No Till Notes: 'Friends and mentors'

I’m on my way to Salina, Kan. to speak at and attend the annual No-till on the Plains winter conference. I always look forward to visiting with old friends and mentors at this conference. I’ve been going to this conference every year for the past 10 years and I always look forward to another learning experience.

I’m part of this year’s program and I’ll work with 3 other producers around this region giving 40 tips on no-till crop production techniques in a 50 minute program. Hopefully our talk will be well received by the audience and will provide some insight into no-till crop production for those who attend our session.

I’ll spend most of my time in Salina listening. I’ll spend the 3 days of the conference attending as many sessions as time allows listening to some of the most innovative producers and researchers on a wide range of topics in no-till crop production. I’ll spend the evenings visiting with and listening to the other speakers at this year’s conference. The other speakers will again give me insights into soil health and no-till crop production systems which I can bring home and adapt to our farm.

I read in the January issue of Nebraska Farmer magazine that Nebraska now has over 9 million acres of irrigated cropland. If this trend continues, we’ll pass the 10 million acre milestone by 2023. We are already the number one state in irrigated acres nationwide having surpassed California’s irrigated acres total.

Some of this development has been the conversion of dry land acres to irrigated acres. A good portion of the growth has come at the expense of pastureland. This is a growing concern in the cattle industry as acres for grazing cattle are diminishing.

I think my trip to Salina and other no-till crop production meetings I’ll be attending this winter will provide the answer to how we sustain our irrigated acres in our state without depleting our groundwater resource. I also think no-till crop production producers and researchers will also help with restoring grazing acres for cattle production.

Soil health is always a major theme of discussion at these winter conferences.  I think improving soil health and leaving previous crop’s residues on the soil surface will go a long way in reducing the amount of irrigation water required to produce crops on our 9 million acres of irrigated cropland.

I also think a focus on improving soil health will lead to more forages being grown for cattle grazing on our cropland acres. This could prove to be a key component to replacing the acres of pastureland lost to irrigated crop production.

While I’m attending the no-till conference in Salina, Kan. I’ll be listening to old friends and mentors as they talk to me and their audience about improving soil health and improving water management using no-till crop production systems. I’ll be thinking of our farms here in Nebraska and how we’ll adapt these systems onto our farms to help us improve the soil we work with to conserve our soil and water resources.