The always popular ninth annual South Dakota No-Till Bus Tour took place August 4, 5, and 6.  This was be a chance to candidly discuss production practices and management challenges with people committed to long-term success with no-till (and achieving it), and to meet fellow Kansans, Oklahomans, and Nebraskans in various stages of no-till adoption. This intense three-day tour departed from Salina and featured the Dakota Lakes Research Farm with Dwayne Beck and three no-till farming operations. 

 

 

South Dakota Scrapbook - (click any picture for a larger view)

 

Tour Itinerary

 

4 August:  Ward Laboratories, Kearney, Neb.  Tour a soil testing laboratory founded by Ray Ward, who has worked extensively with the soils and crops of the Great Plains and possesses enormous technical expertise in soil testing methods and soil chemistry.  Ray has a Ph.D. in soil fertility and has managed both the Redfield, SD experiment station and the SDSU soils lab.  Ray developed soil testing facilities for both Oklahoma State Univ. and Servitech.  In addition to overseeing the lab, Ray also actively manages a no-till farm in southeast Nebraska.  Ray will be accompanying us on the remainder of our journey again this year, which should make for many an interesting discussion of soil properties and fertilization methods, as well as the geology of South Dakota and Kansas soils.

 

Mike Arnoldy, Kennebec, S.D. Mike’s first serious introduction to no-till was in 1987, and he had fully converted to no-till by 1990.  He fully admits to an ongoing struggle to assemble the right rotations, seeding tools, and herbicide programs.  His rotations currently include spring & winter wheat, corn, milo, proso millet, garbanzos, and sunflowers.  He is also trying black-eyed peas this year.  Mike always seems to come up with the right mix of good agronomy and time management to keep his money together in this harsh environment.  Mike was featured in the Dec. ‘02 issue of Leading Edge.

5 August:  Dakota Lakes Research Farm, Pierre, S.D.  Dwayne Beck will guide us through his plots of corn, soybean, sunflower, field peas, lentils, garbanzos (chickpeas), canola, winter wheat, and spring wheat.  Sometimes milo, flax, alfalfa, millet, and black-eyed peas (or cowpeas) are also included, as well as cover crops such as hairy vetch, sunn hemp, Indianhead lentils, and canola.  These crops comprise numerous rotations being studied for water-use efficiency, water storage, allelopathy, disease cycles, soil microbiology, nutrient cycling, weed control, and profitability (and volatility of profitability).  All plots are continuous no-till, with an emphasis on ultra-low soil disturbance -- the main farm has been no-till for 12 years now, although a North Unit was recently added (to replace the West River site) and has recently been converted to no-till.  Plots include both dryland and irrigated -- Dwayne originally began studying no-till as a method of improving infiltration under irrigation.  Later Dwayne managed the Redfield, SD experiment station, producing startling results from continuous no-till, including higher infiltration rates and cropping intensity than previously thought possible for dryland production in that area.  Some of the infiltration boost is attributable to nightcrawlers (not your average earthworm), which are having a major impact on the nutrient & water cycling at Dakota Lakes.

We’ll also see Dwayne’s Concept Seeder -- a continually evolving but fully functional showpiece that incorporates some of the most imaginative yet practical ideas to be found anywhere in the industry (the bridge hitch, parallel-link single-disc openers, true hydraulic down-pressure for each opener, a depth-limited spoked closing system, etc).  Expect to see industry adopt some of these ideas.

 

Mike & Bob Rausch, Gettysburg, S.D.  These brothers started serious work with no-till in 1990 and were 100% by ‘93.  During that time their seeding tools have ranged from a Concord with knife points, to a JD 1850, to a Barton Flexi-coil, and now back to a 90-series Deere.  Mike emphasizes the need for low soil disturbance and the ability to place all his N fertilizer when seeding wheat, although he continues to test and evaluate other methods.  Rotations include spring & winter wheat, corn, sunflowers and soybean.  The highly successful operation also includes cattle. 

 

6 August: Craig Stehly, Mitchell, S.D.  Stehly has ‘been there, done that’ when it comes to crop rotations and cover crops.  Corn has replaced his milo, and soybeans his sunflowers & fallow, but that is just the beginning.  Craig is now well into ‘stacking’ his soybean crops, and trying to do stacked corn, which he finds challenging in the 2nd year with his 22-inch corn rows.  Stacked wheat is a standard practice for them, in an area typified by a corn >>soybean rotation, and Craig has the financial data to support his cropping decisions.  Stehly has done lots of trials with cover crops, either before corn or before soybeans, to make those cash crops more plantable and improve their early growth.  Stehlys have been 100% no-till for over a decade, but never stop looking for improvements to their system.  Stehlys were on the cover of the Sept. ‘02 issue of Leading Edge.

 

Leon Wrage, a world-class weed scientist at SDSU, will join us for a discussion of some herbicide trials being conducted at the Stehly farm.  A keen researcher and excellent communicator, Leon has certainly been a key to much of the successful no-till in the region and clearly understands that weed control is not limited to herbicides.  Not much gets past Leon, and we welcome this chance to gain some of his insights.