Regular or No Till seeding.

This spring I am seeding about 500 acres of spring barley.  The price is still up and the soil benefits from a rotation crop that is not wheat.  I struggle with is the question of planting methods.  I still use some old school tillage method of planting barley and some no till method of planting barley.

Regular tillage has me chopping the stubble after harvest in the fall.  In the spring I will harrow the field to further break down the stubble and then use a cultivator to break up the soil for the future operations.  I then use a fertilizer machine to apply nitrogen into the soil profile.  We then cultivate the field again to prepare the seed bed.  The last step is to drill the barley into the worked ground.  As you can see this requires many trips over the field and this also takes lots of tractor driving time and gallons of fuel. 

No till requires much less tillage and hours of tractor time.  I would chop the stubble in the fall after harvest.  In the spring I just spray the field with Roundup to remove the green re growth and weeds from the field.  My dealer then comes in with a huge tractor and air seeder and seeds the field.  Now this seem like a easy choice from a time and fuel use standpoint. 

I question the wisdom of using no till on my fields.  We now know that weeds have learned how to survive the Roundup and thus they are called Roundup resistance weeds.  I also have to add in the cost of the using the drill.  I have to pay rent for each acre seeded.  I am spending and additional 22 dollar an acre for the drill and the fuel will run another 5 dollars an acre.  The no till does not always yield as well as regular tillage. 

No till is better for the soil and the future of farming is a combination or regular tillage and not till.

This year I have half of the spring crop no till and the remainder is regular tillage.  I will let you know which one works out better after harvest.