Draft animals and "no-till agriculture"

[bivol]

Hello everyone!

 

Anyway, the ingriguing idea is: the possibilities, chances, and advantages of using no-till implements instead of regular plows on animal-driven homesteads.

no-till or no-plowing agriculture is a “new” concept which says that soil should not be plowed, upturned and left barren but kept under a layer of straw mulch. this is predominatelly used for grain cultivation. i was honestly surprised when i found out that around 50% of grain producing land in Germany was cultivated using no-till.

ofcourse, the moment later the question popped up: why not with draft animals, too?

advantages are: less fuel consumption due to less drag, compared to plows. also, if land is kept under a layer of mulch, it will not dry out in the sun, it will require less irrigation and it will be more efiiciently used. from a guest lecturer years ago i know an instance where there was a dry year (Hungary, 2007) and only one farmer which was talked into using no-till had a good harvest, while others suffered loss.

having the field covered also leads no loss through wind erosion.

also, if you have schortched dry ground and rain comes, it takes some time until it regains its water absorbing abilities. in contrast, mulched ground stays moist and covered.

aside from that, i learnt that every soil depth has its own microbial flora which is adapted to it, and upturning and exposure to sun makes the bacteria die. and bacteria are the engine behind the circulation of foodstuffs in the soil.

no-till doesnt say you dont touch the soil; there are cultivators that aerate the ground, and there are seeders. both are designed to work on a mulched field.

many farmers who work with draft animals are also either practicing conservation agriculture or have the concept rather close to their work ethics.

so, my questions are, is no-till equipment already being offered by producers of standard draft animal implements? anyone here playing with the thought of trying no-till?

only specific challenge would be less straw for bedding (although i think one can grow Napier grass to make up)

 

Any experiences, thought or suggestions are welcome!

 

 

[Eli]

There has been talk on hear before about no till and I think some one said they had a no till drill at horse progress days. The only down side I ever had was manure it is hard to use manure with no till. And I was a dairy farmer with lots of manure to incorporate    Eli

[Roscoe]

Here, farmers use 3 times a year Roundup for their no-till fields.

[bivol]

yes i thought manure would be an issue…

in a perfect world (read: no financial worries) a methane digester could cut the manure issue… but it all comes back to dollars…

but yea, manure is a problem…

 

Roscoe, what is Roundup?

[Eli]

Weeds, manure and cold springs are the problems with no till. A digester only reduces manure by 30% at best  and most  digesters don’t make money. I miss a lot of things about dairying but manure management is not one ot them.

Eli

 

[KMichelle]

Not sure if the Round-up question is tongue-in-cheek or not… but my understanding is that a marjority of the farms that I have discussed concerning no-till, practice with heavy herbicide application(Round-up). An intern from Germany I worked with last year on the draft horse farm showed me videos of no-till implements which are certainly impressive and innovative, but agreed that all farms he knew of in GER, were not organic. Certainly alot can be gleaned from the theory of no-till, but many of those practices can be applied through proper knowledge of when and what is appropriate for plowing, cover crop rotation and dynamic composting. The Nordel’s have alot of info regarding this idea.

[Eli]

I think no till  can be part of an organic rotation but I would be hard to replace all tillage with no till. Ground covered with heavy residue warms slower in spring add takes longer to dry out so a cold wet spring like we are having in Wisconsin will make no till corn a challenge. I have planted wheat, oats, new seeding hay in spring with great success.   Eli

[near horse]

Eli – I jus need to add the “dry side” as well.  A large proportion of the dryland wheat farmers here in the PNW have switched over to no-till and had a bad experience last fall seeding winter wheat due to unusually dry fall conditions.  They were pulling up clods of earth the size of basketballs trying to no-till into overly dry soil and tore up their drills in the process.

[Andy Carson]

I have some experience trying to min-till without herbicides.  Weed control have been my main issue, and directs everything I do.  I do not believe this is simply a matter of just pulling smalller no-till tractor implements around.  The lack of spray (roundup or similar) is a huge factor.  That said, I do believe that with clever crop rotations and weed resistant crops, this is possible.  I did have a good 1 acre crop of sunflowers using these methods.  On my land, I don’t belive I will be able to grow anything that is not weed resistant for a while.  Hopefully, some day my weed pressure gets low enough, but that day is far off for now.

On the positive side, I have noticed improvements in tilth of the soil since I started doing this.  Also, the extra organic matter on the surface holds moisture better and more uniformly.  These are noticiable benefits that are apparent in a couple years.

[Andy Carson]

For now, I tend towards a more hybrid approach, plowing when needed and using min-till as much as I can get away with.  I would like to be able to go 3 or more years between plow downs.  Having no plow and no spray, in my hands, doesn’t seem to work year after year.  I get a build up of some types of weeds (especially rhizomatous grasses) that can’t be easily controlled with min til.  Fallows help, but do not elimiate the problem.  After these weeds build up over a few years, I think a plowing is appropriate.  Perhaps this is partly a cop-out, but I don’t see it as that.  Plowing every third year of so is still allows me to capitalize on many of the advantages of min-til, and also dramatically reduces the amount of plowing that needs done in spring.  We’ll see how this goes…

[bivol]

Andy, now that you mentioned sunflowers, this gave me an idea. granted, im miles away from any REAL knowledge on crop rotation (hope it will change soon) but going back to sunflowers, hemp and alike: they’re what i’d call “choker” plants, since they’ll choke the living daylight (literally) out of any weed that goes up on them.in fact, hemp was used as a means of weed control way back before pesticides…
yes, i believe min-plow would do the trick just as good.

[Eli]

It is important that all conditions are  favorable when we no till, low weed pressure, good fertility, warm ground. The crop needs to get growing as fast as possable. I agree a hybrid approach would be the best. Some weeds are best avoided even if you have to till or spray.    Eli

[j.l.holt]

I read a few old horsemanship books a few years ago.  One told of a guy who broke horses to harness and would make a worker out of any sour older horse.  The thing he had that we don’t always is help and time.  But it told how he would plow over and over the same fields to knock the weeds back and give the horses steady work to get worked as he thought they should be.

I was wondering how well repeated plowing would kill the weeds. If I  remember ,he would let them get 24in or so, then get them  covered well. This was before the seed pod could develop.

Any thoughts on the success of this ?   Time and help would be a factor for sure.

[Andy Carson]

I did a mini-fallow last year with various harrows and a disc.  This worked OK, but required a lot of passes.  In most areas, grasses were turned under, or cut up and dried out over time.  In wetter spots, the rhizomes were just spread around and remained moist enough that many “caught” and the total amount of grass was not effected greatly.  I would worry that serial plowing would have a similar effect.  If you invert something twice, it’s right side up again…  On top of this, you have all the negative effects of plowing (poor water retention, water runoff, weed seed exposure, erosion, plow pan creation, burial of organic material, etc).  Also, the power requirements for serial plowing are enormous.  Perhaps there is a place and time for this, but I do not know where it would be.  Perhaps if you have lots of non-grass weed pressure and you don’t care to plant anything in that field that year???  I would still think of something else in that situation, like a single plow and a vigorous cover crop.  I am biased philosophically because I do believe in the value of min-till and serial plowing is pretty much the opposite of min-till…

[bendube]

Andy,
What types of techniques are you using for “min-till” right now? Does that include you “coultervator” and harrows?

Right now we plow 2 out of 3 years in a rotation, with 1 year being prepped with a disc, which is “reduced” but I wouldn’t say “minimum” tillage. Though there are a lot of things to work out, reducing tillage and farming with draft animals seems like a good fit, if only because it makes peak fieldwork season more manageable. Depending on the farming system and how many hours we can “log” (literally or figuratively) with the animals in the winter, spring can be really tough with so much ground to turn over. It often is for us.

One smaller but potentially significant benefit is that if reduced tillage improves soil structure, it should reduce draft on plows by a modest amount, making the heavy tillage a little easier when we do have to use it.

Is there anyone who uses permanent ridges with animal-powered ridge-till?

[Author]

Posts