No Till Notes: 'Irwin Demonstration Farm'

One of the pleasures of traveling to the various winter conference meetings and summer field days I attend is getting introduced to some real innovative producers and researchers who strive to really make a difference in modern production agriculture. Last week, I visited about our tour to Dakota Lakes Research Farm near Pierre, S.D., and the Burleigh County Soil Conservation District, in Bismarck, N.D.

Dwayne Beck, farm manager for Dakota Lakes, and Jay Furher, head of the Burleigh County Soil Conservation District, are two of the innovative thinkers who are devoting their careers to making a difference in production agriculture. Their innovative thinking has changed the landscape of modern production agriculture in our High Plains region.

Jim and Jacci Irwin, lifelong producers in Alliance, Neb., are also striving to make a difference in agriculture in our region. Jim and Jacci accompanied us this past summer on our tour to Dakota Lakes and Burleigh County. They came away very impressed with the soil health concepts being initiated on the farms and ranches we toured on our trip.

On numerous occasions, Jim and Jacci have told me how impressed they were with the systems approach to modern agriculture being used on the farms and ranches we toured. Producers in these areas to our north are striving to treat their operations as a whole ecosystem. They produce cash crops and forages for grazing as part of a systems approach to improving soil health. As their soils recover and become healthier, their yields go up and their production costs go down resulting in increased profitability for their operations.

Jim and Jacci were very impressed with the lack of bare soil on our tour. The fields we drove past in this region are all producing crops and forages using continuous no till crop production practices. Every acre is planted to crops or forage with no bare soil exposed on these farms and ranches. Mother Nature never intended the soil to be bare of plant life. These producers are mimicking Mother Nature to the best of their abilities while producing crops and forages.

Jim and Jacci decided to come home and see if they could also make a difference. They have generously offered part of their farmland to be used as a demonstration farm to see what the possibilities of improving soil health might be in our corner of the world. The Irwin’s approached the Panhandle No-till Partnership with the idea of creating a soil health demonstration farm near Alliance. The demonstration farm will be located along Highway 87 on the north edge of Alliance. The land for the demonstration farm consists of approximately 27 acres. The 27 acres is divided into two separate fields.The north field will be farmed in the traditional winter wheat/summer fallow cropping system. The south field will be farmed in a continuous no-till crop and forage production system.

After meetings between the PNTP and the Irwins, we have reached a consensus on how to approach a soil health demonstration farm for our area. Our plan is take numerous soil tests from each field to use as a reference point as we move ahead.Standard soil tests will be taken for each field as well as soil microbial tests. The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) staff in our area will also conduct a set of tests for the soil’s physical characteristics such as water infiltration rates and aggregate stability. These tests will give us a starting point to see how the soil responds to the different management strategies of the two fields.

Our goal on the continuous no-till production field will be to introduce diversity into the system. We will attempt to have a living root growing in the soil for as much of the growing season as possible with diverse forage mixtures in combination with cash crops. We plan to have the forages grazed with livestock to produce economic value to the forage part of the crop rotation. We want to build a production model for the farm that will increase the soil health of the demonstration field. We also want to develop a production model that can be adopted on farms in our region that will not only improve the soil health, but also the profitability of the farms who adopt similar production practices.

I want to thank Jim and Jacci Irwin for their innovative thinking and willingness to share a portion of their farm for the soil health demonstration farm. I think it will be very interesting to see how the management practices will improve soil health.