No till notes: 'Chadron State College classroom chat'

Last week, I had the pleasure of speaking to Ron Bolze’s students at Chadron State College. Bolze invited me to speak to his farm and ranch management class.

I really enjoyed getting back in the classroom to visit with tomorrow’s leaders in agriculture. The students were very interested in my topic of conservation agriculture and how we can work towards adopting conservation agricultural systems to produce food, fiber and fuel.

I really think the next generation is more focused on their environment and see the long-term benefits of adopting conservation farming practices to produce their crops. I also think the next generation of consumers is also more in tune with how their food is being grown and protecting the environment will be a key concern.

In my opinion, the next generation of producers will be far more aware of protecting their natural resources – especially soil and water. They will adopt conservation agricultural practices as a means of protecting and preserving these resources. The future looks bright for these future farmers and ranchers.

I spoke to the class about our adoption of no-till farming practices almost 25 years ago. I also told them that along the way we have realized that simply adopting no-till was not enough to truly improve the soil that we work with. I talked to the class about other practices that need to be included besides no-till to truly move towards a conservation agricultural system.

My presentation to the students was similar to the steps I talked about the last few articles that Rattan Lal used to define conservation agriculture. I spoke about adopting no-till practices of minimal soil disturbance and leaving the previous crop’s residues attached and on the soil surface.

I also spoke about the adoption of diverse cropping rotations to break up persistent weed and disease cycles. Additionally, I emphasized that diverse rotations promote diverse and higher populations of soil microbes. I explained that the inclusion of diverse forage mixtures into our irrigated and dry land acres is another method to improve soil health even further than diverse crop rotations.

Water conservation is of primary importance on my list of practices that make up a conservation agricultural system. In our area, water conservation is critically important in managing our water resources. Over the years of irrigation in our area, we have depleted our groundwater resource and we will have to learn to produce our crops with less water to stabilize our declining groundwater resource.

With the adoption of conservation agricultural practices I think we can produce profitable crops and stabilize our groundwater resource. On our farm, we have focused on improving the health of our soil, utilized a diverse cropping rotation including low water use crops and soil moisture monitoring to lower our groundwater pumping requirements. I am convinced this is a model for stabilizing our groundwater resource.

I want to thank Bolze and his students for inviting me to their classroom. I really enjoyed talking to the young men and women about the future of agriculture in our area. I hope they had as much fun

listening to my presentation as I had giving it.

As far as the next few weeks are concerned, it’s all systems go for my knee replacement surgery. As much as I hate the thought of surgery, I’m really looking forward to having a new knee. My other new knee is much better than the old worn out one I replaced.

When I get back on my feet, I’ll look forward to our next visit.