Area Wheat Farmers Explore No-Till Alternatives
Nelson Cordill has raised wheat and buckwheat the conventional way for as many years as it has taken for his hair to turn gray.
But this week the Cheney-area farmer considered a change as he wandered out to a test plot deep in a barley field just east of Davenport, Wash.
Like many wheat farmers in the area, Cordill has to find alternatives to traditional farming because of changes in the Conservation Reserve Program and the Freedom to Farm Act. Both programs reduce federal support, thus adding risk to straight wheat farming.
“They need to look at other crops so they can spread their risk,” said Diana Roberts, a Washington State University agronomist who is working with Eastern Washington farmers.
Cordill and 15 other farmers patiently endured a light rain Tuesday as Chad Shelton, agronomist for Western Farm Service, stepped through rows of mustard and soybeans and explained the studies of alternative crops and no-till farming his company is performing. Western Farm Service is a retail dealer for fertilizer and crop protection products and has 11 test sites in the Pacific Northwest.
“We want to learn in plots like these so in a couple of years you can decide what to plant,” Shelton said.
Rows of corn, sunflowers, sorghum, linola and legumes including chick-peas, dissected the untilled soil. By using a no-till planting process, Shelton and the owner of the Wilke Farm property, Washington State University, hope to demonstrate that farmers can reduce soil erosion, retain moisture and still produce successful crop yields.
Plants such as condiment mustard flourished at the test site, while others, including soybeans and sorghum, made a meek showing.
“Sorghum is a tough crop to raise,” Shelton said. “If it had been up to me, I wouldn’t have planted it, but the growers were interested.”
He stood apologetically over a row of dogged looking sorghum plants. “I pull my hair out more often with this,” he said. “I stand in a plot like this and say, ‘What do you think?”’
The farmers looked intently at the results. Some noted that plants like mustard and linola that had done well in this cooler and wetter-than-normal year.
Among the observers was Davenport farmer Hal Johnson, who is already trying alternative crops and farming practices. Johnson has test fields of mustard and canola. He and other experimentally-minded farmers share their results with WSU in hopes of pooling enough information to make good planting decisions in the next few years when their federal subsidies run out.
“What’s interesting is that the farmers are initiating it,” said Roberts of WSU. “We’re now trying to keep up.”
, DataTimes