Strip cropping research, which started at the Precision Technology Institute in Pontiac last year will evolve this year. Precision Planting’s lead agronomist, Jason Webster said, they may look at grazing livestock between corn rows instead of growing soybean strips this year.
It’s always exciting to see what researchers and farmers will be field testing in a new growing season. This year they will be building on growing trends with some new ideas getting attention.
Conservation, both reducing input costs and for helping the environment, seems to be high on the list of what’s going on with field research in 2023. Among other things, cover crops and other practices are being fine-tuned.
Farmers may be farming smaller in the future, not with fewer acres, but farming less of the square footage on each acre, says Jim Schwartz, director of Beck’s Research Agronomy and Practical Farm Research.
Today most farmers farm almost every one of the 43,560 square feet per acre, but in the future, with new technology, they may be actually farming only one-quarter of that – directly where the crops are, he said. Beck’s calls research on this trend the Quarter-Acre Initiative, he said
Beck’s studies this year will include corn row-width and population studies.
Research is already ongoing on with banding fertilizer. Equipment manufacturers are working on equipment to target plant rows and innovations are being made to use chemical control on certain plants.
Farming plant by plant
With the costs of inputs including diesel and fertilizer, farmers are looking for ways to farm more precisely where the crop is. At age 60, Schwartz said it may not be in his lifetime that farmers are actually only farming on 10,890 sq. ft. or one-quarter of each acre, but he expects a time will come when they are only working on 4 inches on each side of the row.
Factors such as new strip till equipment, concerns about environmental impact and advancement of fertilizer placement are all facilitating this move, he said.
“Our research is around systems,” that will allow a farmer to farm plant by plant, he said.
“I think the day of farming 43,560 sq. ft. per acre is coming to an end,” the directory of agronomy research said.
Banding fertilizer research is one of the system. Schwartz calls a study in 2022 “interesting.” He said the two years of banded fertility data shows that it will likely need about eight years of research to have the information farmers need.
More practical farm research will look at foliar applications plant by plant to see what is the most effective and efficient, he said.
Short corn
This year Beck’s is testing short corn varieties to see if they require less nitrogen, a lower carrier of fungicides and what row width and population is best for them.
Along with the potential of using fewer inputs for equal yields, there is interest in short corn varieties to reduce lodging and manage residue in some regions, he said.
Jason Webster, Precision Planting’s head agronomist, will also be testing the short corn with different protocol including row width and fertility placement.
He will be looking at short corn in another context in his strip cropping, a new experiment that was of interest to farmers on the Precision Technology Institute research plots in Pontiac, Illinois, last year.
“In 2022 our highest net returns were with strip cropping,” said Webster of plots that yielded 398 bu./corn.
The extra sunlight on the plants, boosting photosynthesis, seemed to help yields but soybeans strips growing beside the corn showed losses of 5 to 10 bu./acre. With current soybean prices, that quickly cuts into corn profits, he said.
A shorter corn variety might work well here or grazing between the corn strips instead of growing soybeans, he said.
Grain storage and drying
This year, new grain storage and drying facilities in Pontiac will be complete to allow research on the best moisture levels to harvest and store grain, Webster said.
Sometimes there are harvest losses while farmers wait for lower moisture to save on drying costs when propane is so expensive. Research will help determine which timing choices may be more profitable. He and his team will also be looking at the possibility of adding moisture back into soybeans, Webster said.
Soil health continues to be a large area of interest including using cover crops. Studies will look at “the true economics” and how long it might take to make a difference.
Webster is in the third year of a 10-year year soil health study. “This one hits home with a lot of growers,” said Webster who also farms with his family in east Central Illinois.
Other key research projects, including those focused on photosynthesis at the University of Illinois, will continue this year.
In December, the Bill & Melinda Gates Agricultural Innovations project announced another $34 million grant to the RIPE project in Urbana-Champaign.
Researchers Lisa Ainsworth, Stephen Long and Donald Ort will continue to lead the Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency project in which they have demonstrated significant increases in crop productivity in the first decade of their research in field trials on the university farm, the release said.
As support rises for renewable energy at the same time as concern about losing cropland to solar panels rises, researchers continue to look for ways to make the two enterprises compatible.
Agrivoltaics provides a way of combining solar panels with crops or gazing animals in the same fields, according to ACES communication specialist, said Marianne Stein’s report on Dec. 1.
However, there are regulatory complications in such efforts because the land would no longer be classified as agriculture. A new study from the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) at the University of Illinois is compiling an overview of zoning and taxation regulations that affect agrivoltaics across the United States. It will identify challenges and possible solutions, for farmers leaders and legislators.
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Phyllis Coulter is an Illinois field editor, writing for Illinois Farmer Today, Iowa Farmer Today and Missouri Farmer Today.
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Strip cropping research, which started at the Precision Technology Institute in Pontiac last year will evolve this year. Precision Planting’s lead agronomist, Jason Webster said, they may look at grazing livestock between corn rows instead of growing soybean strips this year.
Beck’s studies this year will include corn row-width and population studies.
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Farming plant by plant a focus of some 2023 field research – AgUpdate
