/amoeba that are easier to see can
give you an idea of your bacterial population. The amount of soil
disturbance a no-till planter causes is acceptable, it releases water
from fungal hyphe in the root zone for seed germination. But the
microbes and soil life will be doing the tilling and converting crop
residue. Tom started with organic matter of 0.6 to 0.9%, now up to
2%! Root sugar is the best carbon injection. Fertilizer program is
now 21 Lb/a N instead of 50, split between planting and in season.
Two applications of compost extract, after harvest, and in October.
It is made by buying one truckload of manure compost, putting it into
400 mesh bags, soaked in IBC totes over night. It has to soak so the
fibers swell and stay in the bags, otherwise they clog the sprayer
nozzles. 10 bags per tote. Can use them twice, then reload. Applying
12-13 gallons per acre. Isn’t it better to use the compost
directly? That would cost too much, and require different equipment
to apply. Only uses one $2000 truckload a year. The spot where the
compost got dumped grew as well as the extract acres.
Once you
have good revived soil, you can use your old conventional hoe drill
to plant. There wasn’t these clay knobs 50 years ago, they have
eroded. They need carbon, rebuild the soil.
With this program
of no-till and compost extract, yields have gone from 50 bu/a to 67
in one area, 27 to 38 in another. Yet a good year now is about the
same as the top yields 100 years ago, when farming had just started
here.
How does the extract work? Don’t know, just does
somehow. Too much Phos in it being from cattle? Tests say it isn’t
a concern. Also it has 1-2 lb of N.
4th Session
Cat
Solois from McGregor company.
Sports talk, trying to get crowd
engaged with talk of couches and teams.
Think outside the
box, have a young mindset. Yield breakers, offense and defense
planning. What scoring opportunities do you have? Be ready, not
reacting late.
What is yield? Seed weight, grains per head,
heads per acre.
What are limiting factors? Water, growing
degree days, N? Not any one thing, it changes throughout the
lifecycle of crop. Plant needs what it needs when it needs it.
Different mineral use at different stages. Research from high yield
contests show helping crop early is easier, later made the most
impact. Phos most needed early, get it in the furrow for sprouts.
30-40% of inorganic fertilizer gets tied up in soil, broke out
later by biology. Early wheat tillers are productive, later ones just
use resources and don’t make much grain.
Later N application
is better, during stem elongation in spring. Since its often put down
during seeding, inhibitors that slow N release have been shown to
help a lot, better than split application in cool PNW conditions.
Mid season need for boron & zinc, can boost yield 10 bu.
85%
of photosynthesis happen in head, top two leaves of wheat plant.
Track your heading date, grain fill date, to really know which
varieties perform the best. Heat stress is anything over 85 degrees!
A bunch of plot trials show strobie fungicide increase plant
growth, some sort of hormonal trigger. Lowers ethylene which causes
premature reproduction. Improves N use efficiency. Fungicide timing
is critical, can see 5bu difference. These fungicide trials were all
in conditions where there wasn’t any of the wheat fungal diseases
present.
5th
session
Dale Strictland, Green cover seed.
Wants to pass
land to the next generation that will be prosperous.
All around
the country, the cost of farming adjusts to water availability.
Drought is just less rain than you were expecting. All crops need the
same stuff.
Stories of cover crops. They increase water
infiltration, reduce evaporation, improve capacity, boost root depth
and root efficiency.
In this soybean field, the previous crop
of wheat had all the straw baled off. With a hot, low rainfall
summer, the beans all died, except where the baler broke down and
left a big patch of straw covering the soil.
Rysotron root
imaging shows crops using the root holes made by previous crops.
Worms improve infiltration, and lots of other aspects. Feed them with
legume crops. Slow evaporation a lot with standing residue and tree
wind break field boarders. They work and don’t take up that much of
the field. In Kansas, 5inches of moisture can be saved per year with
some kind of mulch covering the ground. Most stands of cover crops
can be killed with a roller crimper instead of herbicide. Topsoil is
built the best by mixes of perennials. Overlapping roots types share
exudates. Cows turn top growth into perfect microbe soil amendment.
Hardpan layers are hard for roots to get through because they need
soil pore space for oxygen. Less than 10% space and roots won’t
have enough oxygen to grow.
8th
session
Dale Strictland,
Green cover seed.
In an Australian trial, no cover went 27bu,
early terminated millet did 40 and late terminated 44. But with cover
crops you have to measure the result of the whole rotation, not just
one crop. Long term soil building benefits. Before synthetic
fertilizer, farmers would often broadcast clover into winter wheat in
the spring. It still works.
Picking the right
cover crops for your situation. Every plant has its unique
characteristics. Teff grass produces a lot of biomass and winter
kills. Photoperiod sensitive sorgam sudan grass can be timed so it
stays vegetative and frost kills before it tries to produce seed,
which takes a lot of water to do. Sunhemp is tropical, produces lots
of biomass above and below ground, water efficient but only one
variety is palatable to cows. Gaur is the most drought tolerant
legume. Only produces seed in a SW Texas environment.
Fall plant options
can start with tillage radish, oats. Hairy vetch, needs terminated in
spring, popular for making enough N for organic crops. A field of
bellonsa clover in Indiana was measured at providing 275 lbs of N.
In some mixes, the right grasses will use up the available
nitrogen, starving weeds and giving good conditions for a subsequent
crop of legumes.
You can use corn stalk chopper rollers as a
roller crimper to terminate covers, though you will need to add
weight, and some are too sharp. Cutting isn’t as effective as
crimping. In addition to a roller crimper, there is a non-inversion
sweep called a noble blade, slices through root zone without much
surface disturbance.
Calculate the moisture bare soil would
loose in comparison to what a cover crop will use.
A precision corn
strategy is to interseed with perennial clover, then a tool that is a
row of string trimmers can go between the rows to keep clover
suppressed. Graze after corn harvest. Replant by spraying a narrow
band of herbicide in front of each corn planter.
Wide crop spacings
are finding more uses with compatible crops between.
The homestead act
required 10 years of successful grain crops to claim the land. 80%
failed. The loophole was using fallow years between crops, this
worked. But fallow doesn’t store as much moisture for the next year
as you’d think. Bare soil fallow held 10-17% of the rainfall, chem
fallow with plenty of residue held 25-30% of rainfall. A well
designed cover crop can match, beat or at least be more useful. So
find out if you can afford to fallow. Use the moisture, don’t store
and loose it. Consider grazing, baling, some farmers have found
perennial pasture more valuable than grain crops.
6th
session
Nutrition of wheat
Dr David Killilea, private research scientist & nutritionist.
Does part time nutritionist work at a children's hospital,
recently got a grant to look at identity preserved wheat varieties.
Not taking any funding from industry or pharma. Will be speaking
about all public domain data.
Everyone is micro nutrient
deficient – in statistical population studies.
The biggest
deficiencies are in potassium, Vit E, E K, and magnesium. To a lesser
extent Calcium, A, C, and zinc.
There’s no legal definition
for “whole grain”. Regulations use industry definition, which has
wiggle room.
There are many well designed grain nutrition
studies. According to which, eating whole grains are good for
preventing many diseases and and some GI cancers. Good for all the
common ailments, heart, diabetes, blood pressure, stroke, asthma.
Most benefits are gone, and some health problems worsened in studies
tracking intake of white and refined flour. Lists of studies can be
found on informationisbeautiful.net.
Whole grains contain a lot
of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and flavinoids. A half cup of
whole grains has half the RDA of fiber.
There’s a lot of new
research being done on lignans, which are in wheat, flax, and sesame.
Gut bacteria processes some nutrients into other forms the body can
use.
White flour has carbs and protein, enriched flour only
adds back in a handful of the vitamins and minerals that scientists
knew of a 100 years ago. A chart of the nutrients in whole vs
enriched flour looks pathetic.
There are toxins in wheat.
Gluten which can irritate the digestive tract, phytates that can bind
nutrients unhelpfully, lectins that are wheat antibodies that stick
to bacteria, though lectins can have good properties. Immune system
activators. And can there can be agriculture toxins. In whole wheat
the problematic elements are balanced by the good stuff. The popular
opponents of wheat base their concerns on some facts but exaggerate
and take their conclusions beyond what science can verify. Some
people just can’t digest wheat.
Soaking, sprouting and
fermenting have only been found to improve nutrient profile and
digestibility.
The OSU Linus Pauling Institute has wheat
articles you can read, and there is more research being done in the
field of testing the nutrient density of particular grain varieties
and growing methods.
Only 8% of population is getting enough
whole grains, so we can all promote better, unprocessed products.
7th session
Farmed Smart
certification program and NORI carbon credits market Jill
Clapperton
Within industry meetings and government policy
meetings, wheat industry people are working to build recognition for
identity preserved and regenerative practices and the carbon capture
they facilitate. General Mills isn’t interested, organic
certification is enough for them. EPA and state agencies are
interested. Work is being done to make Farmed Smart a certification
process that measures sustainability, carbon capture, energy
efficiency, fish and wildlife protection. Working to build new
marketing opportunities with this. Trying to convince banks that
anyone with this new cert is a lower risk for loans. Looking to get
it into the government grant / loan system. Working to measure effect
of integrated livestock, companion and intercrops. Moving toward
rewarding farmers who stop using a fallow system. Might use
microbiometer test from Prolific Earth Sciences in New York.
Some
of the players involved: Indigo Ag, Tech Stars, South Pole, 3Degrees,
Native Energy, Climate Underground, Nature Conservancy, and NORI.
Check out nori.com/resources
Nori is a private
startup, backed by investors. They are researching carbon credit
marketing and working to build a CC trading platform. Connect the
buyers with the farmers, ranchers, foresters. Other CC ventures had
the middle man getting 40-60%. Nori shooting for 10-15%. Something
like $14 per ton for the farmer and $16 per ton for the buyer.
No
where in the developed world do market prices cover farm expenses.
Everyone is getting some kind of subsidies. Carbon credits would be a
better way. Currently, the big buyers of CC are power/electric
companies and oil companies.
Part of any venture
like this is verification. You need to work with partners you can
trust with your data. Farm data is extremely valuable on the
secondary data markets. Make sure you get paid for your data! Read
all contracts carefully. Some of the Nori team are long time data
tech industry workers and are committed to not selling your data.
Contract length? 10 years. At most can buy credits backwards in
history 5 years. You would agree to do your best effort to maintain a
dynamic baseline. No double selling (to other CC vendors), and submit
annual reports. What if some disaster results in carbon getting
unsequestered? (fire, flood, drought) There’s a buffer in the
credits sold, some are held unsold for such an event as insurance.
The farmer will never be charged. Buyers of damaged credits will have
to write off or buy more. Nori will have a complicated token system
that makes everything work. Who buys CC without legislation making
offsets mandatory? So far its rich people, company executives, big
ag, Granular, power companies and fossil fuel companies. The biggest
worry on their side is that there won’t be enough CC available to
buy. Its easier to buy CC than to build smokestack scrubbers, even
though there are subsidies for scrubbers. How are farmers tested?
Farm visit, the practices you are using. Cornet farm model. New model
in the works. For extra credits, you can agree to satellite data
analysis, and taking soil samples. The Farmed Smart program will do
the visits and map checkup points for future sampling. Working to
train more certified conservation planners, and offer them B&O
insurance.
9th
session
Derek Axten
Learned
from Dakota Lakes Research farm, then met Gabe Brown standing in line
at a hotdog stand. Has been using a microscope to identity fungus and
microbes in soil samples. Started chasing this metric, using compost
from local cows. Turns out there are lots of good nematodes and only
a few bad ones. Has improved his soil to where it will infiltrate one
inch of rain in 29 seconds, and the second inch in 10 minutes. In the
neighbors field its one inch in 10 minutes. Went with wider row
spacing for less soil disturbance. Got a stripper header, works fine
unless weather flattens crops. Started using controlled traffic, got
all his equipment the same size. Modified this combine so the heavy
chaff is dropped into the permanent wheel track. Has gone to all
intercrops. Peas & mustard, Flax and chickpeas/lentils. Stacking
crops is more efficient land use, 35% more money. Seeding rates of
50-50. Legume and a broadleaf. So canola pea, lentil vetch, flax
bean. No need for fungicide when intercropping. Haven’t gotten
watermold like the neighbors. And somehow the crops mature together,
haven’t had a problem with harvesting. Even some neighbors are
including some flax in the lentils to improve standability. All
intercrops are in alternating rows! 20 inch spacing, there wasn’t a
yield hit. Only time Derek had to use fungicide was when mixing the
seed and planting them mixed. Mixed seed rows have the most symbiosis
going on, help each other grow, but alternating rows has been amazing
at avoiding diseases. For beginners, clover is the easiest to include
in wheat. Better planter openers have made a big improvement. With
live downforce automatic adjusters the applied map shows compaction
and soil types. Planter can now plant into live crop, early July.
Haven’t had problem harvesting two crops together. Upgrading from a
complex mobile seed cleaning plant to a full scale industrial seed
cleaning facility. Not just for separating the crops, certified clean
seed sells for more. Screening refuse goes into compost. Got into
thermal manure composting with windrow equipment. Makes liquid
extract of compost with an aerobic bubbler system. Inoculates the
extract with peat moss, its cheap, $1 per acre. Use peristaltic pumps
to avoid pump clogging issues. Starting to get into sap testing.
10th
session
Joel Williams
integratedsoils.com
Only microbes get
nitrogen from the air.
Foliar nutrient
applications skip the soil, are more efficient, fast but limited in
how much can be delivered at once. Foliar applied urea can be applied
up to 7% solution, 2-5% is more typical. At anthesis is is best
timing for wheat.
Carbon compounds are carrier for other
nutrients. By itself, a nutrient may tie up with the wrong stuff in
the soil. Microbes want carbon, and symbiotically break out the
nutrients in forms the plants can use. Carbon amendments are
molasses, aminos, fish, kelp, teas, humates.
Plants use natural
forms of N easier than synthetic forms. Using legumes for N is all
about roots in the round. Top growth doesn’t contribute much. Could
breed for greater root growth. It has been found that other bacteria
contribute N to plants, not just the legumes. There’s a Mexican
maize variety that has slimy air roots that work with bacteria that
give it 30-80% of the N it needs. Synthetic N suppresses nitrogen
fixing bacteria. In the right situation with lots of fungi, and root
overlap, legumes can contribute N to other plants. Alfalfa isn’t
good at this with its deep taproot, doesn’t have many lateral roots
that will overlap with other plants. More N is fixed later in plants
growth, and defoliation increases it. In the process of using N, a
plant converts it into other forms. Other minerals are necessary in
this process, which differ depending on the form of N coming in.
Ammonium needs magnesium and manganese as catalyst. Nitrate need
those, plus sulfur and molybdenum. Urea needs nickel. N fixation in
bacteria also need catalysts, so your bacteria may need nutritional
supplements! Foliar applied N hinders root N fixation the least.
