No More Treating Soil Like Dirt

Beach, North Dakota

Zook were watching their precious farmland dry up and blow away. Constant wind erosion and an annual rainfall of only fourteen inches was making farming an unending, uphill struggle against nature. Mike realized his farming methods were going to have to change.

While the colors of Mike’s landscape changed from black and green in spring to black and tan in summer, Mike could not witness the transformation—because the air was a blizzard of dust. The reason: many farmers in that part of the state were relying on a wheat-summer fallow rotation (wheat one year, no crop the next) to make their living, and their tillage practices were creating soil erosion problems. The fallow land, tilled clear of crop residue, was exposed to the elements, and its soil was being carried away.

“It used to be that when we’d get those hard spring winds, you couldn’t see driving down the road,” Mike recalls.

Erosion due to water was a problem as well. Mike says runoff from quick, early spring snow melts or from summer thunderstorms would fill the creeks and ditches with chocolate-colored water. Of course, that “chocolate” was topsoil.

But those types of scenarios are becoming decades-old memories for Mike. He says, “Now, the runoff coming out of the fields is clear. You can actually see to the bottom of the creeks. We can now hold our soil through most situations, and there are no more dust blizzards.”

Mike has been able to reduce the amount of runoff from his fields, an accomplishment that means more moisture is staying where it melts as snow or where it lands as rain. The result is that there is more moisture available for his thirsty crops, and his precious, fertile topsoil—an inch of which takes nature 500 years to create—is staying in place.

According to Mike, the improved erosion control and water capture are due in part to the technique of no-till farming. Under a no-till system, the soil surface largely is left undisturbed from harvest time to the next planting so that the crop residue can provide protection against wind and catch fallen snow. Most no-till planting or seeding machinery is equipped with coulters, disk openers, or in-row chisels—tools that cut into the soil without burying crop residue, as a conventional plow would. And whereas traditional practices rely on tillage to control weeds, no-till farmers use herbicide applications instead.

Intrigued by the results of Bob Ekre, an early no-till innovator who farmed near Beach, Mike and his father started experimenting in 1982 when the Golden Valley County Soil Conservation District began offering opportunities to test no-till equipment. Later, the Zooks received financial assistance through a U.S. Department of Agriculture program that paid farmers $15 an acre for using?no-till practices on a quarter of land (160 acres) for at least three years.

“I’m a good follower. I had good teachers,” Mike says, recalling his early years of no-till farming. He credits an agent from the North Dakota State University Extension Service as well as his local soil conservation district (an organization that educates local citizens and helps them conserve natural resources) with facilitating his learning process.

But perhaps Mother Nature, in her role as antagonist, has turned out to be Mike’s best teacher. After switching to no-till farming, Mike began planting wheat on his entire farm, year after year. Eventually, disaster struck: a monoculture, or the same crop planted over and over in the same location, creates an ideal environment for pests to become established. He explains, “[Wheat stem] sawfly literally put us out of the monoculture wheat business. I learned pretty quickly that monoculture farming isn’t profitable in the long run. To no-till correctly, you need to have a rotation that involves more than two crops.”

In 1989, Mike met Dwayne Beck, a South Dakota State University researcher working at the Dakota Lakes Research Farm in Pierre, South Dakota. Dwayne’s knowledge formed the basis for much of what Mike knows today about crop rotations. Today, Mike establishes his rotations based on criteria that extend beyond basic insect and disease management: he considers soil type, rain-?fall patterns, landowner preferences, previous cropping history, available water in the field, and field location, as well as market prices.

For example, Mike typically follows crops such as corn or sunflowers, which utilize greater quantities of water, with crops requiring less water. Similarly, his decision about what to plant may hinge on whether a particular field hosted a warm-season crop or a cool-season crop the previous year. Likewise, he may take into account whether the previous crop was deep-rooted or shallow-rooted. He continues, “I usually have three or four different crops I can plant in a field each year.”

Besides helping to control runoff, no-till farming coupled with a diverse crop rotation helps Mike manage available soil moisture more efficiently so there is little, if any, excess left at the end of growing season. Soil moisture management is crucial, as an impermeable clay layer sits three to five feet under much of his land. Without proper soil moisture management, excess water leaches down to the clay, where it is forced to move horizontally underground to lower areas of the undulating terrain. All the while, this migrating water accumulates salts from the soil. Later, when the water collects in a field’s low areas, it can accumulate to a great volume and reach the surface of the land. When it evaporates, it leaves a salty residue that kills most types of vegetation, including crops.

“The longer that you no-till with diverse rotations, the better the system works,” Mike continues. Benefits extend beyond erosion control and water management. He uses the word “harmony” to describe the healthful balance that is developing among soil fungi, bacteria, and other micro-organisms on his farm, and he mentions one benefit of this harmony: “Earth worms basically do our tillage now instead of tillage equipment.”

One day at the beginning of the 2003 harvest, Mike looked across three miles of surrounding landscape and saw various shades of greens, yellows, and tans—fields of lentils, corn, peas, sunflower, durum, chickpeas, and alfalfa. Now, all of these crops play a role in Mike’s crop rotation. “A diversity of crops produces a diversity of wildlife. Animals have actually flourished in this environment,” says Mike, who is impressed by the increased numbers of pheasant, grouse, and partridge that wander into Mike’s farmyard from their nearby habitat.

Mike believes his greatest accomplishments as a no-till farmer have been his ability to control soil erosion and to enhance the diversity of his farm and the local ecosystem. Because of his success with no-till farming, Mike now shares his knowledge with other interested farmers through seminars. In the courses, he stresses the importance of maintaining a constant, diverse rotation of crops to counteract erosion and of developing a willingness to change. Willingness to change, notes Mike, is a survival tactic.