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WHAT I’VE LEARNED FROM NO-TILLING …

By Steve Groff
as interviewed by Ron Ross

CHECK THE SPECS …

NAME: STEVE GROFF
TITLE: OWNER (WITH WIFE, CHERI) OF CEDAR MEADOW FARM
LOCATION: HOLTWOOD, PA
NUMBER OF YEARS NO-TILLING: 22
ACRES: 215
NO-TILLED CROPS: TOMATOES, SWEET CORN, PUMPKINS, BROCCOLI, FIELD CORN, AFALFA HAY, SOYBEANS, WHEAT, HAIRY VETCH, RYE

We’ve been practicing precision agriculture for 22 years, but have never used a GPS system. That’s what I tell people about our 215-acre no-till operation tucked away in the rural hills of southern Lancaster County, PA. Our average field size is only 4 acres!

With fields that small, you pretty much know what’s going on without help from satellites. I’m the third generation Groff to live and farm these highly-erodible fields, but only the first generation to use no-till. We started back in 1980, after I got totally fed up with soil erosion. I distinctly remember having to blade soil back into deep gullies cut by rainstorm runoff, before we could harvest corn. We were losing 14 tons of topsoil per acre per acre and the organic matter, by then down to an average 2.7 percent, was going with it. That year we started seeding corn with a no-till planter rented from our local soil conservation district; two years later we bought our no-till planter.

Like a lot of farmers, though, I wasn’t quite confident about making such a radical change, so on some fields I had been plowing or chisel plowing every other year. Not much was happening. But in1986 when I pulled the planter into a field that I hadn’t tilled for four years, the frame-mounted coulters sank in up to the hubs. I had assumed that untilled soil would get harder over time, but what I was seeing was just the opposite. I can still picture in my mind coming out of that field wishing other people could see what I had. For the first time I knew something major was happening besides reduced soil and organic matter loss. I knew I was changing the soil itself. From that moment on there was no turning back. We have not tilled our corn, wheat, soybeans or alfalfa acres since. Our first no-tilled alfalfa stand was the thickest and highest-yielding we had ever grown.

NO-TILL TOMATOES?

But would no-till work for vegetables? I sure didn’t think so. But three key factors proved me wrong again. First, in 1993, I heard Dr. Aref Abdul-Baki, plant physiologist at the USDA Beltsville Agricultural Research Center tell about consistently higher yields, delayed early blight and fewer Colorado potato beetles on tomatoes transplanted into a hairy vetch cover crop. Second, during the 80s, Dr. Ron Morse, a Virginia Polytechnic Institute horticulturist, designed the subsurface-tiller-transplanter for transplanting cabbage on steep hillsides. Third, the eastern chapter of the Soil and Water Conservation Society bought one of the planters, and made it available. We did a half-acre trial with tomatoes and saw real potential. The second year we tested it on five acres; by 1996 all 80 acres of our vegetables were also 100 percent no-till. Hairy vetch was a success for us right out of the gate. [Here, I would say, “Using hairy vetch as a cover crop was a success for us right out of the gate.]

PERMANENT COVER CROP

For the rest of the 90s we experimented, winding up with a permanent cover cropping system of primarily hairy vetch and rye. We’ve had great success with tomatoes and no-till pumpkins. I make about a dozen speeches a year, and the first thing I always emphasize is that it is a “system”. We’ve learned no-till alone is not a “magic bullet”. To achieve all three of our objectives -- higher profits, enhanced soil quality and less dependence on pesticides – we depend equally on no-till, cover crops and rotations. Early on, we called it a “new generation cropping system.”

On the dollar side, it’s a simple equation: less cost makes us more money. We save $675 an acre transplanting no-till tomatoes. Nearly $500 of that comes from materials, labor and time saved by eliminating plastic mulch. Yields have increased 10 percent. The other savings is from erosion control, improved soil quality and increased organic matter. That 2.7 percent organic matter we started with in 1980 is now up to 4. 8 percent, and runoff soil loss has dropped from that whopping14 tons per acre to almost zero. Soil aggregate stability in fields tilled recently (within the last 10 years) is 16 percent, while fields not tilled for over 10 years. an amazing 67 percent.

We’ve learned we must create a thick cover crop mulch to make the system work. And work it does: Overall, we’re using only half as much pesticide. Fungicide and insecticide cost for tomatoes dropped from $200 to $75 per acre, consistent with Dr. Baki’s research results. I’ve planted 150 total acres of no-till tomatoes the past eight years and have yet to spray for Colorado potato beetle, partly due to a big increase in beneficials and the mulch cover on the ground that the beetles don’t like. Herbicide costs on corn and soybeans dropped from $25 to $18 per acre.

The cover crops give a nutrient boost, too – we credit 50 pounds N per acre from rye/vetch and 75 pounds from vetch alone.

ROLL IT DOWN

My favorite crop mix for transplanting vegetables is 25 pounds per acre of hairy vetch and 30 pounds of rye (Vetch seed is pricey so I grow enough with rye for my own use and sell about 4,000 pounds a year.)

The hairy vetch/rye mix is planted during September until about October 1, a week or 10 days before the first killing frost. Usually it follows wheat or sweet corn. When the rye is about 4 feet tall, about May 10th, we roll the mixture with a 10-foot Buffalo rolling stalk chopper. It’s designed to flatten and chop cornstalks, on a scale between a flail mower and a disk. It has four rollers in front and back, with eight 23-inch blades per roller. We bought this rig in 1996 and modified it with parallel linkage to give it more flexibility in our rocky soils. We added bearing protectors to prevent wrapping. It’s been thoroughly tested; during the past 7 years, we’ve rolled about 1000 cover crop acres. We’ve occasionally successfully eliminated all herbicides whenever we have a good thick mulch cover that is fully matured when rolled. If we need to go in before the cover crop is 2-feet tall, we spray with Roundup 3 days before planting.

What it really boils down to is letting nature have its way. If you leave the soil alone, it will work for you. I didn’t really understand that15 years ago; I do now. The turmoil of tillage can be catastrophic. With our system, soil life is enhanced because we’re not disturbing soil organisms. Nor are we compacting the soil. We’ve had people from NRCS test all over the farm with penetrometers and every report we get back confirms that we have no need for steel.

A PLANTER “JUST FOR YOU”

After 15 years of trial and error with homemade modifications, we had a sharp vision of what we wanted in a “dream machine” for direct planting and it looked like a custom builder was the way to go. Fortunately, Binkley and Hurst Bros., in Lititz, PA, have a motto of “building a planter for you”. On ours, they should have asked, “how many brands can we attach to one rig?”

Here’s what resulted: We mounted Monosem row units on a Kinze frame with Yetter parallel linkage. We’ve got Kinze combo coulter residue managers out front and two Rawson fertilizer coulters 3 ½ inches to the side of the row. Keeton seed firmers, Case IH gauge wheels, Martin spading closing wheels on Kinze brackets, a CDS dual rate fertilizer squeeze pump and Zimmerman foam markers complete this hybrid. We have an assortment of stainless and brass plates for everything from tiny carrot seeds to soybeans. Add it up and we get the precision seeding and fertilizer placement and rugged strength we need for no till that we just couldn’t find in a factory-built planter. The whole thing came in at about $22,000, about the same as a John Deere or Case IH.

Last summer the dealer used it to plant test plots at Pennsylvania Ag Progress Days and exhibited it at the show. They took home 13 orders for new planters!

For transplanting into cover crops, we customized an RJ Equipment carousel transplanter. The planter has a spring-loaded 20-inch turbo coulter, followed by a double disk opener and a short shoe to place the transplant into killed cover crops. Angled press wheels tuck the soil firmly around the plant.

WORMS AT WORK

I’ve heard Midwestern farmers talk about “listening to corn grow”. Well, we have our own version of that: we listen to nightcrawlers move crop residue. First time this happened to me, I was driving down the road on a warm, drizzly evening and noticed movement in the field close to the lane. Lo and behold, the ground was covered with earthworms pulling pieces of residue, some pieces up to a half-foot long, down into their furrows. I drove over to my neighbor’s tilled field later on and didn’t see a single worm. It’s probably the most dramatic indication of what you can expect from no-till, and it reflects the other amazing things that are happening in the soil.

TELLING OUR STORY

I wrote a mission statement in 1996 for Cedar Meadow Farm that reads, “I want to farm in such a way that produces a healthy food product, generates an income to live a comfortable lifestyle and leaves the soil in better condition than I found it.” I probably should add another line about our desire to share our no-till experience. We commit a lot of time to field days, cooperative research with the University of Maryland, Penn State, the Rodell Institute and others. In 2002 I became a sustainable farmer educator in the USDA’s Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (SARE) for the northeast region. I answer about 150 phone calls or e-mails a year from farmers, extension agents, journalists and others and do research on sustainable agriculture. We have our own Web site and have produced two videos. Don’t get the wrong idea, though: I’m not promoting organic farming as such. I’m promoting profitable sustainable agriculture that reduces the need for pesticides.

I like to travel across the United States telling our no-till story. As I said to an ag reporter recently, once the basic concept is understood and the correct equipment put to use, no-till is the easiest, most profitable and most environmentally friendly way for farmers everywhere, no matter what they grow.