South Dakota farmers used a no-till cropping system to plant half of the acres that got planted this year– despite it being the wettest year on record for the state.
Jeff Zimprich is the State Conservationist for the US Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. He says no-till farming has been the predominant cropping system in the state in recent years, but this is the first year the practice was used to plant 50% of the state’s crops.
With the no-till farming system, the soil is left undisturbed from harvest to planting and the planting process disturbs only a small part of the soil surface. Other systems, including mulch till, reduced tillage and conventional tillage, disturb the entire soil surface and bury varying amounts of residues from previous crops.
Of the state’s 66 counties, 20 show 75-100% of crop acres being planted using a no-till cropping system.
While the 2019 Cropping Systems Inventory conducted by the NRCS showed no-till use matched the combined use of full width tillage methods including mulch till, reduced tillage and conventional tillage, the acreages of all cropping systems were down significantly in South Dakota because 4-million acres of crops weren’t planted this year. NRCS didn’t include unplanted or “prevent plant” acres in the inventory because the survey points are observed after planting. Estimated unplanted acres in each cropping system in 2019 were no-till, 20%; mulch tillage, 39%; reduced tillage, 38%; and conventional tillage, 27%.
NRCS inventories since 2004 show the use of conventional tillage, which leaves the least amount of ground surface protected by crop residues, has remained fairly level at about 17 percent. No-till percentage has grown from a 37 percent share of total cropping system use in 2004 to 50 percent this year. “The increase in no-till percentage is coming from farmers who are moving from high-residue tillage systems to not tilling at all,” Zimprich said. “More farmers could well be moving in that direction because no-till is a key practice used with cover crops and crop rotations to regenerate and build healthy soils.”
More than 900,000 acres of cover crops were planted in South Dakota last year. Nine counties now have more than 30,000 acres of cover crops and another 22 counties have between 10,000 and 30,000 acres.
The NRCS has tracked tillage systems and no-till for 37 years to help measure progress in the use of soil saving and soil building farming systems.
The full report can be viewed on the NRCS SD website.
