- [Dr. Duzy] I don't have a
demonstration, unfortunately,
because it is the last
presentation of the day
and it has economics in it.
So that always makes people happy.
But I do talk fast so I'm
going to try to stay on time,
40 slides in approximately 20 minutes.
So I talk fast, so let's hang
on and we'll see how we do.
Like Kip said, I'm with
the National Soil Dynamics Lab in Auburn.
We're on campus if you don't
know a lot about our lab.
I'm part of the conservation
systems research group.
There's four of us on that team.
Dr. Balkcom is one of
those, he's an agronomist.
I'm an economist.
We have Andrew Price, who
is a plant physiologist.
And Ted Kornecki, who's an engineer.
We work as an interdisciplinary team
to look at conservation systems
specifically in Alabama,
but hopefully applicable
to the whole Southeast.
So why are we talking
about conservation systems?
Who wants their field to look like this?
Anybody?
Has anybody seen this kind of field?
Yeah, so we don't
particularly want our fields
to look like this, but it can happen,
especially when you have no
cover in the winter maybe.
I think there's some crops growing,
but I think that's residue out there.
In the winter when we have heavy rainfall,
like everybody's talked about,
sometimes you can get run off
and if you don't have cover
out there you may end up with
something that looks like this,
and we don't want that.
Because what's gonna happen over time?
Your productivity is gonna go where?
- [Audience] Go down.
- [Dr. Duzy] Down, and so we don't want that.
We wanna maintain our productivity
so we wanna keep our
soil where it belongs,
and that's in the field.
David set me up perfectly
to go into my presentation,
which is great.
Although I consider myself
a conservation salesperson
because I have to tell you
how much it's going to cost
you to do a conservation
and what the benefits
are going to be to that.
And hopefully it comes
out in the positive.
There are four main questions
we're gonna talk about.
What is a conservation system?
Are conservation systems
being used in Alabama?
Luckily we have a data source now
that can help us answer that question.
Why adopt a conservation system?
And what does our research say at the lab?
I'm gonna give you two examples.
There are a lot more, but that means
I would talk for the whole day.
And I know you don't wanna
listen to me for the whole day.
What is a conservation system?
For us, when we do our research we assume
that a conservation system
is conservation tillage;
that we're gonna maintain crop
residues on the soil surface.
We know that under some
circumstances no-till
is not always the best option,
that you're going to need to use
a little bit of minimum tillage,
whether that's through strip-till
or a fall or spring para-till,
that maybe that's the best option,
but it's still considered
conservation tillage.
Also we include a cover crop
in our conservation systems.
Most of our research is dealing
with rye and crimson clover.
We do have some research
dealing with other cover crops.
Our main goal is to keep the soil covered.
Exactly like David said,
we want the soil covered.
And I know we're...
This is the corn and wheat
conference, or short course.
So wheat, is it keeping it covered
in the winter through a commodity crop.
So why do we need to adopt a
conservation system in Alabama?
And these are things we've
already talked about a lot.
We have highly weathered soils,
we have high rainfall,
especially in the winter.
We have high temperatures,
we have high humidity.
So as his demonstration
here is showing wonderfully,
we have low soil organic matters.
So we wanna try to raise
our soil organic matter up.
Excuse me, this would probably be easier
than me pointing at the screen.
So this state, in the 2012
Census of Agriculture,
I don't know how many of you all
filled that out that are producers.
One of the questions that
they asked that hadn't
been asked before was about
conservation on your land,
specifically related to
tillage and cover crops.
And this is a lot of numbers,
and I'm gonna go through it quickly.
We have about 2.8 million
acres of cropland in Alabama.
Not harvested cropland, that's cropland.
So that includes pasture and grazing land.
It could be used for cropland,
that includes land and cover crops.
That includes idle land,
that includes more than just
your harvested cropland.
So that's cropland.
According to the census we have about
380,000 acres in conventional tillage.
That's 14% of cropland.
We have about 312,000 acres
in conservation tillage,
excluding no-till.
If you look at the
definitions in the census,
no-till is not just no-till.
It's actually defined as
no-till and strip-till.
So that's something to keep in mind,
especially as you're
filling out the census.
It's important to read the
definitions to make sure
you understand the questions.
That's about 11% of cropland.
According to the census we
have almost 710,000 acres
of conservation tillage no-till,
but I like to say no-till and strip-till.
That's about 26% of our cropland
acres in Alabama that are,
according to the census,
in no-till and strip-till.
Then we have almost 200,000
acres of cover crops.
That's about 7% of the cropland acres.
I like to consider this the benchmark.
This is the baseline for us.
We don't really have this data
coming from the census prior to 2012,
so going into the next
census it's going to be
interesting to see how
those numbers have changed,
and that's great information
that's being provided
by the census that we
haven't really had before
at the state level.
Just a little, I could stand here
and talk about this data all day.
I'm very excited about it because
it does provide us with more information.
This is based on North American
Industry Classification System, NAICS.
I kind of combined some of them together.
There isn't one called specialty crops,
but that's horticulture, floriculture,
all of the non-traditional
commodity crops.
So you have oilseed/grain,
specialty crops, cotton,
all other crops includes
peanuts, hay, sugarcane.
And then you have livestock.
I just grouped all the livestock together.
So here for oilseed and
grain we have about,
for the operations that are considered
oilseed/grain farms we
have about 650,000 acres.
8.5% of those are in cover crops.
So as you can see, the specialty crops,
almost 11% of those acres,
there aren't that many in Alabama,
this is for Alabama, not for the U.S.,
there is only about 100,000 acres
that fall in that category in Alabama,
and 11% of those are
in cover crops.
So you can see where the majority
of our cover crops are located.
Cotton we have about 11,
almost 10.5% in cover crops.
So this is just good information
so that we at the lab
can understand how conservation systems
are being applied on the land
and who's adopting those.
So why adopt a conservation system?
In my prior life, I have
something in common with David,
I worked for NRCS for seven years.
And one of the things we talked about was
how do we get people
to adopt conservation?
And sometimes it can be very difficult.
There are a lot of reasons why
people don't adopt conservation.
And one of those is how much it costs.
What does it cost for me
to adopt conservation?
Because a lot of the
benefits that we receive
from conservation are
not recognized right now,
not in the short-term.
They're long-term benefits.
You may have to wait a few years
before you actually see
the benefit of that.
So I'm gonna talk about, briefly,
what are the environmental benefits
and the economic benefits,
how much does it cost to
do a conservation system
as we define it in our research,
and how does it fit into
your current rotation?
So David touched on some of these.
These are the environmental benefits
to a conservation system.
Obviously controlling soil
erosion and reducing runoff.
The first pictures were
demonstrating of that.
We would like to keep
the soil on the land.
That's one of the main reasons.
Also increasing crop residue.
We want to increase soil organic matter.
And like we've talked
about rainfall a lot,
we've talked about irrigation.
We want to absorb that rainfall impact.
We want to improve soil quality.
I'm gonna go into these
in a little more depth
in a few slides over.
Also increase plant available
water, that's very important.
Through conservation systems
we can increase plant available water.
Improve water infiltration.
Also reduce yield variability.
So even in years where
you have low yields,
if you can decrease your yield
variability in your field
then you're gonna make
more money on that field.
So by reducing yield variability
through conservation systems
you can reduce your risk.
So increasing plant available water,
this increases the efficiency
of a rain or irrigation event.
We've talked a lot about
irrigation this afternoon,
and so by using a conservation system
in conjunction with your irrigation
you can increase the efficiency
of that irrigation event.
Plus you can potentially
lower your water requirements.
Which, what happens when we
lower our water requirements?
We save money, right?
So we're all about saving
money because if we save money
we can increase your profitability.
We increase the bottom line.
And we also need to
preserve water resources.
We do get a lot of rain in the winter,
but at some point we may
be at a place where we...
It may change, and we don't know that.
And so we wanna make sure that right now
we preserve those water
resources going into the future,
and ultimately lower our production costs
because that in the end
is the most important.
This is just a demonstration
of rainfall variability.
This is Alabama.
This data is from E.V.
Smith, which is the star.
This is 63 years of
data, of rainfall data.
I started at days since March the 1st,
so this would be March the 1st,
so this would be April, May,
June, July, through December.
So you can see the gray lines
are the 63 years of data.
The black line is the 63-year normal.
The red line is 2009, so that's what...
The cumulative rainfall was what, 50,
almost 55 inches of rain
in 270 days.
And down here we have 2011 and 2010,
and they're about the same at the end,
but you notice when did you get the rain?
Dr. Ortiz and I were
just talking about this.
It's when you get the rain.
So how was the rainfall distributed?
We had a huge rain event right here,
what's that, five inches of
rain in a period of a day?
What does that do to your field
and to your crop?
So we wanna be able to
help infiltrate that water,
and through a conservation
system we can do this.
And this variability, so here you have
up here 70 inches of rain.
I'm not sure, I think this was in the 70s.
I'm not positive on that,
but you can see the yield variability
that exists at this one
location in Alabama.
Not yield variability.
I'm sorry, it's late.
Rainfall variability.
I'm tired, too.
So I want to go into a little bit
of the benefits of cover crops.
David touched on this a little bit,
but I'm gonna go through it
because I just want to go over them.
Improve soil quality.
So increase soil organic
matter, and I'm repeating this
because
it tends to sink in, I guess.
Reduced soil erosion, improve
soil structure and quality,
improve soil fertility, down here.
The ones in orange are ones
that we can kind of quantify.
As an economist, it's
sometimes hard to put a value
on every benefit of a conservation system.
So we know that conservation
systems cover crops
have a lot of benefits,
but being able to put a value
on every single one of those
is not always the easiest thing.
But we can put a value
on supplying nitrogen
and improving fertilizer use efficiency.
Excuse me.
Also reducing pest
problems, suppressing weeds.
If you use a cover crop and
you have to use less herbicide,
that has an economic value to it.
The same with reducing diseases
and reducing nematodes.
Other benefits may be
a reduction in labor.
If you go from four passes
with a tillage implement
to no passes with a tillage implement,
it's saving you time and
it's saving you money,
if you can maintain your yields,
and that's always the question.
Reducing fuel use, with prices going down
people tend to forget about that
but we know what prices were for fuel,
so it's extremely important.
Reducing land prep costs.
Somebody asked a question about fallow,
and I think it was you David,
was talking about have
you seen a producer say
well I've got cover out
there, I've got weeds.
Getting rid of those weeds has a cost.
So when you're thinking
about using a cover crop
you're saying well that cover
crop is gonna cost me money,
and it's gonna cost me time.
Well, so is fallow
because you still have to
get rid of those weeds,
and dependent on the
severity of your weeds
you then have to control,
you have to account for that.
Also reducing irrigation requirements
and improving water quality.
You can put a value on water quality.
It's even easier when
you have a regulation,
but I didn't make it
orange because I don't,
I just try to stay away from it. (laughs)
Some of the costs of converting
to a conservation system,
you may need new or
modified tillage equipment.
If you're doing some sort of
strip-till or minimum tillage.
Also planting equipment,
you may need to modify
your planter to deal with high residue,
and you'll see why that's
important in just a minute.
Also the cover crop establishment
and termination is gonna be a cost.
There may be a learning curve for managing
high residue cover crops,
and when we talk about
high residue cover crops
we're talking about more
than 4,000 pounds an acre.
That's what we consider a
high residue cover crop.
So there may be a learning curve
of dealing with that much residue.
Limited experience with
conservation tillage
and/or cover crops.
Also there may be a
change in chemical use.
It could be an increase,
it could be a decrease,
depending on how well your cover crops
do at suppressing those weeds.
We hope it's a decrease in herbicide costs
because you are suppressing those weeds.
We talked a lot about seeding rates.
There may need to be an
increase in seeding rates.
We have a lot of really great
information that comes out of the lab,
especially in the form of fact sheets.
And they're all available on our website,
and I'll give you that website at the end.
So if you're not familiar with our lab
or what our website is
you can go and get this.
This is one of the fact sheets we have
on modifying in-row
subsoilers and planters
for a high residue system.
And it just gives you an idea of what some
of the options are for
modifying your current equipment
so that you can move
into this kind of system.
Also, the cost of cover
crops include establishment,
labor, seed, planting, and fertilizer.
My dad's a farmer and
sometimes when I talk to him
about the cost, what
it's costing him to do
whatever he's doing he says
well the seed is costing me $20.00.
I'm like so is that what
it's costing you to do that?
And he's like yes.
I'm like well what about your time?
What about my time?
He's like I'm out there doing it anyway.
Well, it still costs you money.
Your time is valuable,
especially as a producer,
because you could be doing something else.
So always include, when
you're thinking about the cost
of doing something, I always include labor
because it's costing you money.
You can either hire somebody to do it
or you can do it yourself.
Also termination, we use chemical
and mechanical termination.
There was a picture of a roller
in the previous presentation.
Dr. Kornecki has worked a
lot with rollers at the lab,
and so we use a chemical termination
with glyphosate traditionally,
and then a mechanical
termination with the roller.
So it's rolled fat, and you can see that.
This is cotton, but you can see that...
I think it's cotton, might be peanuts.
You can see the black oats rolled down
and then it's been planted into.
This is another example of a fact sheet.
Every year I update our
cover crop costs fact sheet.
It includes the common cover crops that
people may use in Alabama.
I call a couple of the seed
providers in Alabama and Georgia
to find out what their
costs are for those seeds.
And I include that in the fact sheet.
I try to update it every
year prior to fall.
And then we also have...
We have fact sheets about
the majority of cover crops that
are probably grown in
Alabama by producers.
It includes the uses of those cover crops,
the planting dates, seeding rates,
what you can expect for residue production
and nitrogen production in the case of
cover crops that produce nitrogen.
And also just a little
bit about the cover crop.
I've got to speed up.
Cover crop establishment,
I've talked about
the cost of planting a cover crop.
Our research includes a high-intensity,
high-management cover crop.
When we use rye we seed 90 pounds of rye.
Now you think holy moly 90 pounds of rye.
So that's what we include
because we're trying to get
the most biomass to increase
our soil organic matter.
We also fertilize our rye,
so you can see here
this is fertilized rye.
This is non-fertilized rye.
We recommend 30 pounds of N per acre.
That's what we use in our
research the majority of the time,
and that's what you'll see in a minute.
I kind of give you an example cost,
and I know it's sometimes
sticker shock for people.
This is a termination.
We have a termination fact
sheet that talks about
all of the different factors
that go into deciding
when you terminate your cover crop
because it's very important.
This is an example of a roller.
So you can see here this is our rye.
This is in one of our experiments.
And you can see the roller back here.
If Dr. Kornecki was here he
would have a great video.
I don't know if you all have
ever seen his presentation.
But he has a wonderful
video of showing his rollers
in use and it's great,
but I don't have it today.
So this is a roller and
it's rolling the rye down,
and then we plant into it.
I'm going to talk a little bit more
about this data in a minute,
but this is just an example just to show
the differences in biomass production
related to termination.
This is an experiment that took place in
Prattville, Alabama at the
experiment station there
between 2004 and 2009,
that's six years of data.
It was a corn, cotton rotation experiment.
We used two different
cover crops, rye and wheat.
So the wheat was terminated,
it wasn't harvested for a commodity crop.
So as you can see, we had less
than 4,000 pounds per acre
of biomass when we had to terminate
the cover crop before corn.
We terminated that in March
before planting of corn.
And then for the cotton we
let that go another month,
and you can see the in...
As I'm about to fall
off the stage. (laughs)
You can see the increase in biomass
just from that additional month of growth.
So if you can imagine now here
we're dealing with in 2006,
we were dealing with over
10,000 pounds per acre
of rye biomass before cotton.
So that's a lot of residue
and you have to manage that.
So this is an example
of what I usually use
for our costs to do
cover crops in our research at the lab.
So I have a cereal rye, 90 pounds.
Cereal rye is very expensive right now.
It's $0.57 to $0.58 a pound.
So it's the primary cost.
Then we no-till drill,
fertilizer, and the application,
and then we have the different term...
We have the chemical and
the mechanical termination
for a total cost of $92, $93.
But that's with 90 pounds of rye.
That's the Cadillac of rye cover crops.
It's a high-management,
high-intensity cover crop.
I like to also include this.
I said breakeven corn yields,
but it really could be yield equivalents.
So if you have a $90 cover crop
that's equivalent at $3.50 corn,
that's equivalent to about 26 bushels.
So as that number, as you lower your costs
of your cover crop through lower-cost seed
or through different methods
of planting the cover crop or whatnot
you'll see that the number goes down.
I'm gonna skip through that.
The good thing about
having not enough time
is you can skip through the
slides you don't really like.
(laughs)
So I'm gonna talk a little bit
about some of our research,
two different projects, one's on crop corn
and one's on wheat.
This is related to the biomass
data that we just looked at,
but it was in Prattville,
Alabama from 2004 to 2009.
It was dryland cotton and corn.
It kind of is right
before Brenda talked about
her research at Prattville.
This is kind of in the years
before that, 2004 through 2009.
We had four tillage treatments,
fall para-till, spring para-till,
spring strip-till, and
a no-till treatment.
That is we didn't have a
conventional till treatment.
So these are all a
minimum tillage treatment
or conservation tillage.
And then we had three
cover crop treatments.
I called it corn residue, it was fallow.
But there was a lot of
corn residue out there.
So the ground was covered.
And then rye and wheat.
It was on a Lucedale fine sandy loam.
Dr. Balkcom has a paper that covered
the cover crop biomass and
the soil organic carbon,
but the yield data and the net return data
hasn't been published.
Just to give you an idea,
there's Autauga County
where Prattville is.
This is where that soil series is located.
You can see the field.
This plot, this area where
we did the experiment
had been in conventional
cotton for previous ten years,
so it had been, I would say,
so conventional cotton
for the previous ten years.
Just leave it at that.
So this is another example of the biomass.
I'm not gonna talk about
it because we just did.
2006 we had the highest biomass
for rye,
and wheat was in 2008.
So this is the rainfall from that time.
How many of you remember 2006 and 2007?
Can we think back that far?
It was dry, so in Prattville
we had cumulative,
from the days of planting,
we had about 7 inches of rain.
In 2007 we had approximately
4 1/2 inches of rain, I think.
I might be off a little bit,
I'm looking at it sideways.
So you can see these two years we had
very little rainfall over the time period.
This is a picture from
June 3, 2005
versus July 11, 2006.
You can see the difference
in what the corn looks like,
even though it's not the same timeframe.
We threw 2006 data out
because we didn't have any.
No yields.
So this is just a comparison
of the corn yields from this experiment.
I'm not gonna talk about the cotton.
Obviously I don't have time,
but I wasn't gonna talk about it anyway.
So the red is Alabama average corn yields.
The blue is Autauga County
average corn yields.
For some reason NAS didn't have
those averages for 2008 and 2009.
And then the green are
experimental yields.
So you can see we were up around
the state average in 2004 and 2005.
We had a tiny bit of yield in 2006,
but not enough to matter.
And then in 2007 and in 2008, and in 2009
we were below the Alabama average,
but the Alabama average includes
irrigated land, as well.
So it's not just dryland, it's
dryland and irrigated land.
So that's always important to remember
when you're looking at state averages.
If they're not broken out by irrigation...
Oh gosh, I better hurry.
Okay, so down here on the very bottom
it's broken up by fall para-till, no-till,
spring-till, and strip-till,
and then residue.
So corn residue, rye and wheat.
So I grouped them by years
because it's a lot of data.
So this is 2004, 2005.
You can see there's not
a huge difference here.
So for spring para-till and strip-till
you have the rye and the wheat
being the highest yields,
so you can see the yields,
except for no-till,
the yields are pretty equivalent
when you have residue
and then a cover crop.
And the same thing is really
true for the other years.
You can see that down
here with strip-till,
rye and wheat did better in
2008 and 2009 than the residue.
I'm gonna go straight
into the treatment costs
and net returns because
that's my specialty, I guess.
I assumed $4.66 for strip-till.
Para-till was $8.82, regardless of timing
because it's just a timing issue.
Cover crops, I didn't include the cost
of chemical termination because once again
fallow is not free.
There is a cost to terminate the weeds,
the winter weeds and the no cover,
so I didn't include the cost
of chemical termination.
This is only the cost of
seeding, establishment,
and termination with
mechanical termination.
So the interaction between
tillage and cover crops
was not statistically
significant except in 2007,
but I didn't include that
for the sake of time.
I mean, you can see in
2004, 2005 spring para-till
and strip-till there's no
significant difference.
2007, which was the driest
year, no-till did the best,
had the highest net returns above...
This is net returns above
variable treatment costs.
So we're only talking
about treatment costs.
So the things that differ
between treatments,
not your total variable costs.
In 2008, 2009 similar results,
with no-till doing the best.
When you look at cover crops,
okay now I'm talking loud,
when you look at cover crops
you have the corn residue
did the best with regards to net returns
above variable treatment costs,
and that is directly related
to the cost of our cover crops.
Because if you notice in the yields slide
back here
cover crop yields, the yields
with the cover crop treatments
were just as good as, numerically,
or better than the residue.
So in conclusion, when we've
been talking about this
at the offices that we had
some questions that came out of this.
So weather, how did the
yields in 2008 and 2009
were less than the
yields in 2004 and 2005,
however the rainfall was almost the same?
So how did the drought in 2006 and 2007,
how did that impact the yields
in 2008 and 2009, and did it?
And that's a question
that we're thinking about.
Also the corn residue, we
had corn residue out there.
How did that corn residue,
what role did it play
in the success of the
no-till no-cover treatment?
So no-till did great, but
the no-cover treatment
how did it play a role in that?
How did it play a role in the no-till
no-cover treatment doing so well?
Also, cover crop intensity,
and this is of interest to me,
can a cheaper cover crop system provide
similar results in corn at a lower cost?
And that's, I think, an important
question we have to ask.
So wheat production, real quick,
Dr. Balkcom's gonna talk
about this tomorrow,
so I'm gonna be super speedy.
Four locations across Alabama,
they're grouped by soil type,
Limestone Valley is Tennessee Valley,
and Coastal Plains is
E.V. Smith, Wire Grass,
and Gulf Coast.
'08 to '11, depending on location.
We had two tillage treatments,
no-till and conventional.
They weren't necessarily
the same between locations,
so the Coastal Plains had four
passes for the conventional,
while Tennessee Valley only had one.
And then we had 12 fertilizer treatments.
I assumed a price of $5.72 a bushel.
We did have test weight data,
so I included that because
it's extremely important
when you're calculating
the price of your wheat,
and you all know that.
So I did include that when I
was calculating the returns.
As expected...
So these are our fertilizer treatments.
We had a Fall applied
at either zero or 20,
an application at Feekes 4 at 30, 45...
30, 40...
Basically we're looking at
60, 90, and 120 pounds of N.
And so that was just broken out between
fall, Feekes 4, and/or Feekes 6.
So the most expensive
option was $82 an acre,
and that was option number six,
with 60 pounds at Feekes 4,
and 60 pounds at Feekes 6.
I assumed a nitrogen price
of $0.58 a pound of nitrogen.
So these were the results,
the preliminary results.
You see no-till non-inversion,
depending on location,
had the highest net returns
above variable treatment costs.
So regardless of location,
no-till non-inversion
had higher returns than
conventional tillage in wheat.
For the fertilizer, treatment eight,
which is fall applied 20,
70 at Feekes 4
was not statistically different from
fall applied 20,
Feekes applied 40.
Regardless of location, there
was a significant location
interaction with fertilizer treatment.
So I'll show you that next
because this, I think,
is the most im...
This is Limestone Valley.
How many of you all live
up in northern Alabama?
So you're getting high,
based on our research,
you're getting higher yields
than in southern Alabama, or mid-Alabama.
So this shows, the ones in blue
were not statistically different.
This is just at the highest level.
So the highest net returns
above variable treatment costs
were at 373 and that
was number seven which,
based on the previous slide,
that's 20 fall applied and 40 at Feekes 4.
For the Coastal Plains areas,
because these are all grouped together,
eight and nine were not
statistically different,
and that would be,
eight is 20 Fall applied
and 70 at Feekes 4.
And nine would be 20 Fall
applied and 100 at Feekes 4.
So I'm gonna let Dr. Balkcom talk
about this experiment some more tomorrow.
I just wanted to show you
the economics of that,
and the net returns above
variable treatment costs
to give you an idea of how the
conservation works within
wheat with no-till.
So some concluding thoughts,
the best conservation system is the one
that fits your operation the best,
and we know that as we
go into our research.
It's site-specific and it has to be based
on the goals of your operation,
and I've heard several people talk about
the goals of their operation,
like Annie Dee did,
and so you have to look at the goals
of your operation and
what's gonna work best.
Also many of the benefits
of conservation systems
are hard to quantify so even
though the cost may be $90,
let's say, there are a lot of
other benefits that accrue,
like you can see here, that
accrue in a conservation system
that are hard to put an
actual dollar value on,
but they can't be forgotten.
You have to consider those.
The preliminary results
show that no-till corn
is a viable option in Alabama,
depending on location.
No-till non-inversion
wheat provided the highest
net returns above
variable treatment costs,
and the highest net returns to wheat
were realized at 20 pounds
of N per acre in the fall,
with 40 pounds of N per acre at Feekes 4
in the Limestone Valley and very similar,
except with 70 pounds at
Feekes 4 in the Coastal Plains.
The final slide.
We have a newsletter that
goes out twice a year.
We don't spam you,
we don't send you a bunch
of stuff all the time.
We just send you the newsletter,
and occasionally a facts
sheet, if it's really good.
And so this is our
website where you can get
more information about
what I've talked about.
Also if you send us an
email to this email address
we can subscribe you to our newsletter,
which we send out via email.
And it has a lot of
great information on it
about what we're doing at the lab,
plus our publications that we've put out,
if you have more interest
in what we're doing.
So with that, I'll take
some questions, I guess.
- [Male] Any questions for our speaker?
- Yes, sir.
- [Audience] Are you working
with Extension to doing
any experiment plots, research
plots on (mumbles) property?
- [Dr. Duzy] You know what, I'm gonna
let Dr. Balkcom answer that
because I piggyback myself onto
the other scientists' research,
so I'm gonna let them answer that.
- We have done some of that,
but the majority of our research
is on experiment stations,
but we have done some in homegrown fields.
(voice lowers)
- [Audience] Because you said
quantitatively it's hard
to show for people to understand,
but if somebody's neighbor
looks over and sees he's
doing a little better.
But I know it's hard to make that change
with equipment and managing it.
- [Dr. Duzy] And I think that's...
I joked about being a
conservation salesperson,
but that's one way I think
we do sell conservation
it's when you have people adopt it
and they go out and talk about it,
and they talk about the benefits,
and they visibly see, that's anecdotal,
that they see on their operation.
That's the best way that we get
people to do conservation systems.
I can stand up here and
talk about our research
all I want to but
somebody's out there saying
well I use less herbicides
so that's saving me money.
Well we can't change
that in our experiment.
It has to stay the same,
regardless of treatment.
So that's a cost that I can't quantify
because we haven't changed it.
And so you're right, when
you have a producer that
can sell it to their neighbor,
that's the best way that
we have of getting people
to get that from 7% of
cropland and cover crops
up to 100. (laughs)
Yes, sir.
- [Audience] Do you see a yield hit when you move into
conservation ag, and did you quantify
those prices, those costs?
- [Dr. Duzy] You know, if you look at that...
That's a hard question to answer.
If you look at that corn cotton rotation,
I don't know what the...
That was in conventional
cotton before then.
I don't know what
experiments came out of that.
So going from that conventional cotton
into a conservation system with
a rotation of corn and cotton,
the yields for corn were
120 bushels an acre.
That's average for Alabama,
for the whole state.
So I would say there's a pretty good
dryland corn yields in that location.
So I don't know what the
conventional yield would've been
because we didn't have a conventional
a conventional treatment there.
But I think that's a great question,
it's one that
should be looked at.
Yes, sir.
- [Audience] Could you clarify what
you're calling no-till?
Is it stripped, just getting
the seed in the ground,
or are you doing strip-till?
- [Dr. Duzy] Okay, in the case of
the wheat, for example,
at Tennessee Valley it
was traditional no-till.
Nothing, just planting.
But at the Gulf Coast, it did have a...
It didn't have a subsoil?
It had a subsoil, a pass with a subsoiler.
- [Dr. Balkcom] We do try to make that
distinction, though.
Like she showed the corn test.
She showed the corn test with the no-till,
and that was strictly planting
directly into that, as well.
So we try to make the distinction that
strip-till is strip-till
and no-till is no-till
because a lot of times people
just kind of run those
altogether and say no-till,
when they really might
be doing strip-till.
So we really do try to...
If we say no-till, it's no tillage.
I mean, you just plant right into it.
- [Dr. Duzy] And that's the distinction
I was trying to make with
NAS data from the census
is that it says no-till,
but if you read the definition
it's no-till strip-till.
Well, I appreciate you all
hanging around to the very end,
and I hope you all enjoyed the course.
So thank you.
(crowd applauds)
