By: Charlotte Reilly
To outsiders, Nebraska seems like one long corn field on the way to Colorado. To Nebraskans, those fields of green and gold are money in the bank.
“You can see your return from your work and it’s rewarding,” said Nebraskan farmer Patrick Faughn.
UNO student Dillon Klein and Professor Ashlee Dere are trying to help farmers see that conservation and productivity go hand in hand through their study of tilled and no-till fields. No-till fields are covered in crop residue, but soil in tilled fields is broken up and exposed.
“In the process of breaking up that soil, you lose the aggregation, which is the natural way a soil clumps together,” Dere said. “The tillage, although it temporarily fluffs up the soil, it can break up those natural aggregates and in the end, end up causing bad infiltration.”
Dillon studied how nutrient leaching, the loss of water soluble nutrients in soil, affects till and no-till fields during heavy rain and water events. He found they leached about the same, however no-till fields hold onto moisture and organic carbon better, and they are aggregated.
“The roots were penetrating deeper, there was more insect and microbial life,” Klein said. “There were more worm trails. With tilled soil, they hit that hard-pan and started spreading out.”
Keith Glewen, an extension educator at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, has been helping Nebraska farmers care for their soil since the 1970s. He said methods like no-till help prevent soil loss throughout the Midwest.
“In Saunders county Nebraska, since 1860, we have lost the top 12 inches of soil in this county,” Glewen said. “It’s down the Mississippi River down to the delta of Louisiana, and ya know we don’t even a get Christmas card from those folks,”
The residue, or the left-over corn and bean stalks, act as armor during heavy rain events. They prevent tons of soil from washing down hill.
“Where we are standing, this soil was placed here about 12,000 years ago,” Glewen said. “If I worked hard enough at it, I bet within a 5-year period I could lose a significant portion of it.”
No-till farming methods have started to catch on with Midwestern farmers, like the Faughns. Patrick Faughn hopes the methods he is using today will keep the soil profitable for future farmers, like his son Liam.
