NRCS Makes Nebraska Kids "Coo-Coo" for No-till

Cocoa Puffs made a tasty impression for students at the Children's Groundwater Festival on the difference between tilled farm ground and no-till farmland.

The "Dirty Diner" demonstration to promote no-till farming was put on by Dan Gillespie, Tim Schaaf, Jim Husbands, and Mark Nowack of NRCS.

During the conclusion of a talk to one group of kids, Gillespie held up two clear, plastic cups of Cocoa Puffs for kids to observe.

Each cup held an equal number of puffs. However, the amounts did not look equal because the cereal in one cup had been crushed, while the other puffs were left undisturbed.

The cup of uncrushed cereal looked nearly full because of all the air between the pieces. That represented no-till farm ground. When milk was poured into that cup, kids could watch as the milk easily seeps to the bottom.

Gillespie used a third cup with three layers of Cocoa Puffs to show what happens to tilled soil. It had regular puffs on top, with crushed and compacted puffs just below the surface. That compacted cereal was lying on top of another layer of whole Cocoa Puffs.

When Gillespie poured milk inside that cup, the liquid never penetrated the compacted layer of cereal just below the surface.

"See how the top layer bobs around?" asked Gillespie.

He said that if his top layer of Cocoa Puffs were farm ground instead of cereal, it would be subject to erosion.

Before Gillespie did his Cocoa Puffs demonstration, Schaaf of the NRCS said farmers should strive to have "healthy soil, which provides the best dirt for plants to grow, develop and reproduce."
 
"A healthy soil has good soil structure," he said. "Good soil structure allows water to move through it."

Gillespie, Schaaf and Husbands told the children that tilling soil works; many farm families have done it through several generations of farming. But they contended that the no-till method works better.

Gillespie said the biggest impediments to no-till farming are mental, including having patience. It takes several years for the freeze-thaw cycle to begin to show results.
Before the children entered the room, Gillespie noted that the Nebraska prairie once had about 7 percent organic content. He said organic content has declined dramatically in many areas with the advent of farming.

He said his own no-till methods have raised the organic content of the soil on his farm, but noted that it is a long, slow process.

"There is an increase of about one-tenth of 1 percent a year," said Gillespie, who farms near Meadow Grove.

Although not everyone who went through the "Dirty Diner" demonstration may have become a convert to no-till farming, they all left with a good taste in their mouths because they all had an opportunity to eat their own cups of Cocoa Puffs.

TOP IMAGE: Milk stays at the top of a glass above a layer of crushed chocolate cereal, just like water doesn't infiltrate soil that has been tilled very well, as Dan Gillespie of the Natural Resources Conservation Service demonstrates at the 2004 Children's Groundwater Festival during a classroom activity called "Dirty Diner."

LOWER IMAGE: Doing some "Dirty Dining," Aurora Elementary fifth-grader Nicholas Mitchell eats some chocolate cereal and milk with his classmates at the Groundwater Festival. The cereal represented soil during a demonstration.

Story and images courtesy of Grand Island Independent.