Feeding the World - 4

By John Buckner, Progressive Farmer Contributing Editor

There's increasing pressure from the public for farmers to do more than just be good land stewards. Consumers are demanding growers embrace sustainable agriculture practices, an approach to food production that optimizes environmental health, economic profitability, and social and economic equity.

Most farmers would argue they already do. After all, their long-term prosperity depends on increasing productivity through the astute use of inputs and natural resources, while employing practices that protect the soil, water and environment.

Not surprisingly, there's no one path to sustainability. Here's how three farmers are doing it.

WHOLE-FARM APPROACH PAYS OFF

Ron Moore knows his success lies in being flexible enough to adapt with improvements built upon a solid foundation of business principles. He said farming 1,000 acres of corn and soybeans and running a feedlot help him reduce his risk in a commodity-production business, but also enable him to see more clearly the dynamics of a diversified farming system. It has also been the push he needed to experiment with variable-rate technology (VRT) to make him more efficient and profitable.

For Moore, one of the benefits of having a feedlot is the access to manure. Applying it to fields has improved his soil and kept organic matter at 3.3 to 4.1%. "We haul wet and dry manure out to our fields, and it's the reason we started grid-sampling [soil] about five years ago," he said. "We were getting high potassium (K) levels in some fields." It was also a gateway to profitability.

"With variable-rate fertilizer applications, we've maximized our fertilizer value," he continued. Moore has cut fall-applied ammonium nitrogen from 1.2 pounds per bushel per acre to as low as .8 pounds, while maintaining his goal of 200-bushel corn. He sees a 33% savings on nitrogen, and "we're not applying near the limestone we used to."

Last fall, Moore purchased a new Case IH planter and AFS Pro 700 computer control hub for precision planting and auto-guidance. He had to go through a learning curve, so he passed on the field-mapping capability and VRT this planting season. But he's enthused about auto-steer and automatic row shutoff. "We've got a lot of fields with angles and curves, so the automatic row shutoff alone has probably saved us 10 to 15 bags of seed this year," he said. "At $350 a bag, that added up."

About half his acres are no-till, defaulting to minimum till on some black gumbo soils that are hard to dry out. "Sustainability is more than just doing no-till on every acre," Moore said. He's a strong believer in having a diversified (crops and cattle) business. "It's a 'whole farm' type of operation."

OPTIMIZE PRODUCTION ON EVERY ACRE

Cotton had been king on Somerset Plantation since 1814. Jay Hardwick's wife's family acquired the land, near Newellton, in northeast Louisiana, in the 1920s and '30s, and that trend continued -- until 10 years ago, when corn became a profitable alternative crop in the Cotton Belt.

With it came a new outlook and an opportunity to do things differently. Hardwick became fixated on crop rotations and the associated benefits of increased organic matter, controlling weed and insect populations, spreading labor and equipment needs, and adding flexibility to his marketing mix.

"Crop diversity has brought in a whole different way of thinking, such as an awareness of judicious use of crop-protection inputs, fertilizer and seed rates," Hardwick said. "And now, it's time to look at the very thing that sustains us long-term, and that's the soil structure and the things that surround it."

He studies National Resources Conservation Service soil maps that are accurate down to the meter, so he can choose from a range of cultural practices and crop choices for the best agronomic match. This information is paired with cropping history and yield maps to build software prescriptions for variable-rate fertilizer applications and seeding rates using GPS technology. Hardwick enters information by field, creating soil map zones differentiated by soil types. Other factors he considers include soil test results, projected yield and removal of the previous year's crop.

Since Hardwick started variable-rate fertilizer applications, he has cut nitrogen (N) costs by 20 to 35% depending on soil type and yield potential, which he confirms with comparison strip trials.

Hardwick takes residue management seriously because the mulching effect allows crops to go another five to 10 days without water in summer heat. Residue also enhances organic matter levels. Hardwick's goal is to keep 30% or more surface residue on fields. "I can see cotton, corn and wheat residue all at once on some fields," he said. He credits grain sorghum and wheat for heavy residue that has increased his organic matter up to 3 to 4.2% in a region where 1 to 2% is normal.

Like many Delta farms, Hardwick relies on center-pivot irrigation for supplemental watering but is also exploring land-leveling and polypipe economics. He's aware that more production presents challenges to conserve resources, so he's learning how to be more efficient with application rates and surge metering.

Wildlife management plays a big part on the 20,000-acre plantation. "Our area has a substantial number of black bears, which are endangered. We have a management program for them," Jay said. His brother-in-law runs a deer- and turkey-hunting operation that's part of a bottomland hardwood timber management plan.

"It's becoming kind of a complex organization that has major components that go way beyond seed, fertilizer, equipment and personnel," he explained. "I think this is where we're going to find a tremendous amount of opportunity -- not only revenue but having a fully functioning soil and farming operation so future generations can provide food and fiber for their time."

DO WHAT'S RIGHT FOR THE LAND

Jeremy Jack farms in a botanical garden. At least that's his tongue-in-cheek assessment of what it's like to farm 8,500 acres near Belzoni, Miss. "It's one of the best places in the world to farm, but it's also one of the hardest places to farm because you basically fight weeds year-round," he said.

Jack's apparently winning the war. He was recently presented with the Bayer CropScience Young Farmer Sustainability Award for 2013 for exhibiting excellence in business and environmental sustainability. "We're looking at doing more with less -- that whole thought process," he said. His vision quest led Silent Shade Planting Company (the family farm) down the high-tech path of remote sensing and variable-rate technology (VRT), and toward creating new profit centers based around their core business of farming.

Growing from 3,000 acres four years ago, scalability presents special problems. Because of the time crunch of managing multiple crops and field-compaction worries, Jack depends on supplemental aerial applications for fertilizers, pesticides, and cotton growth regulators and defoliates. Scouting can be labor intensive in large Delta fields and only truly effective with experienced scouts. To aid their in-house agronomy staff, Silent Shade relies on remote sensing to pinpoint agronomy and pest problems, and to write VRT prescriptions on a field-by-field basis.

The process begins with aerial photographs of cotton and corn crops at particular growth stages using cameras equipped with infrared filters that pick up reflected light off the plant canopies. To contrast these aerial photos further, they are enhanced with a statistics program called a Normalized Difference Vegetative Index. This allows Jack to see differences in plant growth, measured in biomass in real numbers. "We ask ourselves, 'Is the difference caused by an N problem or maybe poor soil?' We then take it to the next step and follow up with scouting and then write a prescription."

Silent Shade recently purchased an Air Tractor AT-602 plane outfitted with a Satloc G4 aerial guidance system that runs on a Windows 7 operating system. "I can send the pilot prescriptions (from the computer) while the plane is in flight, and he can send me flight maps back in real time while the plane is flying," Jack said.

"Economics has to be the driving force of what we do; but doing what's right for the land, neighbors and wildlife is important, too," he said.

(ES/CZ )

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