Field evaluation of traffic-induced compaction and its potential impact on soil physical characteristics and crop yield

View the project final report

Commodities

Practices

• Education and Training: demonstration, extension, on-farm/ranch research
• Soil Management: soil physics

This pilot study was inspired by the wet weather harvests in 2018 (the wettest year in the past 50 years according to USEPA) throughout the north-central and upper Midwest regions of the United States. Crops were harvested with less-than-ideal field conditions and hence, deep soil compaction and ruts were observed on many farms due to agricultural machinery (e.g., tractors, combines and grain wagons). The trend was similar in the following year, 2019: wet spring and delayed planting forced backwards the harvesting dates. So, we conducted field demonstrations on the producer’s farm having corn and soybean crops, to project compaction influence on soil physical properties and crop yield. In this report, we summarized the soil's physical properties data.

Field demonstrations were started in the harvest season of 2019. Results indicate, the immediate negative impact of agricultural machinery on soil physical structure. After freezing, experiments were again performed during the Spring-2020 to study to what extent freeze-thaw reduced the compaction generated in previous harvests. Results indicate the negative impact of trafficability continued during planting, and areas previously compacted during harvest had greater bulk density and soil penetration resistance compared to control (no machinery). The impact of traffic machinery was relatively more in the conventional-tilled fields compared to the no-tilled fields. Due to drought, crops failed on most of the demonstration farms and hence yields were not collected.

The proposed project is being completed with the following objectives: 

1.  To demonstrate and investigate the extent of soil damage caused by field traffic in terms of soil compaction measurements.
2. To evaluate the effect of traffic on the succeeding crop performance by measuring dry matter and grain yield after post-traffic in the wheel-rut and non-trafficked area.
3. To disseminate the project outcomes to producers, stakeholders, students and research professionals through extension and educational activities and approaches such as field tours, presentations, publications, and websites.