Illinois farmers reduce tillage, help environment

This year, those tractors are burning diesel fuel that has soared to painful price levels - more than 20 percent above prices last spring.

Fortunately, recent trends have led farmers away from extensive tillage of fields and more toward no-till or conservation tillage programs that both reduce fuel costs and improve water quality. Dennis Tierney, senior stewardship leader for water quality at Syngenta Crop Protection in Greensboro, said conservation tillage was used on a record 113 million acres across the country in 2004, up nearly 10 million acres from just two years earlier.

Illinois farmers led the way with more acreage under no-till farming than any other state. And that has a direct impact on fuel use because, according to one Iowa State University study, no-till farming uses about four gallons less diesel per acre - a 74 percent savings - than conventional tillage systems. And benefits of no-till go beyond fuel savings. Proceedings of the 2005 Georgia Water Resources Conference shows no-till and other conservation tillage systems that leave crop residue on the soil surface can reduce sediment loss by as much as 98 percent, reduce nutrient losses by as much as 90 percent and cut pesticide runoff from fields by as much as 80 percent, as compared with conventional tillage. "When it comes to protecting the environment, farmers are the experts in implementing best management practices from tillage, fertilizer applications and other farming techniques to planting grass waterways, creating riparian buffer strips, building terraces and other environmentally-friendly improvements for farm fields," Tierney said.

And conservation tillage and other watershed management programs do have an impact. A nine-year study by the U.S. Geological Survey conducted from 1989 to 1998 showed levels of atrazine, a commonly used corn herbicide, in 53 Midwestern streams decreased about 47 percent between 1989-90 and 1994-95. Today, atrazine levels in water are well within safety standards and continue to decline. "Conservation programs are improving water quality by reducing runoff, and improving air quality and farm economics by reducing fuel use," Tierney said.

"With two-thirds of the land in the United States managed by private landowners, these responsible agriculture programs have a very favorable impact on our society."

(Source: AgriNews)