As we've discussed on the stock talk board in a thread discussing hormones in meat from implants, it is easier to sell someone what they want to buy rather than try to convince someone to buy what you want to sell. I am also in the Driftless area of Wisconsin. This is the organic center of the USA with Organic Valley Co-op and more organic farms than any other county in the USA. The organic farms here are smaller than in California, etc but there are more of them. If you look at food sales, "Organic" is a growing category almost everywhere. By definition, "Organic" farming does not use herbicides. Because of this Organic farming generally requires a LOT of tillage to control weeds. There are newer types of weeders such as flame or tine weeders depending on the crop. Like it or not, Organic crops, NHTC cattle, etc are a growing trend in agriculture. In our Driftless area (HEL) though tillage often means very significant erosion. That's why the first conservation program in the 1930's was contour strip cropping near Coon Valley WI along Hwy 14/61. Land owners in this area and elsewhere are looking for renters who understand their concerns about erosion and desire for more organic agriculture. I am retired from Dawn Equipment Company but remember a number of our Strip-till farmer customers, especially in hilly NE Iowa, that had land owners coming to them asking them to please rent their land and farm it like they saw the place down the road... Here's a picture from the current Dawn website that shows what Strip till can be like. It does in fact reduce fertilizer needs by concentrating fertility in the row where the plants are planted and reduces herbicide needs by maintaining a mulch between the rows. Spring strip till leaves the fall residue in place over the winter. Piling residue on top is the way nature built the soils of the midwest. Nature did not till the soil. Strip till is a compromise to meets the needs of row crops but it can be more profitable than conventional agriculture as well as showing land owners something more "regenerative" or what ever word they want to use. The new generation of land owners likes fields that look like this. I'm not trying to sell anything here, I'm trying to answer your question.
(hero-image-2 (full).png)
Attachments ---------------- hero-image-2 (full).png (105KB - 2 downloads)
|