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No doubt about no-till
Visitors to Milan field day celebrate impact, importance of conservation tillage practices
| Story and photos by Allison Morgan |
8/31/2012 |
In 2012, Tennessee farmers planted 75 percent of their corn, cotton, soybeans, and wheat acres with no-till methods — the highest percentage since the state began keeping tillage records in 1982.
Without doubt, no-till wouldn’t have advanced to this level if it weren’t for the University of Tennessee’s AgResearch and Education Center at Milan and the popular field day that’s been held there since 1981 to promote these important practices.
“We now have a record amount of no-till acres in Tennessee, and that’s just one example of the accomplishments that have been made here,” said Blake Brown, director of the Milan center, at this year’s field day on July 26. “Going back a few years to 1979 — before our first field day — we only had 43,000 acres of no-till in the state. This year, it hit 2.3 million acres. That’s a tremendous success.”
Even Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, who attended his first no-till field day as a gubernatorial candidate in 2010, recognized the importance of this single event not only to agriculture but also to the entire state when he spoke at this year’s welcome breakfast. Haslam said he was particularly encouraged to see the number of farmers attending field day tours first thing in the morning.
“I was thinking of how impressed I was when I drove in at 7:15 and several people were already sitting under those tents, listening to talks, trying to learn how to improve what they do,” said Haslam. “That’s who I want us to be in Tennessee — a leader in figuring out how to do things better. Milan No-Till is a great example of that.”
Now scheduled every other year, Milan No-Till remains the nation’s largest field day devoted to improving the production of no-till crops. The 2012 event on July 26 attracted nearly 2,750 visitors from 65 Tennessee counties, 21 states, and three foreign countries — Brazil, Lesotho and Mozambique. Some 75 vendors, including Tennessee Farmers Cooperative and Mid-South Farmers Cooperative, also exhibited at the popular tradeshow.
The Tennessee farmers who registered for this year’s event represented 18.4 percent of the total acreage of the state’s four major row crops — corn, cotton, soybeans, and wheat. Many of those visitors, like Hardin County farmer Brownie Ratliff, look forward to attending the field day to learn about the latest in agricultural production practices. In fact, 83-year-old Ratliff has missed only one Milan No-Till Field Day since its beginnings 31 years ago.
“I enjoy the visitation with everyone and seeing the new products and practices,” said Ratliff, a member of Hardin Farmers Cooperative. “I still learn something every time I come here — just have to open that mind up! There have been a lot of changes in my lifetime. The difference in what we’ve got today and what I did on the farm as a 10-year-old boy will blow your mind. I walked up to the 40-foot header on that combine over there and wondered what my daddy or granddaddy would think about it.”
Despite the number of repeat visitors like Ratliff, many of whom have been using no-till methods for decades, the field day organizers decided to include a “No-Till Basics” tour at this year’s event. Intended for no-till novices, the session gave an overview of no-till planter components and settings, covered weed and insect control, and demonstrated what happens when a field is worked or planted too wet.
“Every year, people come up and ask, ‘Where is the tour that can show me how to start no-tilling?’” said Richard Buntin, Crockett County UT Extension director who led the session. “Well, we haven’t had that tour in 20 years, but we decided to give it a shot this year. We’ve had bigger crowds than I expected! We take it for granted that everyone is a seasoned farmer here, but obviously there are new visitors who haven’t been around no-till and want to know exactly what it is.”
Also among the 17 research tours were sessions on crop protection, nutrient management, seed treatments, irrigation, and precision agriculture along with complementary topics such as beef cattle production, water and environmental issues, forestry and fisheries, and best practices in grain storage.
One of the most popular tours was no-till weed control in soybeans, which is a growing concern for farmers who use “Roundup Ready” seed technology. Though six weed species in Tennessee are now resistant to Roundup and its generic form, glyphosate, many farmers who attended this session were particularly concerned about Palmer pigweed, one of the most difficult to control.
“We have resistant pigweed in our fields, and it’s just awful,” said Jimmy Hester of Finley, a Gibson Farmers Cooperative member who attended the field day with sons Reed and Connor. “I’m continuously looking for ways to fight it. It’s a major problem, but it’s encouraging to see these new seed technologies and chemistries that are finally coming out to help us.”
During this session, UT researchers led tours of plots showing various weed control tactics in Roundup Ready and Liberty Link soybeans as well as soon-to-be-released systems with “dicamba + glyphosate” and “2,4-D + glyphosate” tolerance.
No matter the technology, however, using multiple modes of action and making timely herbicide applications are critical to thwarting resistance issues, stressed Matthew Wiggins, a UT plant sciences graduate student.
“These new technologies show great promise, but if we aren’t good stewards, we could end up seeing the same type of resistance we’ve seen with glyphosate,” said Wiggins. “We don’t have a silver bullet application like Roundup anymore.”
Between tours, many field day visitors participated in the “Farmers vs. Hunger” event to fulfill the goal of providing more than 14,000 meals for local food banks. In this hands-on activity staged inside the West Tennessee Agricultural Museum, several teams of community volunteers, 4-H’ers, farmers, and industry leaders, including Tennessee Agriculture Commissioner Julius Johnson, formed assembly lines to package soy protein and vitamin-enriched macaroni-and-cheese meals.
According to event organizers, nearly 18 percent of Tennessee’s population is food insecure and can’t afford enough to meet their basic needs. The meals packaged at “Farmers vs. Hunger” were distributed to food banks and food pantries throughout the local area.
“We’ve got a pretty good variety of folks working together here — some of them are farm-related, some of them aren’t,” said UT Extension’s Chuck Danehower as he helped supervise the food-packing project. “We wanted to do something to fight hunger in our area, and farmers, of course, feed America and the world. So we tied the two together.”
More food than ever before will be needed to feed a rapidly growing world population over the next few decades, said Blake Brown, and no-till can help meet that need.
“It’s been estimated that we have to produce as much food between now and 2050 as we have produced since the beginning of creation,” said Brown. “That’s a tremendous challenge, but that’s the reason I and my colleagues get up and come to work every day. We have to be able to produce more food and fiber and produce it more safely and effectively on less land and with fewer inputs. Here at Milan, we’ve had some of the best scientists in the world finding ways to meet that challenge.”
The Milan No-Till Field Day returns on Thursday, July 24, 2014. Those who weren’t able to attend this year or want more details about the research precan download the tour reports from the Milan Research and Education Center’s website at http://milan.tennessee.edu/MNTFD or call 731-686-7362.
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