Simply Sustainable

	Rob Heater adapted strip tillage machines that he uses on nearly all of Stahlbush Island Farm’s 2,500 acres near Corvallis, Oregon. Light-Touch Tillage Producers Find Innovative Ways to Cut Soil Disturbance In the 1990s, Oregon soil scientist John Luna generated excitement over strip tillage among members of a Willamette Valley farm improvement group in western Oregon. Luna set out to the test the idea with seven farmers (FW99-005). Among them was Rob Heater, manager of Stahlbush Island Farms near Corvallis. He strip tilled 300 of Stahlbush’s 2,500 acres, planting the fields to sweet corn, broccoli and winter squash. “All 10 of those fields performed fabulously,” says Heater. “We’ve switched completely to strip till because of this grant. I can create a seedbed quicker and earlier and disturb only one-third of the ground. I will never switch back to conventional tillage.” Today across the West plows gather cobwebs as farmers hitch up tools with a lighter touch on the land. They’ve discovered that reducing tillage saves time, labor and fuel. It retains water. It raises fertility and organic matter and reduces erosion and runoff. The Conservation Technology Information Center says conservation tillage—sometimes called direct seeding—reached 103.1 million acres in 2002, up from 73.2 million in 1990. In the West, the number rose to 9.9 million acres from 6.5 million. Some of those acres belong to Randy Hines, who grows irrigated corn, wheat and beans near Delta, Colorado. Hines modified a tillage tool that forms a furrow for irrigation water while leaving a blanket of corn stalks to protect against erosion (FW00-012). The project has been educational. While reduced tillage in Hines’ high-yield corn leaves too much residue, which slows the water’s advance down the furrows, the practice succeeds with low-residue crops like pinto beans or silage corn. Hines cites higher organic matter, reduced erosion and fewer tillage trips across the field, meaning less money spent on fuel. Randy and Sherrill Hines of Delta, Colorado, fashioned a tool to manage corn stalks under reduced tillage. In Arizona, reducing tillage is improving air quality. A University of Arizona project (SW98-068) found that reduced tillage systems in cotton not only trimmed the airborne particulate level to one-third that of conventional tillage but did it with one-fourth the energy. In the Inland Northwest regions of Idaho and Washington, the late Roger Veseth generated considerable interest in conservation tillage by developing case studies of 16 farmers who had successfully adopted various methods (SW97-034). The project sponsored direct seeding conferences and disseminated information through proceedings, videos and a Web site, http://pnwsteep.wsu.edu/dscases/index.htm.   “My hope, my intention as a small farmer, is to write about my day-to-day farm life with an emphasis on ‘getting in touch with your farmer self’ for urban folk.  I think many of them are unhappy because they belong on a small farm. I’d like to see small farms dotting the landscape again.” Mary Jane Butters, owner, Paradise Farm Organics, Moscow, Idaho Simply Sustainable Home Top