In Steve’s last article, he shared a few aspects of his fertility program as well as the true power of an “ah ha” moment—a chance meeting that can have a trickle-down impact for many different lives. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at Steve’s tillage program and his journey with CarbonWorks products. 

From the Ground Up

I started off on a very conventional route with my tillage—fall tillage and spring tillage. Two of the three farms I now farm were run very conventionally by a renter. When I came in, I soil tested and found that the nutrient levels were very low. During my first couple of years, I achieved decent yields but I didn’t make as much money in the end because of the amount of fertility that I applied. 

Because of this, part of my goal was to build up organic matter in my soil as a buffer against fertility swings. The land I farm isn’t necessarily real choice land. Some of it is very good. Some of it is sandy. Some of it is poorly drained. This is one of the reasons that I adopted grid sampling pretty quickly when I began farming. We started sampling on ten-acre grids every three years, and now we’re down to sampling about two-and-a-half-acre grids every other year. And then we started variable-rate application, which was fairly new yet when I came into the operation. 

Settling on a Seed Population

Several years ago, the guys I share equipment with went to twenty-two-inch rows. That enabled us to increase corn populations and decrease soybean populations to gain yield. When I first started farming, we planted everything on thirty-inch rows, both the corn and soybeans. We were planting about thirty thousand corn seeds per acre and one hundred and eighty to two hundred thousand soybean seeds per acre. 

At one point, we decided to go narrow on soybeans and began air seeding them on fifteen-inch rows. We were disappointed with the seed placement, metering, and the depth control with the air seeder. At that point we asked ourselves, “why don’t we just go to twenty-two-inch rows on everything?” That’s when we started increasing corn populations up to as high as forty thousand. Now, we’re back to about thirty-five-five on most hybrids. And we also started dropping the soybean populations to where I’m at now, which is around one hundred and twenty thousand seeds per acre. 

I have found the inverse of what someone might think to be true: the lower my soybean populations, the higher the yields go. When you have more inter-row spacing, you get a little more canopy establishment. Every plant is expected to contribute a little more. 

Steve’s Program Approach

I would be hesitant to drop my soybean seed rates without putting [CarbonWorks] RSTC17 down as a starter; I get very consistent stands, both population wise and emergence wise. This is part of what I call my “program approach.” Let’s say for a minute that I would try to introduce one of the CarbonWorks products on its own without figuring out how it fits together with everything else: it probably wouldn’t be successful. 

But using CarbonWorks has allowed us to modify our fertilizer application and tillage program. After reducing our tillage, we’re not burning up our organic matter quite as fast. We’re leaving more out there to feed the crop in-season. So, to loop back around to the tillage part of my operation, I’ve gone from strictly conventional, when I started, to minimal. I guess I kind of no-till, but I’m hesitant to use that term because, as some purists are going to say, “well, you use a vertical till machine.” 

This is another reason it works for me to live forty-five miles away from home; I can go over to my land, farm, and come home. I don’t have to bump into my neighbors at church or at the grocery store and answer questions like, “what the heck are you doing out there?” However, on the flip side, that part has become a little gratifying for me, as some neighbors are starting to ask why I do this or that. I never brag about my yields or tell someone that everyone should farm as I farm. 

For my operation, I’ve found a program that works and we keep fine-tuning it all the time. It does make other guys think a bit. Take horsepower, for example. That’s one big benefit to how I operate. I pull my thirty-two-foot vertical-till machine at seven to eight miles per hour with a three-hundred-and-twenty-horse front-wheel assist tractor. I don’t need a big four-wheel-drive tractor or a big Quadtrac. The guy I farm with does have some larger equipment because he does do some conventional tillage. 

The Power of Flexibility

The gentleman that I farm with has a large CRP management business. Because of this, I have access to no-till drills and some other implements. If it makes sense, I can use them when I need to. For example, this year we had extremely heavy rains in my area of Southern Minnesota. I had about fifty-three acres that drowned out. It didn’t dry off until July, when it was too late to seed a crop. In early August, we lightly roughed these bottom areas up with the vertical-till machine and planted a cover crop—radish, turnip, vetch, kale, and ryegrass. We timed the planting so that we'd have sufficient growth. I’ve done the same thing in the past and found out that this really, really helps open up the soil profile and improve the drainage. 

Back when I was in the seed business, I always used to tell guys not to leave any pothole black through the winter or you’re going to struggle with fallow syndrome the next year. If you don’t have something living on a parcel of land, there’s nothing in the ground to support the mycorrhizae. So, the next year when you plant a row crop there, the mycorrhizae has to reestablish itself before it can start breaking down some of the fertility that feeds the plants. You’ll actually see sometimes after a drown-out year, that you’ll be able to tell where the drowned out areas were by looking for stunted crops. It’s not that the areas were heavily compacted or that there isn’t enough fertility on them. The problem is that the soil biology wasn’t present and active. 

To me, by reducing tillage and feeding the microflora in the soil to help them flourish, I’m improving my crop yields. When your plant material decomposes slower, it actually feeds your crop longer. A lot of no-tillers will say that using a moldboard plow is like throwing gasoline on a fire. You’re making too much fuel available to the microbes too quickly. They eat it up and then it’s gone. 

Modeled After Nature

This all makes sense when you think back to what our land in Southern Minnesota was like years ago when it was just buffalo and prairie grass. If we didn’t have abundant microbes or mycorrhizae in the soil, this area would have been a desert. What fed all the new grass each year was the previous year’s decomposing grass and the very lively underground life of insects and microbes. And so, if you think of the soil cycle that way, it's logical that we should be trying to slow down some of our decomposition instead of trying to accelerate it.

At least that’s my train of thought. I always stress that I don’t want to declare myself an expert. I just asked the question, “how can we match our practices up with nature and the way God has designed it?” I just want to help ask these questions. And, of course, be curious and have an open mind about whether a certain strategy, approach, or program may work for my operation.