Does No-Till Farming Work Across Different Geographies?

00:00 No-till is not all the same from geography to geography. But then again, there's a lot of similarities. 00:04 That's what we're talking about here. I'm with Kelly Garrett at Johnny Verell's Field Day in Jackson, Tennessee. 00:09 It's hotter than blazes. He's got a heck of a crowd here. You're a presenter in that tent. 00:13 And I just said, Hey, you know, let's talk about no-till you no-till for a completely different set of reasons than he does here. 00:21 Well, there's an added importance in my area, in my area with the slope we deal with. 00:25 We no-till for conservation and erosion. Right? When it rains too much, that soil sure can run down the hill. 00:31 I always jokingly say you've got 40 to 50% slopes, maybe not that, but you there, there's a, there's a solid 30% slope on several of the farms you farm, 00:38 Right? It it's solid. 15 to 30% in a lot of areas. So you're talking about obviously no-till erosion prevention, et cetera. 00:45 You are not as desperate for the agronomic reasons as you would be if you were in a low CCC sandy type, uh, ground where he is, meaning he needs every, every ounce 00:55 of organic matter he can get. Your soil is pretty good. Yeah. You know, because of the weather down here, uh, 01:00 how warm it stays all year round, uh, relative to Iowa, Johnny, Chad, Matt, they're all about preserving as much organic matter as they can. 01:08 Yeah. And of course, when we till that burns up the organic matter. Yeah. Nobody wants to do that. Myself included. 01:13 I wanna leave the organic matter on top of the soil, uh, for erosion again. But again, that natural breakdown over time is, is better 01:20 for the, the fertility we're trying to reclaim out of that Residue. Nobody ever thought as 01:24 much about residue reclaim, if you will, use residue, uh, residue, uh, revenue if you will, because with fertility prices 01:30 where they are and commodity prices being very pressured lower, uh, seems like somebody's gonna say. 01:36 But if you don't, till you're not getting that nutrient back down there where you can get the fertility out of it. 01:40 We used to think that way a long time ago. Mm-Hmm. Not true. No, it's not true. The nutrition breaks down over time. 01:45 It, you know, it's kind of, uh, the way mother nature intended it to do, uh, is no till. And then, you know, when we talk about, uh, 01:52 conserving the moisture Yep. Conserving the fuel, conserving the labor, conserving the equipment going across the field, 01:57 there's several economic benefits there for no-till versus tillage in in another respect. One more benefit. You're big on sustainability programs. 02:05 You can do very minimal, like if you disturb only the top couple of inches say to try and get that residue right, uh, back into the cycle. 02:13 You can still do that and not get cut outta a sustainability program. But if you're out there moldboard plowing or chisel plowing 02:18 or even v ripping, you're gonna probably have some problems with sustainability programs. 02:22 Yes. You know, you need to check the rules and regulations in your area. But in our area, you know, 02:26 you can certainly make a pass across that field and size the residue as long as we're not turning the soil over 02:32 and still be considered no-till. Absolutely. And, and we do many things on our farm, six or seven of them to try to get that residue 02:39 to break down from devastator on the corn heads to spraying res cycle to to the airway, to the cattle. Yeah. Many, many things. So 02:47 This is very, very hot. It's, uh, he doesn't have to, he doesn't have to worry about erosion to, to, uh, slope the way you do, 02:52 but he has moisture preservation. Is there any other last thought about no-till from northwest Iowa to no-till to West Central Tennessee? 03:00 A lot of similarities. He, uh, moisture preservation here in the low CE soil with, with the water running through is a bigger deal. 03:06 My soil will hold the moisture better. Yeah. But with my slope and things like that, we sure don't want it to erode. 03:11 So we have varying degrees, but the core principles are all the same across the country. I find it funny. There's, somebody's gonna say, 03:17 well, that won't work where I am. Well, we just talked about as disparate. It's, it seems like it's a hundred degrees hotter here. 03:23 It's flat a pancake and they don't have any organic matter compared to where you are. And somebody would say, well, no till, 03:29 no-till works for you, but it won't work for me. We just threw out two extreme examples of difference in terms of topographical 03:34 and climatological areas, not to mention soil types. And they're all fine and it works. A Absolutely. John's Johnny's 03:41 agronomist brewer last night when we were in the hotel visiting, they had some spots in a new farm they took over and they had to do some tillage to kind 03:47 of repair the ground and where they repaired the ground and opened it up. The lack of moisture. They're calling it 65 03:53 plus bushel of corn. There's a metric on how valuable no-till can be in a hot, dry environment. I'll leave it right there. John Johnny Verell's 03:59 Field Day in Jackson, Tennessee. We've got field days, uh, all over the place. You probably already missed them by 04:04 the time you're watching 'em, unfortunately. 'cause our last one is August 22nd at Temple Roads. You can catch the video footage just like this 04:09 that we're doing from the field days to bring the field day to your farm, and you can apply these 04:13 lessons to your farming operation. Kelly Garrett. Damian Mason, thanks for being here. Extreme ag.