Latest / The Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction Podcast / Episode 80 | Dust Storms, Starter Fertilizer, and Conservation Tillage
Transcript
- Giovani Preza Fontes, Agronomist - University of Illinois Crop Sciences source article https://farmdoc.illinois.edu/field-crop-production/evaluating-soybean-performance-in-conservation-systems-project-report.html This is the Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction Podcast. Episode 80. Dust Storms, Starter Fertilizer, and Conservation Tillage. I’m University of Illinois Extension’s Todd Gleason. Today we will explore a research project initiated in response to recent dust storm events in Central Illinois and other Midwestern states, including the tragic incident near Springfield in May of 2023. Giovani Preza Fontes is the lead researcher He is an Extension Agronomist based on campus in the Department of Crop Sciences at the U of I. Before we get to the research Giovani, it is important we acknowledge why farmers asked the U of I to do it. Giovani Preza Fontes: Yeah, just a quick background why we started this project. It was mostly in response to some recent dust storm events that we’ve experienced in the past couple of years, especially in Central Illinois. And by the way, that dust storms were not only in Central Illinois but also happened across some of the other Midwestern states. Especially the tragic one that happened in May of 2023, near Springfield. I think a lot of people will remember that. Right outside Springfield, a dust storm that led about 80 vehicles crashed, dozens of injuries, and at least eight people dead. So again, we started that project. It was funded by the Illinois Soybean Association in response to those recent dust storms events. Todd Gleason: So you were looking at soybean production in different ways, for instance no-till, conventional till, strip-till, and cover crops involved, I think in just the no-till portion of it. Can you tell me why you looked at those and what some of the outcomes might have been? Giovani Preza Fontes: Sure, yeah. So you know, when we think about soil erosion, right, either by wind and water, conservation practices such as reduced tillage and cover crops, they are well established. Right? So we know there is a body of work in the literature showing they are very effective at reducing soil erosion. And not only that, but there is also many other, we used to call agro-ecosystem benefits from those practices, right? So you’re keeping the soil covered for most of the time with the cover crops. You know, there’s evidence that they’re helping suppress weeds, breaking pest disease cycles, improving nutrient cycling. Cover crops is a big component of our Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction Strategy. There is a lot of work that shows that we can reduce nitrate leaching losses in tile drainage with a grass cover crop. So we know all the benefits, but then when we look at adoption, it’s relatively low. My student, Federico, wrote… he… he’s the one leading this project with me. So he looked at the USDA and Illinois Department of Ag data on percentage of no-till fields in the Midwest and Illinois. So just focus on Illinois, we can see that the percentage of no-till cropland is relatively low. It’s about 15% on corn and about 35% on soybeans. And again, we know the benefits, but I think when I talk to people, there’s this, you know, perception that these practices are somewhat risky. Mainly because they are often associated with potential yield penalties. Todd Gleason: You took a look at five different fields in Illinois and Iowa. What did you find? Giovani Preza Fontes: Yeah, so again, we looked at different combinations of tillage systems with starter fertilizer. So a total of 12 treatments. Just to briefly list them: so we looked at conventional till, it’s a two-pass, right, a fall chisel with a spring cultivator. That’s what most people are doing. Then a strip-till in the fall, a no-till, and a no-till with a cereal rye cover crop. Each of those systems were paired with a starter fertilizer strategy. We also have an untreated control where we don’t have any fertilizer. We had a treatment where we applied nitrogen as UAN, and another treatment where we applied nitrogen plus sulfur as a blend of UAN and ATS. Todd Gleason: Once you’ve done that, really what we want to know is how well the soil stayed in place, but also for this, we’re looking at the economics of production. Isolating just the tillage portion of this and the things that surround the different methods. Did you come up with a net return of any sort? And I know it’ll be a partial net return because it doesn’t include anything, but what did that net return look like and which practices held up best? Giovani Preza Fontes: Yeah, so just quickly before we get to that, we did see some early season responses as we would expect to see. Like on average, the soybeans that received starter fertilizer, they tended to look greener and they produce a little more biomass early in the season. We took soybean samples early in the season, mid-season to kind of see how they perform throughout the season. We did see those early season effects, but then at mid-season they kind of disappeared. We took tissue testing at R2, and by that point, we did not see any significantly difference when we looked at nitrogen and sulfur concentrations on those tissue testing that we did. And an important point here too is that when we look at those concentrations, they were all above the critical level that we often see in the literature. So the data pretty much suggests that you know, by that time, mid-season, the soybeans, they were not nitrogen and sulfur deficient. Even the ones that we did not apply nitrogen. When we look at yields, again, even though we saw those early season starter fertilizer effect, that did not translate to yield. So meaning that we did not see any yield increases when we have the starter fertilizers. But we did see differences in the tillage system practices. So on average across six sites and two years, we saw that basically we were able to maintain soybean yields when we moved to some of those reduced tillage practices. So there’s a Figure 4 in the article. If you look at the average yield statistically, we did not see any significantly differences among the conventional till, the strip-till, and the no-till. We saw a slightly lower yields when we had the no-till with the cereal rye, but numerically that was just like two bushels compared to the conventional till. So they all average about 76 to 78 bushels to the acre. Todd Gleason: And when you put down just the brass tacks, because no-till did not have a cost related to tillage, and the others did. Honestly, the no-till, once you took the gross revenue, might have had a lower gross revenue than both strip-till and conventional till, but once you take out the cost of doing the tillage pass, it did better. Giovani Preza Fontes: Exactly. Yeah. So we used like those cost of tillage passes that our colleagues in the Ag Econ… right? So they have this handbook with the College of… cost of tillage passes. So again, we only did this as a partial net return. So we were only taking into consideration the cost of the tillage, right? So if you look at the partial net return, we did see higher returns with no-till, and exactly as you said, just because there is no expenses with no-tilling. Followed by strip-till and conventional till. We did see the lowest partial net return with the no-till with the cereal rye cover crop, and that was mainly associated with the higher cost associated with cover crop management. Todd Gleason: And that would have been the cost of the seed and the pass to get it on. Giovani Preza Fontes: Exactly. Yeah. Planting, cost of planting seed, and termination is estimated at $55 per acre versus strip-till for example, it’s estimated at $26 per acre. But again, we try to make the argument that, you know, like we know there are… and farmers know, right? Everything we do on the field costs money. I know… we know there’s a big push for cover crops. We know the benefits and why we’re promoting it. But again, I think this is something that farmers usually ask me a lot on the economic side. So again, this is just partial net return on this, but it gives an indication that you know, like some of those conservation practices may come at an additional cost. And I think there needs to be some discussion there. There are a lot of state and federal cost share programs that can help offset some of those costs. And I guess I’ll just leave those conversations to the Ag Economists. Todd Gleason: Will this research continue? Giovani Preza Fontes: Yes. We actually… one of the fields, we’re working with a farmer in Piatt County. We’re doing this work in his field. And we established those trials in ’23, and we established a new field in 2024. So we have two fields now that we’re gonna keep rotating them between corn and soybeans. The plan is to have this for at least four or five years. Again, the caveat with this project is all those fields are kind of early years transitioning, right? So they all came from conventional till and they’re transitioning to those systems. So this is what we found early in the first two years, but we’re gonna keep doing that for at least four or five years to kind of see if things change as the system progresses and kind of stabilizes. Todd Gleason: That’s Giovani Preza Fontes. He is an Agronomist in the Department of Crop Sciences at the University of Illinois. You may see this research online. The article that he’s penned, it’s titled “Evaluating Soybean Performance in Conservation Systems: A Project Report.” It’s in the Crop Central website. The Bulletin. Just search it out: Crop Central and FarmDoc Daily. You’ve been listening to Episode 80 of the Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction Podcast. It is produced in conjuction with Illinois Extension’s Rachel Curry, Nicole Haverback and Luke Zwilling. I’m Todd Gleason.