In our previous video of the Jorgensen Land and Cattle Economics Case Study, Nick Jorgensen discussed some of the economic savings they were able to realize in their long-term, no-till fields where typically Organic Matter measured over three percent. What the Jorgensen land and cattle operation was able to do in this analysis was save…
Economics: Jorgensen Land and Cattle Case Study (Part 2)
In this video Nick Jorgensen provides a simple calculation related to equipment costs and economics based on what Jorgensen land and cattle may have done 30 years ago in a wheat – fallow system compared to today. By not operating tillage equipment and running a sprayer the Jorgensens are saving between $25 and $45 in…
Economics: Jorgensen Land and Cattle Case Study (Part 1)
Economics are a complex issue. At Merit or Myth, we have found that getting farmers to talk about money can be tricky, so we were particularly grateful to find that Bryan and Nick Jorgensen were willing to talk dollars and cents with us! This is the first in a 5 part series on the money…
What are SD No-Tiller saying About Soil Temperatures
In the previous three videos we have looked at and discussed some soil temperature data from the 2016 growing season in Vermillion, SD. In this video we speak to some long-term no-till farmers from Crooks in the east to Box Elder in the west of South Dakota and gauge their opinions. While all recognize that…
Soil Temperature Part 3: The Biggest Driver of Heat Units over the Growing Season
The growing season of 2016 was a warm one even though it started out cool and wet, and by the end of the year, the number of heat units or growing degree days for 2016 was 216 above the norm. The take-home from this particular chart was that ambient (or air) temperatures have by a…
Soil Temperature Part 2: How do No-Till Temperatures Catch Up to Conventional Till?
In our previous video we saw that by the end of the season, there is no difference in the number of heat units and temperature as seen by a conventional versus a no-till soil. In fact any differences in cumulative heat units between the two systems disappears by the first week of July. In this…
Soil Temperature Part 1: Comparing Conventionally Tilled vs. No Tilled Temperatures
In this video, the USDA-NRCS’s (Brookings, SD) Eric Barsness and SDSU’s Anthony Bly discusses and experiment the NRCS conducted in Vermillion SD on a conventionally tilled and a long-term no-tilled field. Eric buried two temperature probes at 2” and the probes were able to record temperatures every 15 minutes over the entire growing season of…
Weeds: What SD No-Tillers Say
In this, the final video on weeds, we spent a little time with no-tillers Matt Bainbridge, Al Miron and Ralph Holzwarth and got them to tell their stories about how their no-till, diverse rotation systems were doing with weeds, and how this affected some of their costs to cope with weeds. The message we received…
Crop Rotations for Weed Management (Part 3)
Crop rotations for weed management? At first glance, it doesn’t seem possible. We know, however that in our previous videos, Dr. Anderson showed us how (1) no-till reduces weed prevalence and (2) how he verified this idea experimentally. In this third video, Dr. Anderson discusses why rotating cool season crops into our warm season rotations…
Weed Seed Emergence in Conventional and No-Till Fields (Part 2)
In our previous video, Dr. Randy Anderson walked us through the various fates of the weed seed in conventional and no-till fields. In this video, the theory comes alive as he discusses the results of a three year study he did in comparing conventional and no-till weed seedling emergence.