D22—Lancaster Fanning, Saturday, April 9,1983
Some fanning ideas are so good
they just don’t die. Even though
fanners may not readily accept
them, they keep hanging around
until the time is right. Many of the
important developments of
agriculture were discovered or
invented and then introduced and
reintroduced many tunes before
they gained favor.
It’s hard to believe that horse
drawn implements, including the
reaper, the gang plow, and the
grain drill had been developed for
several decades before farmers,
forced by the Labor shortages of
the Civil War, accepted them. That
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seems strange until you consider
that in the early 1800’s most farm
families had an abundance of hand
labor and very little money, and so
buying a reaper to replace family
labor served no real purpose. It
would have been a costly in
vestment in an unproven and
unnecessary convenience. In fact,
in those circumstances, a farmer
who bought one might be con
sidered downright lazy.
The same could be said for the
acceptance of tractors. It took
Worl War I to push fanners into
wide acceptance of farm tractors
and their related equipment.
Even today, if you look at
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agriculture worldwide you can find
millions of farmers who still don’t
rely on modern machinery to do
their farm work. Oxen and wooden
plows are the state of the art in
much of the world, and the
adoption of the horse collar which
revolutionized agriculture in
Europe and paved the way for an
agricultural revolution has passed
them by even yet.
No-TUI Revolution
And that brings me to a
revolution that is sweeping
agriculture, a system called no-till
that is considered new and dif
ferent and an important
breakthrough in agricultural
production. Current literature
touts no-till as a system for con
serving energy, building soil
fertility, and increasing profits. It
allows crops to be planted with
minimal soil disturbance, thus
reducing erosion potential and
allowing otherwise unsuitable
ground to be farmed.
The pros and cons of no-till
farming have been debated hot and
heavy over the past decade and a
number of today’s scientists have
been credited with making major
contributions to this tillage
system. Some have ever been
honored as having created the
system.
If you believe no-till farming was
invented a decade or so ago, then
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perhaps some of the current
researchers can be given much
credit. But if you look back a little
further, you find that no-till far
ming is not all that new. In fact, a
major farm equipment
manufacturer produced the
forerunner of today’s no-till
planter to fit a Farmall M Tractor.
The last one of those ran off the
assembly lines back in the fifties.
A product promotion piece was -
giverTto me some time back by
Merle Teel, a plant scientist in the
College of Agricultural Sciences at
the University of Delaware. It
touted the virtues of International
Harvester’s McCormick M-21 till
planter, a piece of equipment that
was marketed more than three
decades ago to do the same thing
we’re talking about right now
no-till farming.
Quoting from the literature, the
M-21 was designed to “produce
cultivated row crops under soil
improving rather than soil
depleting Conditions. This is ac
complished by combining two
beneficial practices. Number one:
maintain a mulch on top of the soil
to absorb and retain rainfall,
retard erosion and wind and water,
and make maximum use of crop
residues to build up soil fertility.
Number two: make more efficient
use of chemical fertilizers to in-
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crease yields, as a result of which a
greater volume of organic matter
becomes available to improve soil
structure and fertility.”
The literature went on to extol
the virtues of mulch planting in
controlling erosion and reducing
water runoff. It said, “Mulch
plantings on the contour and
across slopes can virtually
eliminate the costly soil erosion
that so often results from clean
tilled .row crop production under
such conditions.” Hie McCormick
till planter mounted directly on a
Farmall M, Super M or Super MD
tractors. It -included three com
ponents, some cultivator-like
implements that prepared a seed
bed, fertilizer units that applied
both deep and starter fertilizer
applications and a two-row drill
planter. The components attached
both in front of and behind the
drive wheels and were said to work
well in any soil which could be
tilled with a moldboard plow. It
could be used to mulch and plant
directly in corn, soybean or small
grain stubble, cover crops or sods
of clover, alfalfa, lespedeza, and
other grass crops.
The McCormick literature goes
on at great length to explain the till
planter and how it worked. I have
no idea how many of them were
ever sold. I never saw one nor have
(Turn to Page D 23)
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