Project Overview
Annual Reports
Commodities
- Agronomic: corn, soybeans
Practices
- Crop Production: conservation tillage
- Education and Training: extension, focus group
- Natural Resources/Environment: soil stabilization
- Soil Management: organic matter, soil analysis, soil quality/health
Abstract:
The role of sustainable agriculture has expanded in recent decades from a traditional focus on food and fiber production to also include ecosystem management responsibilities. Farmers may now have an opportunity to be compensated for providing a wide array of ecosystem services, such as sequestering atmospheric carbon dioxide into soil organic matter. Recent research indicates that maintaining maximum surface residue through cropping system practices is imperative for carbon sequestration in soils. Even though increasing surface residue can improve soil quality and reduce soil erosion, it can conversely slow spring soil warm-up and thus delay planting and immobilize plant available nitrogen. In Michigan there is a need for publicly available information to aid producers in evaluating these complex tradeoffs.
To help address this need we held two farmer focus group meetings (four producers each in East-central and Southwest Michigan) to help identify major impediments and incentives for maximizing surface residue cover. To illustrate how the major themes identified during these meetings are addressed on successful farms we consulted with four producers to serve as case studies. These case study producers have been involved with no-till management for 2 to 31 years in Southwest Michigan. An extension bulletin is in preparation to highlight the motivation of, the management techniques required to, and the benefits experienced by these producers by converting to no-till management.
Introduction:
The role of sustainable agriculture has expanded in recent decades from a traditional focus on food and fiber production to also include environmental stewardship. Midwest farmers now have an opportunity to be compensated for providing a wide array of ecosystem services, such as sequestering atmospheric carbon dioxide into soil organic matter. Recent research indicates that maintaining maximum surface residue through cropping system practices is imperative for carbon sequestration in soils. Even though increasing surface residue can improve soil quality and reduce soil erosion, it can conversely, slow spring soil warm-up thus delay planting and immobilize plant available nitrogen. These are complex tradeoffs that many North Central Region row-crop farmers struggle to evaluate. Adoption of no-till management practices that maximize soil organic matter sequestration rates has been limited. This project reviews the scientific literature for economic, agronomic, and environmental tradeoffs associated with the conversion of conventional to no-till management practices. Furthermore, we use farmer focus group meetings to identify impediments to no-till adoption and then use case studies to illustrate how these impediments are overcome by farmers that use a variety of minimum and no-till practices.
Project objectives:
Our general objective for this project is to aid northern corn-belt farmers in incorporating carbon sequestration into their management decisions. Three specific objectives will be used to address the general objective:
1) conduct a literature review of the impact of maximizing surface residue cover in the northern corn-belt region on crop yields, soil C sequestration, and farm profitability;
2) determine major incentives for and impediments to maximizing residue cover through the use of farmer focus group meetings; and
3) highlight in an extension bulletin how four successful case study farms optimize residue cover and farm profitability.