Leupold Center for Sustainable Ag

UGUIDE

UGUIDE

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I think UGUIDE has found his home!

An article in Agweek lead me here and here is excellent article on a third system between conventional and organic production.

The article is ISU's study and 3 & 4 year crop rotations and how they are as profitable as bean and corn rotations and reduce inputs as much as 80-90% (fossil fuels, synthetic fertilizers and chemical herbicides).

http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/news...op-rotation-study-makes-national-media-splash

The Leupold Center is part of Iowa State Universities system.
 
Great article Chris, thanks for sharing. :cheers:
 
This is the kind of info that helps encourage me in the right direction. I was contemplating adding a 4th crop in the rotation and wondering what the benefits might be.

My planned rotation was soybeans-winter wheat-corn w/cover crop following the wheat.

Now I will add Grain Sorghum because it is a good crop for our area, drought resistant, pheasants and pheasant hunters love it. I might get to add it sooner than I thought if the wheat crop fails this spring.

Plus I got the Truax drill to plant it and the custom operator confirmed he can combine it on 8" rows with a bean head. I like 8: rows much better than 30 or 40 for pheasants holding and hiding in the stubble while they feed.
 
Not to be a buzz kill but here is the "big picture" fly in the ointment quoted directly from the article.

Barriers to taking this path include the increased management time, skills and labor required, as well as policies that incentivize corn and soybean and the lack of strong markets for alternative crops. An absence of costs assigned to environmental damage associated with farming systems is an additional impediment.

The train is racing down a totally opposite path at a pretty high speed. Am coming to the conclusion the only thing that will slow it down is the bursting of the economic Ag bubble or some dust bowl like disaster. Trouble is when that time comes common sense solutions will get pushed aside because they don't provide instant gratification, good soundbites for the evening news or piles of votes.

Kudos though to any landowner forward thinking enough to embrace the long-term view and put something like this into practice.
 
They used pricing points for 2003-2011 and determined it was just as profitable as a corn bean rotation. The last 3 years has totally changed the price structure of grains.
 
Downtown Bang! said:
Not to be a buzz kill but here is the "big picture" fly in the ointment quoted directly from the article.

Barriers to taking this path include the increased management time, skills and labor required, as well as policies that incentivize corn and soybean and the lack of strong markets for alternative crops. An absence of costs assigned to environmental damage associated with farming systems is an additional impediment.

The train is racing down a totally opposite path at a pretty high speed. Am coming to the conclusion the only thing that will slow it down is the bursting of the economic Ag bubble or some dust bowl like disaster. Trouble is when that time comes common sense solutions will get pushed aside because they don't provide instant gratification, good soundbites for the evening news or piles of votes.

Kudos though to any landowner forward thinking enough to embrace the long-term view and put something like this into practice.
Click to expand...

I agree DB that anyone on the Monsanto track can shoot at this thing all day long if they want.

The question remains if this diverse rotation is as "scale-able" as corn-corn or corn-beans.

The other dimension is the renter-owner farmer. This is about sustainability and the renter will not have the same view of sustainable nor the controls as the owner farmer.

What this study touches on is why I could no longer rent and HAD to start making farming decisions myself.

Where this nicche fits is somewhere between Monsanto track and Organic track. A third alternative.
 
moellermd said:
They used pricing points for 2003-2011 and determined it was just as profitable as a corn bean rotation. The last 3 years has totally changed the price structure of grains.
Click to expand...

Mike, I don't understand? Here's my point.

Just got my crop insurance quotes back. Looking at what to plant is the wheat fails.

I got 5 crops: milo, wheat, corn, beans, and sunflowers.
I got revenue assurance of 3 to 4 times what I was getting cash rent and all 5 crops were within $100 of each other and flowers was the highest and beans the lowest.

If I rotated all 5 crops over next 5 years I could do mighty good on both the input savings and the yields. Not to mention the pheasants might like some of those and the water nigh be a little cleaner.

Sometimes the even biggest ROI is not on what you can measure nor see.
 
I am sure what you get farming your self is higher than what you were getting with cash rent. It should be you are doing the labor and assuming the risk.

Your corn yields must be pretty low to only have a $100 difference between corn and beans. Based on actual input costs and current new crop prices the corn bean spread in our area is $230. If both of our numbers are correct, which I will assume they are, that 5 crop rotation might work in your area just fine. If so I would agree that planting it makes sense. But in my area with high corn yields corn on corn or a corn on bean rotation makes more sense. We do throw in some alfalfa ever few years.

My point is with the high prices and higher yielding varieties of corn in the past 3-4 years it changes things compared to looking back all the way to 2003. If corn drops back into the $3 and other crops hold on better it might make sense to throw in more small grain.
 
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