No Till Notes: 'Dakota Lakes Dry Land Rotations'

I wanted to take a look at the dry land crop rotations designed for the Dakota Lakes Research farm. Dr. Dwayne Beck has given careful consideration to the rotations in place at the research farm. I think looking at his rotations may give helpful insight to designing rotations for my farm. Designing the proper crop rotation for your farm is the single most important consideration to successful no-till crop production in my opinion.

Beck has many publications that address the concepts for planning a good rotation for your individual farm. I would encourage everyone to go to the Dakota Lakes Research farm website at dakotalakes.com and proceed to Publications. I would encourage everyone to read through “The Power Behind Crop Rotations” which you will find on the contents page. This publication is a very insightful look at designing crop rotations and all the considerations required to design a good rotation for your farm.

No one can design the perfect rotation for your farm. You are the only one who understands your resources so you are the only one who can design the best crop rotation for your farm. Resources such as labor, capitol, machinery, soil type, climate and rainfall are unique to your farm so you must give careful consideration to all your resources when designing your crop rotation.

Beck uses four different rotations on his farm. There is no standard rotation as each rotation is designed to fit the resource concerns for each different part of the farm and to research the effects of carbon inputs over long periods of time.

The first rotation is a simple rotation which is used by many producers around our region. This rotation is a cool season grass which is winter wheat. The winter wheat is followed by a warm season grass; most often corn but can be milo or proso millet. The warm grass is then followed by a cool season legume; on our farm we use yellow field peas.

This simple rotation has the advantage of a limited number of crops to manage and market. This rotation also produces a fairly high amount of carbon with 66 percent of the rotation in high residue crops with the winter wheat and corn.

The disadvantage to this rotation is the limited number of crop sequence/interval combinations. All the corn is planted behind winter wheat, all the winter wheat is planted behind field pea, and all the field peas are planted behind the corn. This may eventually lead to insects and diseases becoming more of a problem because the crop sequence and intervals continue to repeat themselves.

Another rotation used on the Dakota Lakes Research farm is a winter wheat, warm season broadleaf, corn, cool season broadleaf. This rotation was designed as a low residue rotation since only 50 percent of the rotation contains high residue crops but does contain pretty high diversity with each crop type in the rotation. There is cool season grass, warm season broadleaf, warm season grass and cool season broadleaf.

Over the long term this rotation has shown the lack of carbon in the rotation to be detrimental to winter wheat yields following the cool season broadleaf. Winter wheat yields following the cool season broadleaf, with field pea or flax, are considerably less than winter wheat yields in the simple winter wheat, corn, field pea rotation. The 50 percent high residue crops is insufficient in adding carbon to the soil over the long term and results in poorer crop performance over time.

Next week, we’ll continue to look at dry land crop rotations on the Dakota Lakes Research Farm.