08/15/08 Saving Energy With No-Till

Saving Energy with No Till. I'm Greg Martin as Line On Agriculture presents the Harvest Clean Energy Report. Saving energy can take many forms. Slowing down, correct air pressure, turning off lights and many more. But on the farm there are fewer ways to cut back. Chad Kruger, Interim Director & BIOAg Educator, WSU Center for Sustaining Agriculture & Natural Resources says one alternative is no till. KRUGER: Instead of tilling in preparation for planting, you come through with a different design drill for your grains or seeder for your corn and you plant right into the previous years' crop residues. It creates a change in the production system and so you don't necessarily do all the same exact things that you previously had done and you do some new things that you previously didn't do. Kruger says the payoff is in the mileage you won't be putting on the tractor. KRUGER: What you are essentially doing is trading a number of passes with a tractor and some kind of tillage implement for an herbicide that burns down any weeds that you are dealing with. And then you have to have a specially designed seeder that will cut down through the previous year's crop residues and plant the seeds so that it can get established. Depending on your situation, Kruger says the savings can be substantial. KRUGER: We've seen very substantial savings in terms of trips across a field to produce a crop and that has a direct result in a reduction of fuel use. And some of the highest reductions I've seen are non-harvest fuel use reductions on the order of 60-70% lower. Those are some big numbers. There are also residual benefits to the no-till idea. KRUGER: What it really does is changes the distribution of carbon in the soil profile and you have a lot more carbon at the soil surface. One of the key things that that carbon at the soil surface does is it does hold more water, soil organic matter acts like a sponge, it holds more nutrients at that soil surface but probably more important is it reduces evapo-transformation from deeper in the soil profile. Kruger says there can be as much as 15% more water available with the no till system. For additional information on clean energy, visit harvestcleanenergy.org. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network. www.harvestcleanenergy.org