I farm on a 5500 acre land base in partnership with my brother Glen and our wives. The farm is located in the Northeastern corner of agriculture in Saskatchewan. We grow a wide variety of crops including forages for seed production. Our livestock consists mainly of leafcutter bees, which are located on or farm. I have an ownership stake in some beef brood cows, approximately 100 head of feeder steers, and some bison on land not attached to the main farm. We also run a custom farming/land management service on another 4000+ acres. This enterprise serves the purposes of reducing our machinery investment costs per acre as well as exploiting what I see as an expanding business opportunity in rural North America.
"Riding the Wave" implies to me that one has been successful in keeping your head above water with enough control that you can actually arrive at a predetermined spot on the beach and with a technique that will impress someone. This is in contrast to falling into the water, being swept up by the wave, and finding yourself trying to recover after the initial mistake was made.
To avoid the undertows of direct seeding, the five pillars that we have heard mentioned so many times before still must be addressed each and every year. Residue management, field sanitation, crop establishment, crop nutrition and crop rotation cannot be ignored... ever!
Our whole farming system is planned and carried out with next years crop in mind. We never plant high residue crops back to back and we always plan to plant those high residue fields in the last half of our seeding schedule. We have to remind ourselves that we cannot seed the entire farm on one day. On our farm, preharvest glyphosate is primarily a residue management tool and its weed control benefits are a secondary consideration. Cutting your crop at the proper height and spreading the residue evenly means more even soil surface moisture at seeding time. There are two ways that we preserve soil moisture. The first is by the use of crop residue to protect the soil surface to prevent moisture evaporation. The second is to mechanically create a layer on the soil surface that moisture cannot pass through much like our fathers did to prevent their summerfallow from drying out and crusting before they could seed in the spring. It puzzles me why farmers burn crop residue other than flax or give their cereal residue away, because on our farm, we are always in need of more residue on the soil surface.
Weed control is best done using herbicides. We have found that trying to control your weeds with sweeps on your seeder actually will stimulate more weed growth. We started direct seeding using sweeps and on row packers and have evolved to using a 1" vertical knife with 3" packer wheels. This creates an ideal environment for crop growth in the
seed row and a very stressful situation for the weeds and volunteer crops between the rows. Our seeding outfit is designed to seed into very wet ground. Large tire surface area on the ground, low draft openers, and disc type mid-row banders for nitrogen have helped us achieve our goal: great crop establishment in all soil types and all moisture conditions for all crops.
Crop nutrition has in the past been a challenge for direct seeders. Over the years I have seen many "one pass openers" fail because of changing weather conditions. I learned early the hard way that you never, never compromise seed bed quality to put all of your fertilizer on in a one pass seeding system. We needed a dedicated seed opener and a dedicated fertilizer opener in order to direct seed every soil type every year on our farm. At the peril of sounding like a commercial, I must state that the Bourgault mid-row disc bander is the only system that I have found to work consistently on our wide range of soil types.
Finally, and probably the point that most bankers don't understand well, is the importance of crop rotations on your farm that allow you to balance your direct seeding system. Crop rotations control every aspect of the system including your potential for profit, your ability to control crop pests, moisture utilization, crop quality, timing of seeding and harvest and your equipment needs.
Direct seeding is no longer a new concept. Many of my colleagues started direct seeding because of a concern for soil conservation. The economic benefits soon became apparent to us. What is now becoming clear is the contribution that direct seeders are making to reducing greenhouse gas emissions to help Canada meet our Kyoto goals as a nation.
Direct seeding is an environmentally friendly farming system that will be a very useful tool to make agriculture on the prairies a sustainable venture well into the future.
To those of you who haven't yet made the shift to direct seeding on your farm, jump in. The water is great.