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No Till Notes: 'Field Days Thank You'

I would like to thank everyone involved in making last week’s Panhandle No-till Partnership’s field days a success. I would like to especially thank Mark Betson, Mark and Pat Ernest, Bob Gifford and Jack Revelle for hosting these field days on their farms.

I also want to thank the University of Nebraska Panhandle Research and Extension Center, and specifically Dr. Cody Creech and Dr. Karla Jenkins, for hosting our tour group at the UNL High Plains Ag Lab.

I’m always amazed when I drive around the Panhandle of Nebraska at the diverse landscape we have to work with in our region. There are many variations in elevation, soil type, dry land acres and irrigated acres, amounts of precipitation received and rangeland associated with many of our producers operations.

All of this diversification leads to many producers adapting their farming and ranching operations to match the landscape they have to work with. This leads to very interesting visits on various producers farms to learn how they have adapted their practices to best utilize the resources they have on their land. The common thread in all the producer’s farms we visited last week is they all have adopted continuous no-till crop production on all their dry land and irrigated acres. These producers are growing a variety of crops and forages to best match their resources to their operations.

Betson, Gifford and Revelle have added forages for livestock as part of their crop rotation on their dry land acres. They are all using a diverse mix of forages that will be hayed, grazed or a combination of both, to enhance their feed stock for their livestock

Interestingly, Gifford and Revelle are using an early season forage which they plan to hay and then allow the forage to recover and regrow and will graze the forage at a later date. Betson is using a different approach to his forage production with a summer planted forage mix which will grow into the fall. He will then use this forage for late fall and winter grazing. These producers have matched their forages to best fit the needs of their individual operations.

Diversification of forages mixtures has shown to improve the overall health of the soil. Diverse cropping rotations have also proven beneficial on our dry land and irrigated crop acres. All of the farms we toured have adopted diverse crop rotations. These diverse crop rotations help break up persistant weed and disease cycles. Diverse rotations also improve the health of the soil and the organic matter content of the soil by mixing in warm and cool season grasses with warm and cool season legumes in the crop rotation.

The Ernests use a winter wheat, corn or milo, proso millet, field pea crop rotation on their dry land acres. Gifford and Revelle use a winter wheat, corn or forage, field pea rotation. Betson uses a spring wheat, winter wheat, forage rotation. He is also experimenting with milo on his farm near Whitney.

All of these producers around the Panhandle have diverse resources and operations in which they have adopted continuous no-till production practices to benefit their farms and ranches. Their adoption of no-till crop production practices has allowed them to diversify the crops and forages they grow. This diversification has helped improve the soil they work with and helps to break up weed and disease problems often associated with monoculture farming practices.

Next week, I’ll visit with you about some of the very interesting research being conducted at the High Plains Ag Lab and also take a look at no till crop production practices on irrigated acres.

 

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