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2003
Table of Contents |
Broughton Land Company is a family owned farm in Columbia County. The farm was started by Charles Broughton in the 1880’s. Over the past 120 years, the Broughton family has steadily acquired land. They have rangeland, timberland and currently farm about 12,000 acres of dry land in Columbia County. The average rainfall for Dayton is 19” per year. They have farmland that ranges from 15 to 25 inches of rainfall per year. I have been asked talk about the intermediate rainfall zone of 16 to 20 inches per year.
Soils:
The soils on their farm are predominantly Athena Silt loams, with a touch of
Walla Walla soils in the lighter areas and Palouse in the higher rainfall areas.
The soil depth is considered deep on most of the land, with the average depth
of over 6 feet.
Rotation:
Today, the farm is almost entirely in crop every year. Less than 10% of the
farmland is currently on a chemical fallow rotation schedule. The reason we
use the chemical fallow is that it has been too dry over the past few winters
to store enough water to justify continuous cropping in our drier areas. Our
main rotation is a three-year rotation, winter wheat/ spring grain/spring grain
or legumes. We have a small portion of our land in a four-year rotation. The
four-year rotation consists of two back-to- back winter wheat crops/ spring
grain/ spring grain or legumes. We have one farm in the higher rainfall that
is in continuous winter wheat; it has had winter wheat after winter wheat grown
on it for the past 10 years.
Our preferred rotation is the 3-year. rotation. We use this mix of rotations to spread out our workload. By having the 4-year and continuous winter wheat rotation, we have about 50% of our land in winter wheat and the other 50% is planted to spring crops. If we used a straight 3-year rotation, we would have about two-thirds of our land, or around 8,000 acres of spring crops to plant each year. With the equipment we have, it is difficult to plant that much of our land in a timely manner each spring. If we were in a straight 3-yr rotation, I would need more equipment and manpower to pull it off. We have elected not to make that investment as of yet.
Current Planting
Method:
We are currently using a two-pass system to plant almost all of our crops. By
a two- pass system, I mean we use a shanked fertilizer applicator prior to seeding
to inject our pre-plant fertilizer, and then we seed directly behind that operation
with minimum or no-till drills.
Prior to Direct
Seeding:
Prior to converting to direct seeding with the two-pass system, Broughton Land
Co. used conventional tillage with mainly a two-year rotation. Half of the land
was in winter wheat and the other half was mainly summer fallow and to a lesser
extent, peas. They had a crew that worked summer fallow land all summer until
planting. Soil erosion, weed problems and getting the work done on time were
challenges. Most of the farms had a maze of strips to help reduce soil erosion.
Broughton slowly started doing more annual cropping with tillage, to help reduce erosion. The annual cropping was a big help on erosion. The time window after harvest to get the ground worked and new crop planted was overwhelming. The fields would be disked or plowed, cultivated, fertilized, then cultivated again and finally seeded. Usually it took five trips across a field to get it planted into a questionable seedbed. Most crops were seeded either too early or too late. Also, the tillage operations used to work the residue from the previous crop into a seedbed pulverized the soil and reduced water infiltration. The rains that came, mostly evaporated during the winter since our infiltration rate was so slow in the over-worked ground. It took an above average rainfall year, just to get to an average crop.
Broughton slowly tried no-till; in fact they owned a John Deere 750 no-till drill for several years. They have had a lot of custom seeding done by the latest no-till drills. Today, they have settled on the two-pass system
Why Two Pass:
The most important resource to Broughton is rainfall. Our goal is to turn every
drop of rain into bushels of something. On the average, we get enough rain to
grow our crops at a profit, as long as we are efficient and timely in our operations.
With the two-pass system, we are for the most part, meeting those qualifications.
Currently, we prefer the two-pass system to the one-pass system that fertilizes
and seeds in one pass. The reason being, I have not found a one-pass drill that
does a good job of fertilizing and seeding our various field conditions and
crops. I can do a better job with a two-pass system.
We also like the two-pass system because it spreads out our workload . It lets us start our work early before the planting season. It lets us use a wider, lighter, good quality fertilizer applicator to inject fertilizer prior to planting. It lets my employees concentrate on doing a good job of fertilizing and adjusting to the field conditions at their pace. We can cover a lot of acres per day and usually keep ahead of the seeding window for our fields.
The two-pass system lets us use wider, lighter drills to plant. I feel that I can control the seed depth better and adjust to field conditions better. We can cover a lot of acres per day during the ideal seeding window. It lets my people concentrate on just doing a good job of seeding.
The two-pass system or direct seed system has virtually eliminated soil erosion on our land. It lets us store virtually every drop of the water that Mother Nature gives us. It has allowed us to farm our fields as units, instead of strip cropping. We now have fields that are 600 to 1000 acres in size. Our fields are generally all planted to the same crop. They only have the field border that the weeds can infest. With the strip system, we had miles of borders inside our fields that would get infested with weeds.
Our soil quality has improved dramatically for water infiltration. We recorded a rain a couple of years ago that was raining at a rate of 5” per hour. It only rained 15 minutes and we received 1.25 inches rain. No water left the field. If this field had been in conventional tillage, the infiltration rate would be more like .5 to1inch per hour. We would have had a gulley washer. This improved water infiltration has allowed us to work our fields earlier in the season, which has improved our timeliness dramatically. In fact we can get a .5” rain over night and start working in the field the following afternoon. One of our biggest challenges has been getting our spray trucks and fertilizer trucks into the field after a rain. The field can be dry enough to run in, but we cannot get into the field because the roads are too wet. We have been building new roads and graveling them to avoid this problem. The gravel has also stopped our roads from eroding. The two-pass system makes us very efficient by maximizing our equipment and manpower.
Direct seeding operation and Equipment
Seeding spring
crops:
Our operation generally consists of two pre-plant sprayings to control weeds
and volunteer crops. It also breaks up the green bridge between crops. We try
to spray every acre in the fall and spring prior to planting with a non-selective
herbicide. Our plan is to avoid any residual herbicides at anytime. We then
pull a shank applicator on 12” spacing to inject fertilizer at least 6”
deep in the spring. The idea is to put the fertilizer in a zone that will stay
moist during the life of the crop, but will also be available to the crop soon
after germination. We have settled on this 6” depth to accomplish that
goal.
We do all of the fertilizing
pre-plant; we do not use a starter fertilizer with our drills. I am convinced
that the loss in seeding efficiency and extra expense does not justify starter
fertilizer in our operation. In my opinion, the expense of extra manpower and
equipment, the amount of equipment deterioration and the extra time spent in
dealing with this operation, far out-weigh any benefits.
We try to work the fields according to the crop that will be planted. We try
to plant all of our spring wheat varieties first, because of the longer growing
season requirement. We then plant our fields that will grow spring barley, because
it has a shorter growing season. Finally, we plant the legumes, because they
have shortest growing season of all.
Soon after we get the fertilizer in the ground, we start planting. We attempt to get good seed-to-soil contact, and a uniform stand. Our seeding operation is a frustrating art and sometimes it is just plan luck.
Seeding fall crops:
Our fall crops are mainly winter wheat. Most of the winter wheat is seeded after
a legume or a spring grain crop and it is fairly simple. We will spray a pre-plant
non-selective herbicide, if we have the opportunity, and then just shank and
seed. One of our biggest problems is being able to see our mark in the field
while seeding into standing stubble. Also, trying to achieve good seed-to-soil
contact can be difficult. In anticipation of the fall and winter rains, we error
on the shallow side for seed depth.
Fertilizer:
Since we began using our two-pass system, our fertilizer needs have gone up.
I have been told that the added organic material returned to the soil, will
in time, release more nutrients, but we have not seen that yet. We do soil tests
on all of our fields prior to planting. We then fertilize for the yield as calculated.
We keep our yield goals realistically high, in hopes of good moisture.
Efficiency:
We start every year with a plan that covers all of the acres that need to be
planted and harvested that year. We do the bulk of the fieldwork with 4 big
tractors and 4 men. We can run as many as four big sprayers to apply our pre-plant
herbicides prior to planting. We then start two fertilizer applicators to cover
all the fields that will be planted to spring grain. Shortly after that we will
start seeding. We have two minimum-till drills and a JD 455 for seeding our
lighter residue land. We also have a Krause 5400 no-till drill to use on our
land that has a heavier residue. We do not yet have the drills that I would
like to have. I want a drill that can maintain uniform depth of seed in high
residue. It should have the ability to get good seed-to-soil contact in high
residue. The best we can manage right now is about 50% of that goal in high
residue with our current drills.
After seeding, we do a lot of praying that we have adequate stands of grain. Once we know that we have an adequate stand, we do a lot of praying for rain.
Economics:
It is difficult to compare our cost of doing business in today system versus
prior to direct seeding. With nearly acre planted every year and all the inputs
that go into the crops are expenses are way up compared to the era before direct
seeding. Our long term bottom line is about the same now as it was before. In
stead of having pretty predictable yields with a summer fallow system by saving
two years moisture for one crop, we are now relying solely on how much rain
we receive each year for yield. On wetter than normal years we do great and
on lower than average years we don’t do so great. On average rain fall
years we are doing about our long term average.
We run fewer tractors today than before, but newer tractors can do so much more work today than 10 years ago. We are geared up to cut all our acres with 4 class seven combines. We would have less combines if we were still in the conventional system. We have a little less man power today than we did 10 years ago. We have reduced our equipment inventory and our repair bills are about the same.
The economics of saving
our soil is the biggest benefit. We have like I said earlier eliminated soil
erosion. If we can put a value on that and what it will mean in the future it
should be a huge benefit, environmentally and economically. But it is hard to
go to the banker and get a loan on it.
Problems:
Our biggest frustration is too much residue. Our goal is to grow good crops.
When we do, it is great at harvest time. Then the problem begins of how best
to re-seed again in a short time frame. As a rule, we can handle 70-bushel stubble
or about 7000 lbs. of residue per acre, as long as it is short stubble. Long
straw is a disaster to our two-pass system because of the shank-type applicator
we use to inject fertilizer. We have learned to cut our crops closer to the
ground to make the residue as short as possible. We are trying different varieties
of crops, which produce shorter straw residue. The problem with this is the
best yielding varieties, which are my favorites; tend to be the taller types.
Also you cannot out-guess Mother Nature, some years the growing conditions are
good enough to produce large amounts of residue even though you try to avoid
it.
We are learning that our best residue management tool is our combine. We have excellent straw coppers and excellent spreaders on our combines. I have been amazed at how much residue we can get through with our fertilizer applicators and grain drills. One of our direct seeding problems is seeing our mark in the field with the grain drills. At times, it is just a guess whether you are on the mark or not. Needless to say, we do have skips in our fields, but I am very proud of our crew for keeping them small and to a minimum.
Another problem is good seed-to-soil contact. I have yet to be satisfied with our stands in higher residue. Looks are not everything in direct seeding; in fact you had better get use to having some ugly, poor stands in parts of your field. We always seem to start out with a thin spindly stand, but it continues to improve over the course of the growing season. It is a good thing we grow forgiving crops like wheat and barley. They have the ability to compensate for weak stands. If we were counting on a crop that required a high percentage of uniform stand establishment, we would be in trouble.
So far, our yields have been close to what we expected with the amount of rain that the crop received. In fact, we have had some exceptional crops because of good stand establishment and the extra water we have stored from using the direct seeding system. Sometimes, almost too successful by having some fields that averaged over 100 bushel per acre. We have a yield monitor on one of our combines, and when a field averages over 100 bu/ac, some of the field will make 50-to 70 bu range, other parts will be up to 150 bu/ac. This causes a problem for residue management.
I am disappointed to say that we still have to use field burning as a management tool to control high amounts of residue. We have made great strides in reducing the amount of acres burned by learning how to plant into higher and higher amounts of residue.
Plans for the Future:
Next spring we are going to reverse our 3-year rotation. Instead of winter wheat/
spring grain/ legume, we are going to try winter wheat/ legume/ spring grain.
Our problem has always been trying to seed early in the spring into the high
residue from the previous winter wheat crop. It is especially hard to do with
a small sized seed crop like wheat or barley. The straw is wet and the ground
is soft, so most of the time you are just punching wet straw into the ground.
If the seed goes through the straw, it is either too deep or the straw throws
the seed back on top of the ground.
We hope that by planting larger seeded legumes into the higher residue, we can
plant deeper and achieve a good seed-to-soil contact. Since legumes are seeded
later, the straw should be dryer and more brittle, and the ground should be
firmer. Our hope is that the drills will be able to cut or slice more straw
and get better seed-to-soil contact.
Our spring grain crops will be planted behind legume residue, which is very
low residue. It should be a lot easier to get a good stand. We should be able
to get on the ground earlier and get great seed-to soil-contact.
After a spring grain crop, we will then plant it back with winter wheat. The spring grain stubble should be in the 70-bushel range and this amount of residue has been manageable for seeding in the past. Our plan is to keep using the direct seed system and hopefully, be able to eliminate field burning as a residue management tool. Wish us luck.
From Industry we
need:
High yielding varieties of grain that have less straw.
Grain varieties that are shorter
Grain varieties that emerges well
Pea varieties that are taller and stand up well
Seeding equipment that maintains good down pressure and cuts into higher residue
Seeding equipment that holds up under this heavier work load
Larger seed from seed suppliers
More chemistry from chemical suppliers to avoid resistance
More GPS and guidance systems to help us guide our equipment blind-folded
 Contact
us: Hans Kok, (208)885-5971
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