WHY WE STILL FALLOW

      Why do we still have fallow in our farming system when we have the equipment to direct seed was, in essence,  the question I received from a recent post.  We have no conventional tilled fallow, but do have chemical fallow.  
       I've concluded the short answer is TRADITION.  It's part of my family culture. There are plenty of university studies indicating how poor the moisture efficiency is with fallow, and how destructive fallow is to our economic base (the soil), and to the environment, however, we have learned to farm with it, getting good yields, and that is a comfort level of it's own.
      There is no question in my mind that, for the future, we would be better off if we broke tradition and looked at building up our soil health instead of continually farming it into oblivion as we have for the past 100 plus years.  That; however, puts us into the realm of the unknown, associated with higher risk.   Our forefathers used cover crops to a certain extent, but never to the extent of soil sustainability.  Sweet clover was planted for nitrogen, then ploughed down.  Many operations rotated cattle or sheep onto crop ground and seeded pasture, but those "soil building" attempts were negated by grazing those fields into the dirt.  As time went on, cattle left most of the operations, ground  has been consolidated, and transitioned into a monoculture of wheat.  The little our forefathers did understand about soil health and the role of cover crops was hampered by the equipment available.  To build soil health we have to remove our traditional fallow practice, and introduce more diversity of crop cultivars.  We will probably need to introduce cover crops to help with that diversity.  Chem fallow is a no-brainer for those of us that have been doing it for a couple of decades, but even that "conservation practice" is used by a small minority of the community as a whole.  I'm seeing more delayed tillage where the first one or two operations are application of chemistry, then tillage follows before planting.  This has morf'd, in some cases, into the two pass system (or 3-4).  That looks risky to me, but I've seen some pretty nice crops develop from that system.  It's all about moisture and it's timing.
      Even the mention of introducing cover crops leave people walking away shaking their heads.  It's just too risky.
      The next step for our operation to reach the goal of no fallow will probably be Green Fallow, --and that may be as far as we wish to go.  I'm starting to see where the "fallow" period my be the staging for the next cash crop.  The "fallow" will be planted with a diverse (designed plan) mix of cultivars that will bio-drill, add root mass, add nitrogen (if needed), and scavenge nutrients from the depths of the soil profile.  I'm reading where most (or all) the plants nutrition comes from the top 18" of the profile, and roots drive deeper for the purpose of accessing moisture.  If this proves out, we need to rethink how and when we apply nutrients in the short run, and plant appropriate cultivars to replace commercial fertilizer in the long run.