Nebraska Soil Health School: Residue, Soil Biology, and Systems Approach

PREEC staff Author

09/05/2023 Added

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The University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) held a Nebraska Soil Health School in August with Paul Jasa, UNL extension engineer, discussing soil health.

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[00:00:00.380]On the program itself, I think it says
[00:00:02.070]no-till systems approach or something like that.
[00:00:05.370]I don't put the word no-till on my title slide.
[00:00:08.190]No-till is just a tool.
[00:00:10.080]For me, the important things when it comes to soil health,
[00:00:12.450]when it comes to conservation,
[00:00:13.560]when it comes to what's going on in the field,
[00:00:15.780]it's the residue.
[00:00:17.730]And as an engineer, I was trained as an engineer,
[00:00:20.160]never had a soils class.
[00:00:21.660]Engineers don't have to take it for some reason.
[00:00:24.360]But as I learned more about crop production,
[00:00:27.180]I says I should have took a crops class.
[00:00:29.163]I should have took a soils class.
[00:00:30.675]I should have took a biology, soil biology class.
[00:00:33.192]And I've been evolving slowly as I'm learning,
[00:00:36.390]and I'm a slow learner.
[00:00:38.130]I got a set of plots that
[00:00:39.390]I'll show later that are in year 43.
[00:00:43.650]And I was doing no-till for three years even before that.
[00:00:46.650]So again, there's some things I've learned over the years,
[00:00:49.737]but I'm gonna stress the systems approach,
[00:00:51.567]how each step affects the next.
[00:00:54.150]Too often we get locked into a single thing.
[00:00:56.400]It's harvest time.
[00:00:57.240]This combine has to run to get the grain out of the field.
[00:00:59.017]You know, we also have to spread
[00:01:00.720]the residue to make no-till easier.
[00:01:02.160]We have to think about the systems approach.
[00:01:06.240]So again, I'm gonna give a lot of examples
[00:01:07.800]that I've learned over the years.
[00:01:08.940]Some of the things that I think will help make the systems
[00:01:13.020]approach work for you and your clients.
[00:01:17.190]Okay, when I first started with the extension,
[00:01:19.795]we talked about conservation tillage.
[00:01:22.320]Let's park the moldboard plow.
[00:01:23.670]Let's leave some residue out there.
[00:01:25.620]We're gonna conserve soil.
[00:01:26.820]We're gonna reduce erosion.
[00:01:28.800]To be truthful, conservation agriculture is what
[00:01:32.760]the rest of the world calls no-till.
[00:01:36.030]Conservation tillage.
[00:01:37.080]There is no such thing in my opinion.
[00:01:39.030]You're not doing conservation if you're doing tillage.
[00:01:42.000]Conservation agriculture is a little bit different.
[00:01:44.400]But again, tillage point blank destroys crop residue,
[00:01:47.100]destroys soil life, destroys soil structure.
[00:01:49.484]Now if you got a bad soil structure, compaction,
[00:01:53.580]for instance, doing tillage to destroy soil structure,
[00:01:57.090]destroy the bad and make good, that's all right.
[00:02:00.300]But what if you have good already?
[00:02:02.970]Again, we have to start thinking about this approach.
[00:02:06.510]And again, we start thinking about
[00:02:07.800]what we're doing out there.
[00:02:09.120]A lot of people look at the soil itself.
[00:02:11.010]A lot of people draw this as a pie chart.
[00:02:12.750]I draw it as a bar graph.
[00:02:14.580]The bottom half is the solids, the soil solids.
[00:02:17.880]That's the sand, silt, clay.
[00:02:19.260]That's the nutrients.
[00:02:20.093]That's organic matter.
[00:02:20.926]Depends where you're at.
[00:02:21.759]I put 5% on this.
[00:02:22.710]It might be 2%, it might be 8%, whatever.
[00:02:26.790]The top half is the pore space,
[00:02:28.890]the space between those particles.
[00:02:31.200]And some people say the ideal soil
[00:02:32.360]is half air and half water.
[00:02:34.770]Well after heavy rain it might be 80% water.
[00:02:39.050]In a drought it might be 80% air.
[00:02:41.611]But the key is that other half of the pore space
[00:02:44.730]is sort of like a lung breathing in and out.
[00:02:46.500]You have to have the soil structure to allow that to happen.
[00:02:49.830]So again, we start thinking about soil itself.
[00:02:54.480]I'm an engineer by training.
[00:02:56.430]We engineers are proud to say,
[00:02:59.940]we're here to help you do the wrong thing better.
[00:03:03.360]Unfortunately, we've got a lot of people,
[00:03:05.010]a lot of specialties, a lot of things,
[00:03:07.050]helping people do the wrong thing better.
[00:03:09.210]Driving on or tilling the wet soil is
[00:03:11.010]the worst thing you do for soil structure, soil biology.
[00:03:14.700]That's right, engineers will give you more horsepower,
[00:03:16.590]better tire design, duals.
[00:03:18.780]We can get out there.
[00:03:20.190]We can do that tillage, right?
[00:03:22.447]You know, when it comes to soil life,
[00:03:23.820]soil biology, that's one of the worst things you can do.
[00:03:26.610]Again, we gotta think about not what are we doing.
[00:03:29.670]How's it gonna affect all the next steps?
[00:03:32.700]I pick on some of my cohorts at extension.
[00:03:34.620]Continuous corn or crop rotation solves a lot of problems.
[00:03:38.850]So again, we gotta think about not
[00:03:40.650]doing the wrong thing better.
[00:03:42.274]Let's do the right thing.
[00:03:45.030]Compaction, those lubricated soil particles,
[00:03:47.280]when they're wet, they slide and we lose the pore space.
[00:03:50.892]The pore space that's lost is shows up real nicely here.
[00:03:53.323]Here's the rut.
[00:03:55.830]Pore space is gone now.
[00:03:56.970]The solids are non-compressible.
[00:03:59.070]Now on the foreground of the screen is compaction as well.
[00:04:02.130]You just don't know it because we fluffed
[00:04:04.320]the entire surface with tillage.
[00:04:06.060]But we have broken down that solar structure.
[00:04:08.700]If we stop at this point, we're probably okay.
[00:04:10.470]But if we drive on it again or till it again,
[00:04:12.600]then we really start messing things up.
[00:04:15.780]So I like drawing this as a bar graph.
[00:04:18.480]Remember the solids are non-compressible.
[00:04:21.420]That bar is smaller on the pore space.
[00:04:23.790]That's the rut you saw in the field.
[00:04:26.010]That's the pore space reappeared is the rut.
[00:04:28.590]Now in full width tillage, you don't know where that's at.
[00:04:31.440]But what happens?
[00:04:32.310]Look at the pore space.
[00:04:34.140]I got less water storage.
[00:04:35.340]I got less air.
[00:04:36.720]A compacted soil or a tilled soil gets wet faster
[00:04:39.510]when it rains and dries out faster when it quits raining.
[00:04:43.260]We don't have that reserve there as we lose our pore space.
[00:04:46.680]So again, we gotta think about what we've been
[00:04:48.390]doing to the soil structure out there.
[00:04:51.630]So on a tour down at K State, Manhattan Bottoms Farms,
[00:04:54.960]riding the tour tram.
[00:04:56.784]And they're talking about their no-till plots.
[00:04:59.061]And I asked them, why are your no-till plots
[00:05:00.510]out here taller than the till plots?
[00:05:05.008]He didn't really know.
[00:05:07.260]It's because the tillage has beat the pore space down.
[00:05:11.220]Remember my height of the different bars?
[00:05:13.080]There it is with tillage with reference.
[00:05:15.810]Now your reference might be your
[00:05:17.070]field compared to the fence row.
[00:05:19.500]But again, tillage has beat down some of that pore space.
[00:05:22.470]Now I said the wet soil particles are lubricated.
[00:05:25.530]They slide.
[00:05:26.430]If your soil's dry, you're still not doing yourself a favor
[00:05:29.010]when it comes to soil structure and soil biology.
[00:05:31.980]That tillage then still breaks that up.
[00:05:34.830]And again, if it's a bad one, break it up.
[00:05:36.440]If it's a good one, don't destroy it.
[00:05:39.114]We've done field days for years where we dig soil pits.
[00:05:42.450]This is one of the worst pits I've ever been in.
[00:05:45.660]This is the wheat fallow producer out
[00:05:47.550]in Western Nebraska who is an organic producer.
[00:05:50.880]Now those who are not familiar with wheat fallow,
[00:05:52.440]you harvest your wheat in July and you let it sit idle
[00:05:56.640]for an entire year and you plant
[00:05:58.650]the next September 14 months later.
[00:06:01.500]And the idea was at the time I was gonna store
[00:06:04.620]two years of precips so I could raise a crop.
[00:06:07.710]I got news for you.
[00:06:08.543]There's no soil I found in Nebraska
[00:06:10.080]that stored two years worth the precip.
[00:06:12.690]What they were doing was when they first started raising
[00:06:15.000]wheat back there in the twenties or whatever,
[00:06:17.932]each tillage trip, they oxidized some of the organic matter.
[00:06:21.060]They released nutrients to the next wheat crop.
[00:06:23.700]Their yield increase was not
[00:06:25.050]from the extra water from the fallow.
[00:06:27.360]It was from the extra mineralization of the organic matter.
[00:06:30.360]They're basically mining their soils.
[00:06:33.180]This producer, organic wheat fallow producer.
[00:06:37.829]From harvest till planting,
[00:06:40.290]he averaged 15 to 20 tillage trips.
[00:06:44.236]He's basically beat every pore out of that soil surface.
[00:06:48.300]The surface is just above that.
[00:06:49.898]Down here is interesting.
[00:06:51.660]He said, I'm gonna vary my tillage depth
[00:06:54.150]so I don't cause compaction.
[00:06:57.360]He changes tillage depth and you can actually pull that
[00:06:59.940]layer out and see the sweet smear marks where he went
[00:07:03.120]through there and smeared that soil.
[00:07:05.550]Here's the thing that's amazing though,
[00:07:06.840]is look below the tillage depth.
[00:07:11.160]Free slough, wet and drying,
[00:07:13.050]roots growing, biological activity
[00:07:15.330]is forming vertical structure.
[00:07:17.550]But he's coming along 15 to 20 times and erasing it.
[00:07:21.900]So again, we gotta think about what we've been doing
[00:07:23.730]to soil structure with tillage.
[00:07:27.030]This is his wheat growing.
[00:07:30.360]And as I took that picture,
[00:07:31.620]I should have stomped a little better
[00:07:34.201]with my waffle shoe there.
[00:07:36.563]'cause when I got back to Lincoln,
[00:07:37.560]I says, you know, it looks about like that.
[00:07:41.700]But those that are old enough,
[00:07:42.600]that's Neil Armstrong's first step on the moon, 1969.
[00:07:46.577]Look at that soil versus is that soil.
[00:07:52.347]We all know there's no life in the moon.
[00:07:55.050]I think with his wheat fallow organic production,
[00:07:57.210]all tillage trips, everything he's done,
[00:07:59.729]right there in the soil.
[00:08:02.340]We had a soil pit in that area there.
[00:08:04.410]Native grass.
[00:08:06.840]Soil structure all the way to the soil surface.
[00:08:08.670]Dark soil all the way down
[00:08:09.960]'cause the carbon's not been mined.
[00:08:11.640]Native grass, we've got red exudates putting carbon
[00:08:13.980]into the soil year round.
[00:08:15.780]Not just those seven, eight months a week growth
[00:08:19.800]with 14 months of nothing growing.
[00:08:22.710]And again, we're gonna hear more about carbon later,
[00:08:26.070]but it's the roots putting carbon
[00:08:27.510]into the soil is where our,
[00:08:29.070]so our best benefits come from.
[00:08:31.830]Again, conservation agriculture, soil health principles.
[00:08:35.610]These are the five that everybody will talk about.
[00:08:38.250]We've added a sixth one now is know your context.
[00:08:41.520]I say your context is important because what we're doing
[00:08:43.950]here in Northeast Nebraska is different
[00:08:45.390]than what we did out in Bridgeport.
[00:08:47.400]That's why our presentation's a little bit different.
[00:08:49.410]It's gonna be different than what Jodi does
[00:08:51.390]in Minnesota on probably drain soils.
[00:08:54.286]I already told her I was gonna pick on her.
[00:08:56.388](chuckles)
[00:08:57.221]But again, have to know your context.
[00:09:00.270]Minimal soil disturbance, keep it covered.
[00:09:02.430]Either growing plants or vegetation.
[00:09:04.620]Diversity of plants.
[00:09:06.330]Maybe not in your crop rotation,
[00:09:07.590]but maybe in your cover crops.
[00:09:09.540]Living roots, that's where the cover crops
[00:09:11.460]in the off season really come into play.
[00:09:12.900]Or perennials, come into play.
[00:09:15.030]Integrate livestock.
[00:09:16.410]I will admit our research firm where I work 10 miles
[00:09:18.930]east of Lincoln, we do not have livestock.
[00:09:21.433]Just the way our university system's set up.
[00:09:23.330]It just doesn't work out.
[00:09:25.500]But again, a lot of people like
[00:09:26.790]the livestock option as well.
[00:09:30.420]Again, a variety of utility systems mean the engineer.
[00:09:32.490]I've been studying tilling systems for years,
[00:09:34.500]looking at fuel and labor.
[00:09:35.670]I was not looking enough at the soil.
[00:09:37.980]I switched now, looking more at the soil.
[00:09:40.257]And this is one of our fields
[00:09:41.490]a couple years ago already planted.
[00:09:44.940]I want uniformity every day of the year.
[00:09:47.340]You know, where did the combine run last year
[00:09:49.830]harvesting those soybeans?
[00:09:52.260]I got uniformed residue spread.
[00:09:53.880]I got uniform residue cover over every seed.
[00:09:56.790]I got uniformed soil moisture, uniformed seeding depth.
[00:09:59.910]People say, don't you have to move residue?
[00:10:01.183]I go, why?
[00:10:02.460]Right now every seed's in a uniform condition.
[00:10:05.640]We get again, think uniformity every day of the year
[00:10:08.130]you look at your fields.
[00:10:10.320]A lot of people don't think too much
[00:10:11.490]that little pile of residue hiding there
[00:10:12.930]in the combine axle.
[00:10:14.730]I don't think too much of it either
[00:10:15.870]when it falls off and plugs my drill
[00:10:18.060]or fertilizer bar or planter.
[00:10:20.070]Systems approach, each step affects the next.
[00:10:22.410]You have to spread the residue.
[00:10:24.720]You know, choppers versus bat spreaders.
[00:10:28.860]People love choppers 'cause it takes the residue,
[00:10:30.660]breaks it open, exposes the soil microbes
[00:10:32.640]and the residue breaks down sooner.
[00:10:34.306]I hate choppers because it breaks the residue open,
[00:10:36.900]exposes the soil microbes and it breaks down sooner.
[00:10:39.270]We run in just a simple spinner spreader.
[00:10:41.670]Leave the residue as whole as we can.
[00:10:43.110]'cause ours doesn't hang around long enough
[00:10:45.437]with a good soil biology.
[00:10:47.730]There's no chaff distribution on here.
[00:10:49.500]You got a windrow of pods, got some bare soil,
[00:10:52.200]another windrow of pods.
[00:10:53.760]Next spring, that's two different soil temperatures,
[00:10:55.560]two different soil moistures.
[00:10:57.390]Spread the chaff as well.
[00:10:59.400]Have to spread everything.
[00:11:01.560]And it used to be you had to go to aftermarket companies.
[00:11:03.720]This is stall storm and chaff storm
[00:11:05.220]outta Canada to spread everything.
[00:11:07.380]You don't see any windrows out there.
[00:11:09.510]The good news is industry starting to listen to producers
[00:11:12.480]say we need to think about spreading residue.
[00:11:15.420]An example, the new John Deere Power Board
[00:11:18.120]spreads the residue wider.
[00:11:19.770]Redekop, standard equipment on the Claas combine,
[00:11:22.080]spreads the residue wider.
[00:11:23.730]Redekop claims 60 feet on spread.
[00:11:26.910]Deere claims 40 feet on spread.
[00:11:29.310]So again, industry's starting to give us that now.
[00:11:31.770]No longer thinking about just the harvest.
[00:11:34.050]Thinking about setting up the field for next year as well.
[00:11:38.700]There's a producer down near Schuyler, Nebraska.
[00:11:42.150]Year I took this picture,
[00:11:43.440]he had seven pivot average 265 bushel per acre corn.
[00:11:47.490]The corn head is processing the residue.
[00:11:50.250]Again, you don't need the chaff spreader.
[00:11:52.020]There's no chaff with corn basically.
[00:11:53.850]We don't take it off.
[00:11:55.950]Those are 1820 inch rows going through that combine
[00:11:59.130]on 265 bush of corn.
[00:12:00.840]Look how little residue's coming out the back.
[00:12:03.390]The corn head's processing the residue.
[00:12:05.430]And there's been a big switch in industry now to give us
[00:12:08.280]better corn heads for processing residue.
[00:12:10.950]System approach, setting yourself up
[00:12:12.630]for the next step with his slopes.
[00:12:15.110]He loves no-till.
[00:12:18.424]One of our fields 10 miles east of Lincoln years ago,
[00:12:21.570]we had a combine with snapping rolls that really
[00:12:23.640]processed the residue.
[00:12:24.600]We thought we really needed that.
[00:12:26.853]That's about 200 bushel corn residue day after harvest.
[00:12:31.080]Now this is a different field, a different year.
[00:12:33.300]So there's about 200 bushel corn residue the next spring.
[00:12:37.140]Our soil biology is such that when we break
[00:12:38.910]that residue open, it disappears too fast.
[00:12:41.820]We've learned as you're in no-till and your soil biology
[00:12:45.510]builds, you no longer call it trash and the field,
[00:12:49.260]you call it residue.
[00:12:50.730]And you say, how can I get more residue?
[00:12:54.420]Switch combines to tapered, snap
[00:12:56.160]and rolls, run the head higher.
[00:12:57.480]We leave the residue standing a lot
[00:12:59.070]taller so it hangs around.
[00:13:01.620]That planting time will knock it down and let the soil
[00:13:03.840]microbes start working on it because we want the residue
[00:13:06.390]to be cycled into the system for the nutrients.
[00:13:11.195]We want the residue taller to catch snowfall.
[00:13:13.200]Now it's been weird winters, but again that's free moisture.
[00:13:17.250]Too often I've seen where the snow blows free and they gotta
[00:13:20.010]drift over here and over here there's ground is froze
[00:13:22.980]'cause there's no insulating layer.
[00:13:24.690]Here the ground is wet 'cause it never froze
[00:13:26.520]'cause insulating layer on top.
[00:13:28.500]That's not uniform next year when it comes time to plant.
[00:13:31.620]So again, uniformity every day of the year.
[00:13:34.590]Further west you go, you'll see a lot
[00:13:35.940]of stripper headers for harvesting wheat.
[00:13:38.520]The stripper header takes the berries off the top,
[00:13:40.440]leaves the residue in place.
[00:13:41.910]Don't have to worry about spreading it,
[00:13:43.407]but more importantly it leaves it in place.
[00:13:45.210]Standing upright, anchored and attached.
[00:13:48.060]That makes no-till a lot easier.
[00:13:51.046]Our combine, we don't have a chopper.
[00:13:55.560]We just spread the residue and by next spring you'll be
[00:13:58.789]amazed how much the residue disappears.
[00:14:00.840]And actually we've switched now.
[00:14:01.980]All our weed acres get cover crops onto 'em.
[00:14:05.040]But by next spring, if that residue stain, upright,
[00:14:07.395]anchored and attached, you can pass across it.
[00:14:10.320]If I've cut it loose with say a high speed disk
[00:14:12.420]or vertical tillage tool or something,
[00:14:13.920]it's gonna move with your implement going across it.
[00:14:17.220]Leave the residue anchored standing up.
[00:14:19.380]If it's standing up, I don't have to cut it.
[00:14:21.240]It's not gonna create a mat.
[00:14:24.928]1981 I started a set of tillage plots.
[00:14:27.430]I had a little three year grant study fuel and labor
[00:14:29.820]requirements to different tillage systems.
[00:14:32.070]I had no-till with and without row crop cultivation.
[00:14:34.260]One disk or two disks because we were trying to save energy.
[00:14:37.200]Cut out one of the disks.
[00:14:38.820]Fall plow, fall chisel.
[00:14:41.310]Those were my six systems I had.
[00:14:43.022]This is a picture taken to, oh, about
[00:14:45.750]30 years into the project.
[00:14:47.378]And just like the K state to the line here,
[00:14:51.180]this is about four inches lower than this tillage
[00:14:54.420]just beat down the soil structure here.
[00:14:57.000]Virtually every soybean seed is up and growing
[00:14:58.980]'cause I know where the soil moisture is.
[00:15:01.418]Here we've got some seeds under our crust.
[00:15:03.301]We've got some seeds in dry soil.
[00:15:05.132]We get better stands in our long-term no-till
[00:15:07.738]because we have good structure, good biology there.
[00:15:11.388]So again, we have to think about that in the field.
[00:15:14.952]Take a tile spade and fold the soil.
[00:15:17.755]I should have lined those up
[00:15:19.112]four inches difference in height.
[00:15:20.838]But for the picture I put 'em side by side.
[00:15:23.194]The no-till is so loose and mellow chunk of it fell off.
[00:15:25.315]You can see where water can penetrate,
[00:15:27.117]where roots can penetrate.
[00:15:28.873]The tilled, it's dense up here.
[00:15:30.768]Down here, it's not too bad
[00:15:32.966]and water can't get through this layer.
[00:15:34.935]It doesn't matter what's down here.
[00:15:36.990]Now there's some interesting research coming out of France.
[00:15:40.110]They said, well the surface of the earth
[00:15:42.510]underneath is much warmer.
[00:15:44.521]They're measuring where we heat rises through this good
[00:15:48.540]structure and they're actually finding
[00:15:50.400]no-tills warmer than tilled.
[00:15:53.820]We started checking that at the Rogers Memorial Farm
[00:15:55.650]10 miles east of Lincoln.
[00:15:56.483]We're seeing the same thing.
[00:15:58.170]We plant our no-till sooner than our tilled neighbors can
[00:16:00.780]plant their crops 'cause our soil is warmer than theirs.
[00:16:05.340]Our soil does not freeze to about four inches.
[00:16:10.140]With the biology we have, the residue we have,
[00:16:12.120]with insulation we have and the heat rising we have,
[00:16:14.670]we got temperature sensors out there,
[00:16:15.990]two inches, four inches, eight, 20 and 40.
[00:16:19.380]Last four years we have not frozen eight inches.
[00:16:23.250]It's because the biology, residue and structure.
[00:16:28.860]Now the engineer has put numbers to it.
[00:16:30.990]People say well the no-till gets dense.
[00:16:33.210]You gotta till it to fluff it up.
[00:16:35.820]Bulk density, no-till, in that tilled zone
[00:16:40.410]is fluffier than the disk.
[00:16:42.540]Down in the disk pan zone,
[00:16:44.475]yeah, a little denser.
[00:16:46.744]And you talk to a lot of agronomists,
[00:16:48.360]they say well the ideal soil density is about 1.3
[00:16:51.609]or 1.25 depending upon the soil type.
[00:16:55.050]We're fluffier than that.
[00:16:56.070]We've got extra pore space
[00:16:57.690]because we're not dense in the soil.
[00:17:01.560]My tillage plots, here's the soil pit
[00:17:03.210]we dug for a field day and someone else
[00:17:04.980]took the photo here and gave it to me
[00:17:07.140]'cause I never pay attention to these things out there.
[00:17:10.050]This is to the line disk on one side, no-till on the other.
[00:17:14.640]And again, you can almost see the four inch
[00:17:16.590]difference in soil health or soil height.
[00:17:19.277]And you can see the disk pan.
[00:17:21.810]The other thing, look at the soil, the sub soil.
[00:17:25.230]We're getting more roots down.
[00:17:26.580]Get more carbon exudates down.
[00:17:27.960]We're building organic matter deeper
[00:17:29.610]in our long-term no-till.
[00:17:32.679]So how much are we building?
[00:17:34.790]I had someone who owed me a favor had us getting soil probe.
[00:17:38.430]It can take samples down to six feet.
[00:17:41.070]This is inches down here, zero to four inches.
[00:17:44.670]The first bar is moldboard plow system.
[00:17:46.350]The last bar is the no-till system.
[00:17:49.440]And everybody says yeah no-till builds
[00:17:51.210]carbon near the soil surface.
[00:17:53.850]Four to eight, eight to 16.
[00:17:56.820]Here's one that surprised me.
[00:17:59.472]16 to 32.
[00:18:01.740]Those are the (speech chopping) down there.
[00:18:04.770]Our town law has studied carbon at Ohio State for years.
[00:18:08.850]He's not seen things like this.
[00:18:09.957]And I asked him, have you measured
[00:18:11.400]the carbon carbonate coming out the tile lines?
[00:18:14.704]'Cause most of their projects are tile drained.
[00:18:17.430]He goes, what difference does that make?
[00:18:18.750]I says, you're sending carbon away.
[00:18:20.730]Mine's staying here in the soil.
[00:18:22.997]And so again, when we look at total carbon,
[00:18:25.432]my no-till had 10 tons per acre
[00:18:27.930]more carbon to six feet than any of the tills.
[00:18:31.380]The moldboard plow 20 tons per acre more.
[00:18:34.680]So again, I like the no-till.
[00:18:37.827]And again, another soil pit picture to that line.
[00:18:40.260]Again, you can see the height difference
[00:18:42.420]and you can see the darkness difference.
[00:18:44.070]Increased organic matter and soil structure.
[00:18:46.410]When I park the tillage tools for continuous no-till,
[00:18:51.180]People say, well organic matter, you can't change that much.
[00:18:53.730]Now it takes some time, but there's benefits.
[00:18:56.100]One is you'll store more water.
[00:18:58.320]This is some research done by Hudson years ago.
[00:19:01.920]My long-term no-till the first 20 years
[00:19:06.172]house system compared to the no-till system had 1% more
[00:19:09.840]in organic matter in the no-till in a corn bean rotation.
[00:19:15.270]An adjacent field, same soil type
[00:19:17.070]but I didn't wanna mess up the rotation here to switch
[00:19:19.890]to a corn, bean, wheat rotation
[00:19:21.810]with cover crop after the wheat,
[00:19:23.820]so I had another living root there.
[00:19:26.760]I up upped that 2% in 10 years.
[00:19:31.051]It's the living root that builds that organic matter.
[00:19:34.680]Went from a 2.2 to 3.2 in my plots.
[00:19:38.610]This field next to it went to a 5.2.
[00:19:41.607]And you start looking at change of how much
[00:19:43.620]water we've stored on a silty clay loam soil...
[00:19:50.414]50% more water makes a big difference when it comes
[00:19:53.340]to yields, when it comes to surviving droughts.
[00:19:57.870]I showed you the nice pictures of my plots.
[00:20:00.960]Here's my first year in 1981.
[00:20:04.500]Planting no-till grain sorghum into corn residue
[00:20:07.290]and the disk plots right up in front of it.
[00:20:10.890]At that time the weeds already used all available soil
[00:20:13.470]moisture, sorghum didn't bother germinate.
[00:20:15.880]The weeds were already going dormant, burned down.
[00:20:17.610]Herbicides didn't kill 'em
[00:20:18.720]'cause the herbicide wasn't taken in.
[00:20:20.700]No rain coming.
[00:20:21.780]Residual herbicides didn't get activated and the liquid
[00:20:23.700]nitrogen went this way with no rain to activate it.
[00:20:26.730]My first year in the grain sorghum,
[00:20:28.380]I did not have to combine the plots.
[00:20:30.240]That's the trip I saved.
[00:20:33.150]I learned never let weeds get ahead of you.
[00:20:35.580]Put the herbicide early.
[00:20:37.050]Rained in activated.
[00:20:38.250]Remember in 1981 we didn't have all the post
[00:20:40.080]emerge products we have now.
[00:20:43.380]After three years, when that grant ended, I says,
[00:20:46.380]I finally figured out how to no-till.
[00:20:47.700]Those plots are still going like say year 43.
[00:20:51.150]I spent the first 20, 25 years of my career
[00:20:54.975]saying never plant into growing weeds.
[00:20:59.280]Then I had to get a brain transplant
[00:21:01.887]'cause about 20 years ago, people said,
[00:21:05.190]let's plant cover crops.
[00:21:06.510]Let's plant green into it.
[00:21:10.290]He is.
[00:21:11.123]You manage that.
[00:21:12.031]You don't let it go to seed.
[00:21:13.470]You control your population.
[00:21:14.880]You control your species.
[00:21:15.930]You control whatever.
[00:21:18.060]I started with simple cereal rye.
[00:21:19.620]Switched to cereal rye and Austrian winter peas
[00:21:23.040]a grass and a legume because my corn and soybeans
[00:21:25.140]is a grass and a legume.
[00:21:26.550]I got cold season and warm season.
[00:21:28.710]So again, we think about it.
[00:21:31.290]One of the keys though,
[00:21:32.123]to make no-till successful in that
[00:21:34.373]systems approach is own your own sprayer.
[00:21:36.420]Self-propelled is nice.
[00:21:37.950]That's our sprayer in the bottom there.
[00:21:42.180]The key is never let weeds get ahead of you.
[00:21:44.760]There's a herbicide label that says yeah out for post emerge
[00:21:47.520]on a two inch tall weed, here's the rate you use.
[00:21:50.190]Well when you're driving by the field at 60 mile an hour,
[00:21:52.470]you don't see it till it's that tall.
[00:21:54.422]By the time you call the co-op, it's that tall.
[00:21:57.030]By the time they get there, it's that tall.
[00:21:59.490]You're in trouble.
[00:22:01.380]Again, own your own sprayer
[00:22:02.730]to really make no-till successful.
[00:22:05.370]Again, own your right nozzles.
[00:22:07.650]Flood jet nozzles are a fertilizer applicator,
[00:22:09.840]not a herbicide applicator.
[00:22:11.490]There's no herbicide out there that says
[00:22:13.380]flood jet nozzles are acceptable.
[00:22:15.542]Fertilizer, I don't like it on the soil surface.
[00:22:18.240]I like to inject it.
[00:22:19.073]If I'm using liquid,
[00:22:19.950]we'll run a cold rig.
[00:22:21.480]This isn't ours.
[00:22:22.313]It's a cooperating farmer I worked with.
[00:22:24.060]But again, get it below the residue such that
[00:22:26.580]it's less likely lost and less likely to be tied up.
[00:22:30.930]We use anhydrous.
[00:22:32.250]The cheapest form of nitrogen there
[00:22:33.815]is 'cause all the others are made from it.
[00:22:35.694]We inject it in what I call the off season
[00:22:39.750]when all the soil biology is either sleeping
[00:22:41.670]or not active yet.
[00:22:43.251]'cause people say, Hey, I just kill soil biology.
[00:22:45.829]We're not in the middle of March.
[00:22:47.430]We don't have a lot of soil biology going on then.
[00:22:49.515]We got a disk on there or a colder up front that cuts
[00:22:52.830]the residue, but more importantly cuts the soil.
[00:22:55.200]So the knife slides through the slot without throwing soil.
[00:22:59.172]The covering disks are set straight for no-till.
[00:23:02.610]When I'm doing strip till research, we take the knife off,
[00:23:05.420]we put a mole knife on to heave the soil
[00:23:07.950]and we set the disks to make a berm.
[00:23:10.830]So again, it's nice for research
[00:23:12.120]but for no-till mole knife is not a no-till knife.
[00:23:16.620]Now running that rig into wheat stubble,
[00:23:20.400]are five knife marks in that picture.
[00:23:24.150]Granted that one and that one are in the corners.
[00:23:27.420]But there's one here, one here, one here.
[00:23:30.646]That's how minimal soil disturbance
[00:23:32.610]we have with the anhydrous bar.
[00:23:35.280]We put our anhydrous on and we plant between the marks.
[00:23:37.650]We're never planted into that anhydrous band.
[00:23:40.440]We use controlled wheel traffic.
[00:23:41.610]We know where everything is at.
[00:23:45.102]Switch gears a little bit to the planters.
[00:23:46.859]In the eighties I had a grant.
[00:23:48.648]I worked with 30 to 50 farmers a year.
[00:23:51.873]And I take, you're not a farmer.
[00:23:55.760]Can I take you, your equipment, your management, your land,
[00:23:59.216]can you no-till?
[00:24:02.001]Through the eighties, I learned a lot of what to do,
[00:24:05.040]what not to do.
[00:24:07.320]This is a farmer I worked with over here in Wayne County.
[00:24:09.660]He said, don't even list the outset
[00:24:10.980]on your planter and try it. You'll be amazed what it can do.
[00:24:13.470]That's an old 7,000 John Deere MaxEmerge.
[00:24:16.920]Put openers on there, left them on there
[00:24:18.630]to knock the stocks over,
[00:24:20.550]add a little bit more weight.
[00:24:21.660]His herbicide is raining activated,
[00:24:23.310]should have pulled the one weed.
[00:24:25.620]He didn't disk, he didn't plant the volunteer corn.
[00:24:27.510]His soybeans were a lot cleaner.
[00:24:29.640]So again, thinking the system's approach.
[00:24:34.380]Said, well what are we conserving?
[00:24:36.330]Now we're conserving soil because we're not
[00:24:38.700]letting raindrop packet soil.
[00:24:40.320]We're conserving some water.
[00:24:42.862]And again, the engineer looking at silt loam soil
[00:24:46.080]holds about two inches of plant available water per foot
[00:24:48.960]and till it about six inches deep.
[00:24:50.760]It might dry out half of it.
[00:24:53.310]You might lose half to three quarter inch of water.
[00:24:56.440]That doesn't sound like much if you get 25 inches
[00:24:59.190]of rainfall normally or you got irrigation.
[00:25:02.460]But what if you did three tillage trips,
[00:25:04.754]lost an inch and a half and it's planting time?
[00:25:09.870]That's why we all grew up with furrow openers to push away
[00:25:12.180]those dry soil and push away the clods trying to find
[00:25:14.790]moisture to plant into.
[00:25:16.920]Good news is with no-till you don't have to do that
[00:25:18.523]'cause the moisture's there.
[00:25:21.570]That half inch of soil types three trips was probably
[00:25:23.880]the most valuable water you had
[00:25:25.410]if you can't get a stand in the field.
[00:25:29.280]But we lost residue, so we lost erosion control.
[00:25:32.370]And again the 85 farm bill was gonna leave
[00:25:34.140]residue out there, reduce the erosion.
[00:25:36.090]So we're gonna help reduce these problems.
[00:25:38.384]That residue then also reduces evaporation.
[00:25:42.330]So we want the residue out there.
[00:25:44.370]This is a corn on corn in this case.
[00:25:46.110]North Platte was plant (coughs)
[00:25:50.319]studying corn under irrigation.
[00:25:54.264]This is two different years of data.
[00:25:55.957]He had no corn planted here.
[00:25:58.089]Bare soil, had growing crop here.
[00:26:01.680]Cut the res, cut the evaporation in half
[00:26:03.133]simply by growing a crop.
[00:26:06.201]He says, I always grow a crop.
[00:26:07.350]No you don't.
[00:26:08.183]From harvest to this year 'til next year,
[00:26:10.110]especially if you do fall tillage,
[00:26:11.790]you've got next to bare soil.
[00:26:13.827]Do something to keep the sun and wind off the soil surface.
[00:26:17.430]He added residue back where he had no crop.
[00:26:19.987]Again, he cut the evaporation roughly in half.
[00:26:22.530]Under the growing crop, he still cut it 30%.
[00:26:27.595]Residue and the growing crop, keep the sun
[00:26:30.250]and wind off the sole surface to reduce evaporation.
[00:26:33.201]So now my running total here, the measurements he had
[00:26:36.741]over the years and others I've seen, two and a half
[00:26:39.524]to five inches of reduced evaporation.
[00:26:42.710]At residue, we lost raindrop impact.
[00:26:45.873]We had raindrop impact when there's no residue.
[00:26:49.635]A lot of people thought about erosion.
[00:26:51.960]I think about crusting as well.
[00:26:54.390]How about the opposite of crusting?
[00:26:55.890]It's that seal now that rather than crop not coming up,
[00:26:59.431]rain not going in, infiltration.
[00:27:03.127]I want residue out there to reduce crusting.
[00:27:05.280]And again, going back to my soil here,
[00:27:08.220]you can see how the water can soak in here.
[00:27:10.170]Can't soak in as much there.
[00:27:12.900]And on those plots, we went out
[00:27:14.700]and did a saturated intake rate.
[00:27:17.700]The saturated infiltration is we put a siphon jar there
[00:27:20.970]and kept it wet in a double ring infiltration for 24 hours.
[00:27:25.548]Then we took the measurements.
[00:27:28.140]So this isn't how fast it'll take the first inch.
[00:27:30.420]This is after the soil's already wet, swelled saturated.
[00:27:34.620]In the wheel track row, I use control wheel traffic,
[00:27:36.750]two tenths inch per hour.
[00:27:37.890]The nine wheel track row, four tenths inch.
[00:27:40.680]The soil survey says because the silt clay loam soil
[00:27:44.640]and particularly the clay sub soil,
[00:27:46.410]it swells and you can saturate intake rate
[00:27:48.750]should be between two-tenths and six tenths
[00:27:53.940]To the no-till, wheel track where it's been driven
[00:27:58.050]on for 30 plus years at this time, six tenths.
[00:28:02.460]That's in the range.
[00:28:03.960]Four inches where I haven't driven.
[00:28:06.660]That's that good soil structure.
[00:28:09.237]Again, I want to build that, keep my water.
[00:28:13.920]Aerial view of that research farm.
[00:28:16.068]We got terraces, that's wheat stubble you see
[00:28:17.460]in the brown there at a repair
[00:28:20.070]and buffer strip here that was planted.
[00:28:23.220]This terrace defines the only runoff comes
[00:28:25.020]through that buffer comes from this field.
[00:28:27.480]That field was no-tilled since the early nineties.
[00:28:32.250]In 98 they put it in the buffer.
[00:28:34.410]In 99 they put instrumentation in front
[00:28:36.090]of the buffer behind the buffer
[00:28:37.200]to measure what was coming through the field,
[00:28:38.940]how effective was the buffer.
[00:28:40.980]In 2005, they quit putting instrumentation out there
[00:28:43.530]'cause they had not yet measured runoff off of that field.
[00:28:47.820]Every bit of rain we've had in those
[00:28:49.410]five years soaked in,
[00:28:53.180]in reduced runoff.
[00:28:56.331]Our neighbors, our terraces have water.
[00:28:58.470]Terraces are a bandaid.
[00:29:00.090]Terraces are not needed because you have runoff.
[00:29:02.280]Terraces are needed because you don't have infiltration.
[00:29:05.864]And again, we gotta think about that.
[00:29:06.900]Our terraces very, very seldom see water.
[00:29:10.920]Now you think extension's a dangerous job.
[00:29:14.910]Driving around southwest Nebraska after a six inch,
[00:29:19.410]called June 12th overnight 13th.
[00:29:23.220]Stopped to take this picture.
[00:29:24.840]The farmer pulls up.
[00:29:26.910]What are you doing?
[00:29:28.620]I just simply asked him and you can ask any farmer.
[00:29:30.780]He calms down real fast.
[00:29:32.100]Say how much rain did you get?
[00:29:33.990]Oh, six inches worthless rain.
[00:29:36.300]It crested my sorghum field.
[00:29:37.800]It washed out my terraces.
[00:29:39.300]When's it gonna be dry enough for me to till
[00:29:41.490]that field so I can replant?
[00:29:44.970]Or across the road,
[00:29:48.480]said beautiful rain.
[00:29:50.580]That's all the water that was in his terrace.
[00:29:51.960]It all soaked in.
[00:29:53.010]Nothing run, nothing crusted.
[00:29:54.600]His sorghum's up and growing into a full
[00:29:55.980]soil moisture profile on June 13th.
[00:30:00.780]It's rain, beautiful rain difference in soil structure.
[00:30:05.852]I put the question mark on the six.
[00:30:08.280]You don't always get the six.
[00:30:10.470]I've seen two fairly often.
[00:30:12.570]I've seen more.
[00:30:14.940]What does it mean?
[00:30:16.410]Year in 2000 was a drought year in southeast Nebraska.
[00:30:18.780]We had 13 inches of rainfall during the growing season.
[00:30:21.856]We had neighbors who were harvesting 25 bushel beans
[00:30:25.219]felt pretty good until they heard my no-till at 47.
[00:30:30.344]I used the water that got away on the neighbors.
[00:30:35.162]Rain, sorghum, 61 versus 121.
[00:30:39.907]In 2007, I started cover crops in these plots.
[00:30:45.497]2009 was a year that was not a drought.
[00:30:48.216]To the line tilled 210, no-till 237.
[00:30:53.762]This is dry land corn, Southeast Nebraska.
[00:30:56.506]I didn't take the picture for that.
[00:30:58.434]I took the picture for the standability.
[00:31:00.723]Our standability problems have gone away when we had soil
[00:31:04.184]structure where the roots can anchor themselves.
[00:31:07.740]So again, build the soil structure.
[00:31:10.785]In cover crops 2007, here's 2015.
[00:31:15.942]No-till 223, no-till with cover crop 207.
[00:31:20.072]People say, why the hell did you use cover crops?
[00:31:22.189]Look how much yield you gave up.
[00:31:23.558]I said, why the hell did you tillage?
[00:31:25.219]Look how much yield you gave up.
[00:31:28.011]It's all relative.
[00:31:29.765]And again, build that soil.
[00:31:33.390]Beans, eh.
[00:31:36.630]That's 18 or 15.
[00:31:38.880]Here's 18.
[00:31:40.350]No-till about the same, no-till with cover.
[00:31:42.450]Whoa, there's more.
[00:31:44.790]And with tillage still gave up yield.
[00:31:47.940]Cover crops don't pay every year.
[00:31:50.400]But cover crops build a soil that's more resilient
[00:31:52.770]that can handle stresses when stress years occur.
[00:31:56.760]And the cover crop, the stress I had that year
[00:31:58.650]was we didn't have late season rainfall.
[00:32:00.870]My bean yields are down 10 bushel 'cause we didn't have
[00:32:03.330]enough moisture to fill the pods.
[00:32:05.490]But with the cover crop, the extra residue,
[00:32:08.308]extra soil biology, I got a corn yield increase.
[00:32:12.192]So again, we gotta think cover crops
[00:32:14.322]are long-term investment in building health
[00:32:16.395]of the soil to make it more resilient.
[00:32:18.714]More resilient.
[00:32:19.806]2022 is drought year.
[00:32:21.378]We had 12 inches of rain in the growing season.
[00:32:25.770]No-till, no-till with cover crop.
[00:32:28.230]And again, people say, well cover crops,
[00:32:29.790]gonna use the water, the crop needs and 12 inch rainfall
[00:32:32.850]a year with the cover crop,
[00:32:34.050]I still got a yield increase because I got a healthier soil
[00:32:37.410]that's more resilient.
[00:32:39.480]Beans, I still don't have the water to fill the pods,
[00:32:42.844]but they're still not that bad of yields.
[00:32:45.000]Kelly just still lost some yield.
[00:32:48.960]But it takes continuous no-till to make it work.
[00:32:52.080]You know this guy says, I no-till corn
[00:32:55.440]but he tills in front of his soybeans.
[00:32:57.060]That's still a tilled soil when it comes to crusting.
[00:32:59.640]Lack of soil biology, lack of infiltration.
[00:33:03.840]Continuous, every crop every year.
[00:33:07.200]This from Dan Gillespie used to be NRCS up here,
[00:33:09.870]passed away.
[00:33:11.040]This is his soil after about 10 years of no-till.
[00:33:13.140]Good soil pads, good aggregates.
[00:33:15.000]This, he walked across the fence is tilled neighbor.
[00:33:17.970]Again, which one will the water soak in
[00:33:19.740]or the roots can penetrate?
[00:33:21.240]It's the no-till.
[00:33:24.090]Had rainfall simulator.
[00:33:25.260]We're gonna see one demonstrated tomorrow.
[00:33:28.950]It uses the exact same nozzle you see here.
[00:33:33.000]Except he's only got one.
[00:33:34.410]Much easier to run than this one.
[00:33:36.690]This one is for research where you do it out in the field.
[00:33:39.540]It's out at Sydney, Nebraska.
[00:33:41.130]We did research where we had plow wheat stubble.
[00:33:43.830]We had standing wheat stubble.
[00:33:45.840]One inch water applied in 20 minutes.
[00:33:48.480]So it's two and a half inch per hour intensity.
[00:33:50.460]And we had runoff, and the farmers standing there said,
[00:33:52.950]see you have plow that to open it up so the water soaks in.
[00:33:57.085]On this side standing wheat stubble.
[00:34:00.150]We stood there for an hour and a half,
[00:34:02.370]three and three quarter inches of water
[00:34:04.473]applied before we even saw a runoff.
[00:34:06.900]Carly Finster had these plots in no-till
[00:34:08.730]for 13 years before we got there.
[00:34:11.430]The soil structure was there.
[00:34:15.720]I took the small nozzle, one nozzle, made similar like this.
[00:34:19.380]Like I say, we'll see it tomorrow.
[00:34:21.120]I like doing demonstrations.
[00:34:22.350]These three are tilled soil.
[00:34:24.240]The only difference is residue cover, bare soil erosion
[00:34:28.230]runoff, a little bit of cover, less erosion, less crusting.
[00:34:33.390]A lot of cover, a lot less crusting,
[00:34:35.340]so there's a lot less runoff.
[00:34:37.410]Coming this side is no-till, good pads, good aggregates,
[00:34:41.190]but no residue cover.
[00:34:43.530]And the soil aggregation, the stability
[00:34:45.810]had less runoff, less erosion.
[00:34:48.030]This is the best of everything
[00:34:49.320]with permanent cover and good soil.
[00:34:53.070]This may have improved since then.
[00:34:54.480]He has infiltration jars underneath.
[00:34:56.730]I hope you're running them.
[00:34:58.980]Okay, so again, we'll see that tomorrow.
[00:35:02.490]Let's put a total on this.
[00:35:04.740]Five to 12 extra inches of water in the average year.
[00:35:08.970]How much rainfall did you get?
[00:35:10.530]It's not how much rainfall you got.
[00:35:12.387]It's how much did you keep is the question to ask.
[00:35:17.130]I'm gonna pick on my friends in northern Iowa.
[00:35:20.820]They used to be corn soybeans with tillage.
[00:35:24.930]They switched to no-till.
[00:35:26.280]They got five to 12 extra inches of water
[00:35:29.100]in the soil moisture profile.
[00:35:30.750]And what do they complain about in the spring?
[00:35:33.750]The soil's cold and wet.
[00:35:35.880]I gotta till it to dry it out.
[00:35:37.680]They quit doing the full width tillage.
[00:35:39.470]They're just doing strip till to dry out that zone to plant.
[00:35:42.960]It works.
[00:35:44.292]What they're doing is blowing off some
[00:35:46.080]of that extra water that no-till saved them.
[00:35:49.230]They're not blowing it all off,
[00:35:50.370]they're just blowing off the strip.
[00:35:52.710]Well norm, he started doing some research
[00:35:54.600]when he moved to K State on residue cover
[00:35:57.240]reducing evaporation.
[00:35:58.530]And this is on inches per day.
[00:36:01.632]Eight hundredths inch per day on bare soil.
[00:36:05.910]Take that times a hundred day corn for easy make easy math.
[00:36:08.970]Out in western conditions they raise
[00:36:10.200]a lot of a hundred day corn.
[00:36:11.970]That eight inches lost evaporation.
[00:36:15.000]That's similar number like I showed you earlier.
[00:36:17.790]25, 50, 75% covered.
[00:36:19.680]Knocks it down to seven tenths.
[00:36:22.110]That saves only an inch of water.
[00:36:24.870]100% covered, knocked it down to five tenths.
[00:36:26.910]That's three inches of water saved.
[00:36:29.415]And I asked Norm outright, I go, wait a minute.
[00:36:32.130]30% cover cuts erosion in half,
[00:36:34.590]but it took 100% cover
[00:36:36.450]and doesn't even cut the evaporation in half.
[00:36:39.450]Says why does it take so much more cover?
[00:36:41.940]He says, it's like this.
[00:36:42.930]You build the best house there is insulation,
[00:36:46.935]R19 in the walls, R38 in the ceiling, triple pane windows.
[00:36:50.400]And the kids go out and leave the door open
[00:36:52.770]and all the heat goes out the door.
[00:36:55.260]Water vapor is preferential flow, does the same thing.
[00:36:58.290]Unless you have 100% cover,
[00:36:59.670]you're not gonna conserve water.
[00:37:02.130]And his research has shown the same thing on strip till
[00:37:04.350]because strip till is roughly that 25% bare soil.
[00:37:09.210]So again, if you're interested in conserving water,
[00:37:11.460]you want 100% cover.
[00:37:14.250]If you're an irrigator,
[00:37:15.720]five to 12 extra inches of water with no-till.
[00:37:18.630]Let's take the low side irrigation that this
[00:37:21.570]cost is about $20 or at variable cost
[00:37:24.330]it means $20 an acre inch.
[00:37:26.370]Five inches less pumped is a hundred dollars extra profit.
[00:37:31.830]For a dry lander, corn responds about
[00:37:34.200]12 bushels per acre inch once that plant's up and growing.
[00:37:38.490]Five extra inches is 60 extra bushel of corn.
[00:37:41.610]Means 17 extra bushel.
[00:37:44.400]Again, build that healthy soil, keep your water.
[00:37:49.170]A lot of people say 60 bushel, go on.
[00:37:52.200]I showed you I've got some 224 bushel corn.
[00:37:55.950]If you apply for crop insurance
[00:37:57.600]and you don't have an APH in Lancaster County,
[00:38:00.840]dry land, the T value for crop insurance is
[00:38:04.410]based upon who knows what, is 120.
[00:38:09.018]Our APH is 189.
[00:38:11.607]We're beyond that 60.
[00:38:13.577]The T value, if you're an irrigator,
[00:38:15.498]don't have an APH is 171.
[00:38:19.837]You're beating the irrigators without the cost of irrigation
[00:38:23.029]because we have long-term no-till.
[00:38:26.313]Guys out west, it used to be wheat fallow,
[00:38:28.050]they switched to no-till.
[00:38:29.130]They do continuous crop raising corn
[00:38:32.280]out there where corn supposedly won't grow.
[00:38:35.040]Guys down south used to be wheat
[00:38:36.330]fallow on Kansas and Oklahoma.
[00:38:37.650]They're doing wheat, they're doing continuous crop
[00:38:39.750]and they're even doing double crop 'cause they got
[00:38:41.250]the longer growing season 'cause they're using
[00:38:43.110]the extra water that no-till saves them.
[00:38:46.980]Friend of mine, Ralph Dirks, Paraguay,
[00:38:49.668]almost all of that area down there in Brazil, Paraguay,
[00:38:53.190]Argentina grows cover crops to use the extra water to build
[00:38:57.300]soil, build soil health to add carbon to the system.
[00:39:00.957]And again, that's what we're looking at now
[00:39:02.640]in Nebraska the last 20 years.
[00:39:04.620]Let's grow cover crops to use that extra water rather than
[00:39:07.020]blow it off of tillage or send it away to the drainage tile.
[00:39:10.350]There's some quite a bit of information coming out
[00:39:13.110]of South Dakota about the benefits of a cover crop to use
[00:39:16.170]the extra water rather than the expensive
[00:39:18.000]tile to send that water away.
[00:39:20.658]So again, build your soil.
[00:39:23.674]Again from Ralph Dirks, how good long-term soil looks.
[00:39:27.685]Now it's a different soil type than we have here.
[00:39:30.172]But again, good pads, good ag, good soil biology.
[00:39:34.513]Back to the Rogers Memorial Farm.
[00:39:36.360]We're starting to build that with our long-term no-till.
[00:39:39.495]There's a couple visitors from the United Kingdom.
[00:39:41.280]Had to take pictures.
[00:39:42.810]Couldn't believe we're plant through that,
[00:39:44.527]so I took a picture of them.
[00:39:45.840]That's about 210 bushel corn residue.
[00:39:47.790]A lot of people say, well you can't plant
[00:39:49.500]down hill road 'cause the corn root balls will roll out.
[00:39:53.850]I went to my tillage plots the day I went out,
[00:39:55.620]do my spring disking, grabbed a corn stalk
[00:39:57.750]from the disk plot, grabbed one from the no-till plot,
[00:39:59.820]held 'em up, snapped this picture.
[00:40:03.420]One on your left is the disk plot.
[00:40:06.780]The disk across the years has reduced the soil biology such
[00:40:09.840]that the roots are not being cycled back into the system.
[00:40:13.061]The right side is no-till.
[00:40:15.203]Soil biology recycling the nutrients back in the system
[00:40:17.824]are ready for your next crop.
[00:40:21.178]I plant down the old corn row.
[00:40:22.694]We don't roll out the root balls
[00:40:24.621]'cause the rip balls are already gone.
[00:40:27.094]And when a farmer tells me I have too much residue,
[00:40:29.958]I can't get rid of my residue, I got root balls.
[00:40:31.440]It tells me they don't have soil biology yet.
[00:40:34.170]Do something to build soil biology.
[00:40:36.273]How do you do that?
[00:40:38.850]You change your rotation rather than continuous corn.
[00:40:41.040]Corn, beans helps.
[00:40:42.150]Corn, beans is not a rotation.
[00:40:43.470]It's an oscillation.
[00:40:45.150]Corn, beans, wheat is a rotation
[00:40:47.100]or oats or alfalfa or whatever.
[00:40:51.000]Add some extra crops in there, put some forages in there.
[00:40:53.949]Maybe it's a short seasoned crop and do two short season
[00:40:56.640]forages rather than one long seasoned corn because now I get
[00:41:00.300]more diversity or use cover crops like I'm doing.
[00:41:05.580]Here's about 200 bushel corn res the day of harvest.
[00:41:07.920]Seeding the cover crop.
[00:41:10.350]Corn, wheat, bean rotation of this one started in 2005.
[00:41:14.085]Planting Austrian winter peas.
[00:41:16.890]The next spring, that's the same field,
[00:41:19.230]roughly the same place.
[00:41:20.430]Where'd all the corn residue go?
[00:41:23.130]I'm feeding the soil biology.
[00:41:24.960]I got my legume there fixing nitrogen.
[00:41:29.339]I got the legume growing there to dry out
[00:41:31.282]some excess water so I can plant sooner.
[00:41:33.142]So again, we think about the systems approach.
[00:41:38.474]Michael, I'm doing carbon versus nitrogen on my cover crops.
[00:41:42.236]This is the corn, bean, wheat rotation.
[00:41:44.736]Again, this is a different field, different year.
[00:41:47.196]Corn, bean, wheat rotation with no cover crop.
[00:41:51.001]This is corn, bean, wheat rotation
[00:41:52.876]with the carbon cover crop cereal rye,
[00:41:54.851]just breaking normalcy here.
[00:41:57.209]I have some farmers say I got too much residue out there.
[00:41:59.230]Say plant a cover crop.
[00:42:00.395]They go, what?
[00:42:01.320]It'll feed the soil biology to cycle the residue.
[00:42:06.074]I'm cycling the residue here.
[00:42:08.520]The residue that's gone now is gonna be replaced
[00:42:10.320]by the carbon growing in my cover crop here, I hope.
[00:42:15.330]It depends upon this spring,
[00:42:17.550]but again, the soil biology's there.
[00:42:20.610]Back to my long-term tillage plots.
[00:42:22.950]No-till, fall chiseled.
[00:42:25.307]This has been fall chiseled every year
[00:42:27.570]since 1981, disked in the spring.
[00:42:30.360]This picture was taken about 2015.
[00:42:33.120]I introduced covers in 2000.
[00:42:38.010]Say I have to do tillage to get rid of the residue.
[00:42:41.610]No, the tillage kills the soil biology.
[00:42:44.520]It's soil biology what's cycling the residue.
[00:42:46.200]What tillage has done there is it's cut the residue loose,
[00:42:49.920]so they gotta go out and dis it to smooth
[00:42:51.584]it out to be able to plant it.
[00:42:53.221]Here, my residue is being cycled and people say,
[00:42:56.040]well I can buy a vertical tillage tool.
[00:42:57.510]I go, why?
[00:42:58.680]It cuts and sizes the residue.
[00:43:00.460]I said, so does my drill.
[00:43:01.920]Well vertical tillage tool put the residue
[00:43:03.330]in contact with the soil.
[00:43:05.222]I said, so does my drill.
[00:43:06.690]My drill puts a living seed in the ground
[00:43:08.940]to feed the soil as well.
[00:43:11.370]I got soil biology here.
[00:43:15.525]The key is use crop rotation, use diversity.
[00:43:19.200]Here's wheat, peas, beans, corn.
[00:43:23.790]Cool season, warm season both.
[00:43:25.440]Legume grasses both.
[00:43:27.390]Try to get that in there.
[00:43:29.190]If you don't have your cash crop
[00:43:30.810]rotation included in your cover crops.
[00:43:33.360]In my corn, bean rotation.
[00:43:34.710]My cover crop now is cereal rye and Austrian winter peas.
[00:43:38.000]Corn beans are both warm season,
[00:43:40.080]one grass and one legume.
[00:43:41.970]Cover crops both cool season one grass, one legume.
[00:43:45.270]Real simple.
[00:43:46.530]I got all four crop types.
[00:43:50.202]Our wheat acres, we get keep our wheat
[00:43:52.320]'cause we get cover crops out there.
[00:43:54.690]After wheat harvest, that's already drilled to a cover crop.
[00:43:57.780]Our drill leaves the residue standing.
[00:44:00.682]The cover crop looks like that a few weeks later.
[00:44:04.080]I love the flowers for the pollinators.
[00:44:05.820]Keep the bees happy.
[00:44:06.990]I love grasses.
[00:44:07.860]I love the legumes.
[00:44:08.730]I love fun plants like okra.
[00:44:11.010]Go out there and pick that and graze on it.
[00:44:14.008]Radishes, turnips.
[00:44:15.960]Warm season.
[00:44:16.793]Cool season both.
[00:44:18.120]And it's because the one year I had a September five frost
[00:44:22.740]that knocked out all my warm season.
[00:44:26.010]If I had that year, I only had warm season,
[00:44:28.680]'cause wheat harvested in the summer.
[00:44:30.900]I had no cool season.
[00:44:31.733]I lost all my covers in September.
[00:44:33.660]Now with cool season, I got covers all the way to winter.
[00:44:36.960]When I say all the way to winter,
[00:44:38.550]I'm a drawing lander.
[00:44:39.751]It all winter kills.
[00:44:42.630]I go out and plant next spring.
[00:44:44.309]My herbicide bill at this point is zero.
[00:44:47.700]How much volunteer wheat do you see?
[00:44:50.370]With my cover growing,
[00:44:51.660]volunteer weed is no longer a problem.
[00:44:53.940]With the cover growing, it's suppressing weeds.
[00:44:56.160]I've saved a couple of herbicide applications and again,
[00:44:59.280]a lot of people only pay attention to yield of the cash crop
[00:45:03.075]or biomass of the cover crop.
[00:45:04.740]You gotta pay attention to all your equals.
[00:45:07.680]Equals, I always have trouble saying that one.
[00:45:12.287]Again, cutting herbicide.
[00:45:13.620]They're planting no-till there.
[00:45:16.530]Producer from Kansas I met, his,
[00:45:20.490]forage sorghum frost killed and his wheat stubble.
[00:45:23.190]He's out planting Milo the next year and he's got a hell
[00:45:25.560]of a mat here to reduce evaporation and raindrop impact.
[00:45:29.400]Again, cover that soil, protect it.
[00:45:33.217]Closing thought on protection of the soil.
[00:45:36.120]Temperature management.
[00:45:38.160]This is a few years ago.
[00:45:39.420]My tillage plots that year were
[00:45:41.679]in grain, sorghum, soybean rotation.
[00:45:43.560]In the foreground close to me here,
[00:45:45.727]is the tilled, no residue there.
[00:45:49.320]Over on that side is the no-till with residue with moisture.
[00:45:53.421]This is what it looked like that first week of June when
[00:45:56.250]that grain sorghum went dormant
[00:45:57.750]'cause it was too hot to grow.
[00:46:00.159]Now rain came and that sorghum took off.
[00:46:05.340]They're surprised the combine ran 35 bushel acre difference.
[00:46:09.360]Again, temperature management.
[00:46:11.880]Temperature management.
[00:46:13.080]June 21, sun is overhead, solar noon.
[00:46:15.780]That's why there's not much of a shadow here.
[00:46:18.330]Went out, shot the side of the barn
[00:46:20.010]where the thermometer is, 86 degrees.
[00:46:23.760]For my international attendees,
[00:46:25.680]I always do metric conversion as well.
[00:46:30.000]Shot the canopy, 76.
[00:46:33.210]Again, crops transpiration, cools 'em some.
[00:46:37.500]That's part of the defense.
[00:46:39.333]The bare soil next to the crop.
[00:46:42.930]133.
[00:46:45.150]That's on an 86 degree day at noon.
[00:46:49.260]Imagine what it's like on a hundred degree day
[00:46:51.360]at four in the afternoon when the sun's been on it all day.
[00:46:54.933]Now it's obvious I like to eat.
[00:46:58.222]Take a steak, throw it on the grill, 133 degrees,
[00:47:02.340]flip it 133 degrees.
[00:47:05.010]10 minutes, it's safe to eat.
[00:47:06.240]You've just killed everything there.
[00:47:09.150]What did 133 or worse yet to 150 do to your soil biology
[00:47:14.352]in that unprotected soil?
[00:47:17.381]Top of the residue, 120.
[00:47:20.246]That wasn't much corn residue.
[00:47:22.685]Pulled it away.
[00:47:24.674]76 underneath.
[00:47:27.210]It doesn't take a lot.
[00:47:28.770]It does take residue though.
[00:47:33.060]Temperature management, soil biology.
[00:47:36.510]I spent two trips now to Australia and South Australia.
[00:47:40.586]I was there after the cool front went through.
[00:47:44.100]It was only 95 degrees.
[00:47:45.450]And I says, what do you mean cool front?
[00:47:46.460]He says, it was one last week.
[00:47:48.990]This is what their pasture looked like.
[00:47:51.510]That's not the grazing animals.
[00:47:52.830]That's just the wildlife.
[00:47:56.460]Here's a no-tiller who is proud that
[00:47:57.990]he's been no-tilling for 15 years.
[00:48:00.240]He bales his wheat stubble off.
[00:48:02.970]He uses a shank opener drill and his soil look like this.
[00:48:07.187]And after 120 degree heat,
[00:48:09.430]there's not much soil biology there.
[00:48:13.460]You see the cracks there.
[00:48:15.623]There's two pieces of residue,
[00:48:17.881]one is from his field.
[00:48:19.109]The other is from his neighbor's field.
[00:48:20.130]It has a stripper header for harvest.
[00:48:22.440]His residue looked like this.
[00:48:25.080]He left the residue there to keep the sun
[00:48:26.520]and wind off the soil surface.
[00:48:28.470]Now, this does not have a living root
[00:48:30.060]to feed the soil biology.
[00:48:31.618]This is simply temperature management.
[00:48:33.450]Again, a closeup on the two roots.
[00:48:36.660]Soil biology is active enough the roots went away.
[00:48:40.110]Where he had all that bare soil,
[00:48:43.440]soil biology wasn't there.
[00:48:45.690]Now, in many cases, this is actually a plus
[00:48:48.750]because it's still anchored the residue.
[00:48:51.090]This, the residue can start blowing,
[00:48:53.866]and one way to reduce that from happening
[00:48:56.430]is you plant a cover crop,
[00:48:58.800]the root exudates, feed the soil biology,
[00:49:01.227]the soil biology doesn't go as crazy eating off
[00:49:03.780]all your roots and you go, huh, it works.
[00:49:09.090]Guys out west are doing that now with their stripper head
[00:49:11.490]harvested wheat stubble.
[00:49:14.130]Cover crops.
[00:49:14.963]This is an area of 10 to 12 inches annual rainfall,
[00:49:18.540]and they said cover crops would never work here.
[00:49:21.450]To the line, I drug my foot cover crop, no cover crop,
[00:49:27.300]Which would add more moisture, which would look better?
[00:49:30.732]Not much there for cover, but it's enough to keep
[00:49:33.990]the wind and some of the sun off the soil surface.
[00:49:37.560]So they conserve some water.
[00:49:40.590]This producer was proud of his no-till.
[00:49:42.960]He said the cover crop has doubled his wheat yield compared
[00:49:46.470]to no cover crop.
[00:49:48.300]And I looked at that and go, huh?
[00:49:51.709]That's when it clicked with me on soil biology
[00:49:54.465]and temperature management.
[00:49:56.298]Where the soil was bare and it got hot,
[00:49:58.817]the soil biology went dead.
[00:50:01.372]That little bit of a cover crop,
[00:50:06.000]that little bit of a root zone was enough
[00:50:08.160]to feed the soil biology to keep it alive,
[00:50:09.930]and that's what doubled as wheat yield
[00:50:11.820]in a 10 to 12 inch rainfall area.
[00:50:14.298]So again, we gotta think about the soil as a system.
[00:50:20.340]And that's a little different than that cover crop.
[00:50:22.770]This is up in North Dakota.
[00:50:24.510]They grow the cover crop after wheat for grazing.
[00:50:27.420]Now my opinion, that's a forage crop.
[00:50:29.460]That's not a cover crop, but that's all right.
[00:50:31.860]That's where you get the extra income.
[00:50:33.120]You still get the soil biology benefits of the living root.
[00:50:36.240]If you graze and leave a lot of residue cover out there,
[00:50:39.240]you still get those benefits as well.
[00:50:40.980]You get the extra income from the beef as well,
[00:50:43.500]or sheep or chickens or whatever you're gonna use out there.
[00:50:49.493]Start looking at the soil and start thinking soil
[00:50:51.060]as a living system,
[00:50:52.890]not just as a plant medium to grow seed in.
[00:50:56.220]Think about everything else that grows in that soil itself.
[00:50:58.770]Think about soil structure.
[00:51:00.793]Think about these, think about context.
[00:51:05.760]Quick commercial for Cropwatch.
[00:51:07.740]It was mentioned this morning about a Cropwatch article.
[00:51:09.780]If you wanna look for that,
[00:51:10.680]it's simply cropwatch.unl.edu.
[00:51:13.670]We put articles in there regularly to report on research
[00:51:16.260]or crop scouting, crop production.
[00:51:18.270]It's our newsletter for that.
[00:51:19.890]It's also our extension portal for almost
[00:51:22.710]everything about crop production in Nebraska.
[00:51:25.770]Across the header on top, you can click on crops,
[00:51:28.770]corn, phosphorus, and see the recommendations
[00:51:31.860]for phosphorus management.
[00:51:33.300]Click on soybeans, disease,
[00:51:36.270]whatever disease you're interested in.
[00:51:38.073](audience applauds)

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Nebraska Soil Health School: Residue, Soil Biology, and Systems Approach

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