What do four no-till sugar beet growers have to say about how they got started, the challenges and opportunities they’ve seen, and advice for farmers considering making the change? Just try it.
Ranging from Edgar to Bainville, these four farmers grow sugar beets under varying conditions, but they have seen the same crucial benefits from no-till – decreased input costs and improved soil health.
Watch the No-Till Sugar Beets in Montana: Producer Perspectives video to hear more from each of the producers.
Getting Started
“Western Sugar changed the amount of acres we were going to have to plant and I needed 20 more acres. I had a small field that I would have planted malt barley right directly into the corn stalks and we didn’t find out until spring, so we weren’t going to tear it up. Heavy ground, it would have just been a mess. I’d been to an NRCS event down in Billings and we talked about no-till and I just said, dad we’re going to do it. And that’s what we did. Those ended up being our best beets that year. I think it was 35 ton or something like that at 19.76 sugar,” said Greg Schlemmer, who farms between Edgar and Fromberg, Mont., about getting started in no-till sugar beets six years ago.
The others had different reasons for getting started.
Brian Kindsfather farms near Laurel and decided to try no-till rather than buying another piece of tillage equipment.
Cavin Steiger farms between Forsyth and Hysham. He was interested in no-till and when he saw how well the neighbors’ equipment worked, made the switch.
Dana Berwick’s grandfather was no-tilling some dryland small grains in the 1980s in the Bainville area. “We thought we could take that down to the irrigated and stop spending so much money on diesel and tractor hours and make it work,” said Berwick. And it did work, first on wheat, then corn, and now sugar beets.
Saving Money
Even though they started with no-till sugar beets for different reasons, they’ve all stuck with it for the same reason – they’re saving money. Farmers must make good business decisions, which include managing their financial and natural resources in the best way possible for long-term success.
“Sometimes in this business the only money to be made is the money you haven’t spent. I think the fact that we can raise as good or better of crops while spending less money is important,” said Berwick.
“I roughly figure I’m probably saving $150 per acre by not doing any tillage,” said Kindsfather. “I think more farmers are more concerned about money in their pocket where [NRCS] get excited about the soil concept. There’s a lot of us that might care about the soil. We want to grow good crops. We want it to be healthy.”
“I figure on the no-till beets I’m probably saving around $100 to $120 an acre in tillage applications and labor,” said Steiger.
“My neighbors are out plowing today and I’m not. There’s one farm down, I think they have three tractors in one field, so at 10 gallons an hour per tractor at $2.50 a gallon, probably $15.00-$20.00 per hour for the person in the tractor, wear and tear – that’s all money that I’m not spending today. I get just as good or better yield than I ever have and I’m not spending any money to get that,” said Schlemmer.
Improving Soil Health
With no-till beets, the savings aren’t only about diesel, time, and wear and tear on equipment. There are many savings associated with the soil health benefits. “When you stop disturbing the soil lots of good things start to happen and you actually allow the soil to function as it is meant to. And the benefits there are you get better water infiltration. Organic matter levels tend to rise. You get better nutrient cycling,” said Mark Henning, Miles City Area Agronomist for the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).
Why does no-till allow for better soil function? The soil is full of microbes – fungi, bacteria, and other organisms. These organisms are working to build soil structure, add organic matter to soil, and digest (cycle) nutrients so that they are available for plants. Soil organisms have to rebuild their habitat and interactions from scratch after tillage, greatly decreasing the effectiveness of the system. Soil Biology Primer
What does improved soil health mean for a farmer’s bottom line? With better water infiltration and water holding capacity in the soil, farmers may be able to decrease irrigation frequency. Improved nutrient cycling means less fertilizer may be needed.
“We really thought irrigation was going to be our biggest issue and I still think everybody thinks that. If we’ve got one piece of straw out there in the whole field the water won’t make it to the end. That’s the farthest thing from the truth. When we started doing [no-till] and you could irrigate every 14 days or every 21 days rather than every seven, it’s a lot easier to irrigate,” said Schlemmer.
Steiger is seeing the benefits of more nutrient cycling from better soil microbe activity. He said, “We seem to be getting a lot more earthworms. Aside from that it seems like we’re getting a lot more mineralization of nitrogen in the ground. It’s not uncommon for me to have between 90 and 120 units of nitrogen available after a crop. And a big chunk of that is also soil sampling. If you don’t pull the soil samples to see what you have, you’re going to end up over applying there too.”
During a visit to Steiger’s no-till, furrow-irrigated beet field, Henning examined a shovelful of soil. “So this is excellent structure. You can see there’s an earth worm right there. Best soil engineers on the planet. Evidence that earth worms are currently active because we haven’t destroyed their habitat so they’re able to thrive and work for Cavin in his beet field out here,” said Henning. “Great soil aggregation. It’s very crumbly. You want it to crumble just like chocolate cake. That structure’s all built by microbes. It’s never built by tillage. Tillage only makes it go backwards.”
“The ground is so much more forgiving now. We don’t ever really have much trouble with crusting for the beets and other seeds that are hard to come up. And there’s protection from the wind so we don’t have beets blowing out,” said Berwick when asked about benefits of no-till for his soils. “All of our acreage now, you stick a shovel in, you’re going to bring up earth worms. I think that helps too. You have a little more capillary action to help get water in the soil. Like I say it’s made for healthy dirt.”
Overcoming Challenges
They will all tell you that moving to no-till came with some challenges. Kindsfather has had a difficult time planting into heavy barley stubble. He said, “On this particular drill, they don’t offer a floating trash cleaner, so I got rigid ones. It’s really hard to get them set. They’re either digging and plowing or not doing anything at all, so floating trash cleaners would be ideal.”
Steiger has seen that hair-pinning seed when planting into residue can be an issue, but he says, “It seems like even if you do end up with some hair-pinning, most of those seeds are still going to germinate because there’s that much more moisture in the ground at seeding time.”
Traffic through a no-till field can cause ruts that interrupt irrigation water the next season. At harvest, Schlemmer has truck drivers go straight down the field and out rather than turning around. Steiger keeps trucks out of the field during harvest. He says, “We have two carts that we run. They stay on the ends and you load them out and they go.”
No-till sugar beet farmers see slower early season vigor but see that as a tradeoff to get plants that are better able to resist heat later in the season and soil that stays cool and retains more moisture for plants during hot weather. According to Berwick, “There’s probably some issue where things take off a little slower with the no-till ground, but I think they catch up quite a bit in July when it’s 90 and 100 degrees out. The soil doesn’t get 90 or 100 degrees. It stays 60. You’ll really see it during the growing season. The leaves don’t lay down like they do a lot in tilled ground.”
Steiger agrees, “One of the struggles is that early season vigor. It’s just hard to watch those fields look ugly and be comfortable that they’re going to catch up. It’d be nice if we could figure out a way to increase that. I’m sure by cutting lower, removing residue, and stuff like that that would help, but then you’re giving up something on the back end and we have a lot more season where it’s hot than we do where it’s cool. So I don’t feel like that’s a good way to compromise.”
No-Till Sugar Beets? Just Try It.
Even with the challenges involved, these four farmers would recommend trying no-till sugar beets.
“My only thing is you just don’t need a big fancy planter. Don’t let that hold you back. I’m using, I guess, old equipment and getting more out of it. It’s paid for itself years ago and now it’s just working for free,” said Schlemmer about his experience planting no-till sugar beets.
“I’d say try it. You don’t have to dive in and do 100 percent of your crop in year one. If you have a field that you feel is more suited for it, just try that field and see what you think. Work your way into things,” is Steiger’s advice about starting out in no-till sugar beets.
“You might have to buy some attachments for your planter, but you know, it’s one less trip from the fuel truck they’re paid for. Maybe don’t do the whole farm but give it an honest shot in a decent field,” Berwick said about trying no-till sugar beets.
“My biggest advice is do a little bit the first year. You know, maybe one field. And when you plant, you have to have a lot of patience, because that’s where I struggled and what I thought was the hardest part of it all. If you just keep with it, it’ll eventually work out for you. Like I said, I’ve only done it two years and I’ve had great success with it,” said Kindsfather about switching to no-till sugar beets.