Friday, January 14, 2011

To Till or Not to Till

That is not the question anymore. It costs too much to till the soil and does too much damage. Presentation after presentation at the 19th National NoTill Conference in Cincinnati this week has proved that.

Let earthworms and soil fauna be your tillers. Feed them calcium, they thrive on calcium ao many discussions on lime vs by products vs pelletized. To me they all work if they provide calcium to the soil which feeds our soil livestock.

Does glyphosate limit uptake of these nutrients? That is becoming a bigger discussion point around the world but most farmers here don't see the concern many scientists point to from their research.

Farmers are more concerned about resistant weeds from over use of glyphosate. That is a bigger concern among farmers at this point.

There has been lots of recognition this week and more at lunch and dinner tonight when the big winners are announced. All of us who have received the notill innovator award were introduced last night at a reception by Syngenta. Thank you Syngenta.

I have many notes and ideas.

More later,

Ed

2 comments:

  1. Yes, I have a few concerns about the over use of glyphosate. And I'm still a tiller too. This past year tillage was the only to try and dry up the soil enough to try and get the land seeded. Many fields never did get seeded and ended up summerfallowed, with glyphosate in many cases.

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  2. There were farmers there with excellent yields who plant all non GMO seed and have left glyphosate in quest for better yields. This will be an interesting story.

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