Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

livingontheland - [Livingontheland] breakthrough for organic no-till corn yield

livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] breakthrough for organic no-till corn yield
  • Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2007 13:57:36 -0700


Year 2006 is breakthrough for organic no-till corn yield; tops standard
organic for first time at Rodale Institute
Roller system creates moisture-saving mulch from cover crop to suppress
weeds and build soil as it slashes fuel and labor inputs.
http://www.newfarm.org/columns/research_paul/2007/0107/notill.shtml
By Paul Hepperly, PhD; Rita Seidel, project leader; Jeff Moyer, farm
manager

Posted January 12, 2007: Harvest records show last season’s
cost-slashing, soil-building, no-till organic corn yields topped comparable
tilled organic and tilled non-organic fields here at The Rodale Institute.

Using an improved design of its no-till roller—and only a legume
cover-crop for fertility and weed management—the institute’s no-till
organic corn plots produced 160 bushels per acre (bu/a), compared to 143
bu/a for tilled organic plots.

This means the one-pass, roll/plant no-till system—with no additional
field passes until harvest—significantly out-yielded normally tilled and
cultivated organic plots that experienced eight or nine field passes
(plowing, disking, cultipacking, planting, two rotary hoe passes and two to
three cultivator passes). Yield on comparable chisel-tilled non-organic
(conventional) plots was 113 bu/a.

Figure 1: Corn yield comparisons, organic
plow till, organic no-till and conventional
chisel till, at The Rodale Institute 2006.

For full details of the system’s development here—and how it’s
spurring innovation with collaborators across the country— check out our
No-till Plus section.

For the past 15 years, TRI farm manager Jeff Moyer has been working with
Dave Wilson (resident agronomist) researchers and operations staff to
actively problem-solve and develop no-till and reduced-tillage applications
that work in our organic production systems. We continue to improve these
systems year by year. The 2006 results verified the benefits of
improvements made in the no-till system in seed placement and weed
management, giving us no-till yield superior to our normal organic system
for the first time. Plot size was about 20 acres each.

The organic no-till figures show the competitive nature of established
organic grain crops—after the required organic transition period and
using well-selected crop rotations—compared with non-organic production
systems.

One of the myths about organic agriculture is the common claim that organic
yields cannot equal those of conventional agriculture. For the past 26
years we have been growing corn and soybeans in replicated, randomized
large plots under organic and conventional farming systems. Over the long
haul, among well-managed organic and conventional systems in our trial, we
have seen that crop yields between these systems are not statistically
different.

This key result was reviewed by panels of scientific peers and published in
the highly regarded international scientific journal Bioscience (Pimentel
et al. 2005).

This year’s superior results with the “holy grail” of organic
cropping—organic no-till—show further potential to improve yield using
the innovative low-input crop system where applicable.

Support needed to improve sustainable systems

The long-term documentation from our farm’s unique living laboratory
provides results giving us the scientific platform for testing the limits
of organic production strategies.

It’s true that, in the short-term, organic transition can represent a
real management challenge to create healthy, living soil using a suitable
cropping system. The transition also requires new marketing efforts to
capitalize on new crops and crop attributes.

Despite these challenges, our studies show that, over the long run,
well-executed and entrepreneurial organic agriculture can be completely
competitive with conventional methods for yield and represents real
opportunities for conventional, sustainable and organic farmers alike.

Conventional agro-industrial food production has received virtually all
food and agricultural research support over many decades. With a jump up to
an allocated $3 million per year for the current Farm Bill, organic is
still less 1 percent of the pie. We believe that with additional research
and attention, organic agriculture will surpass the productivity of
high-input agriculture.

Research, demonstration and field production at The Rodale Institute are
yielding important activities to improve our agriculture and food systems.
Imagine the potential of a more broadly supported initiative.






  • [Livingontheland] breakthrough for organic no-till corn yield, TradingPostPaul, 01/14/2007

Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page