In recent years I have observed a number of no-till operations that do not look as if the operators understand that there are some basic fundamentals that need to be followed to be successful. I fear these operations will get into trouble, or revert back to their comfortable position with tillage. I recommend and encourage farmers to open the above link and learn from it.
This image of Dwayne Beck, a researcher at the Dakota Lakes Research Farm near Pierre, SD, is from a presentation he gave at a meeting sponsored by the SD NO-TILL ASSOCIATION, March 11, 2019. I have had the privilege of meeting with him and listening to several presentations over the years, starting in May of 1995 at the Dakota Lakes Research Farm. I would say that Dwayne is the GURU of gurus when it comes to no-till. Back in the early 1990s, he established the basic fundamentals for successfully no-tilling and the reasoning behind them. His interest and mine are the same, --manage water better. He needed to stop soil erosion in SD, and I needed to stop soil erosion on my operation. No-tilling was key to that goal. Unlike so much information available through media, his basic fundamentals on Sanitation, Diversity, Intensity and Competition to successfully no-till works anywhere on the globe. My first trip (1995) to the research station was prompted by complaints I had using Glyphosate for weed control. My second trip was prompted by complaints I had about applying his fundamentals to my operation. The take-home message from that trip was his statement to me, "I earned my Ph.D. developing those fundamentals, now, you will earn your Ph.D. learning how to apply those fundamentals on your farm". He was so right! I knew back then that everything about farming is site-specific, but didn't think about it in this context. Soils, microclimates, topography vary across the land. I was trying to clone his Pierre SD practices for St. John WA, and that didn't work. When I adapted my practices to fit the FUNDAMENTALS, no-tilling did work. We learn our trade and tend to get stuck in our ways instead of adapting to changing conditions. Climate change and an increasing population with its political fall out are major challenges for farming, and will be more so in the future. As we move forward to a goal of sustainable production and more nutrient-dense foods with reduced commercial inputs we will have to follow "improved" fundamentals. Unfortunately, I don't know how to interpret "improved fundamentals" at this time, but I do have a blurred direction to follow.
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