Conservation can increase field productivity

Matthew Oehmichen

When it comes to creating best-practice land management with a grower, I find it fascinating how crazy ideas become agronomic practices. As my years in this industry have gone by I’ve seen chang es in beliefs on such practices as interseeding, cover cropping, minimum tillage and diversity of crops in the rotation. As those practices were incorporated into increasingly more acres, I foresaw an important question.

“How do I know this is doing anything?”

When growers expand the number of acres on which they establish systems that include cover crops or interseeded companion crops, they want to know if they’re maximizing their crop management and increasing the productivity of their fields. From what I’ve seen in field trials and plots in Marathon County, Wisconsin, I believe they are.

Conservation practices can bring more productivity to fields, especially when combined with fertility. “Practices” is the operative word because using multiple approaches during the course of a season helps create the benefits of nutrient cycling. Nutrient cycling occurs when energy and matter are consumed and released back into their environment. It’s the process whereby forests and prairies become self-sustaining. As plants grow they take nutrients from the soil. When their life cycle is complete, the plants decompose and release those nutrients back to the soil.

But in a cropping system the crop is harvested,thus removing the nutrients from the soil.With a crop’s removal the nutrient