NEWARK, Del. Today’s grain
producers have many tillage
alternatives. Choosing the best
system to maximize profits while
minimizing erosion isn’t always
easy.
The moldboard plow is still the
best tool for covering sod or trash
while pulverizing the topsoil, says
University of Delaware extension
agricultural engineer Tom
Williams. It buries many potential
weed, insect, and disease problems
but leaves the land exposed to
erosion.
The chisel plow stirs and
pulverizes the topsoil while leaving
ridges and furrows and some
surface residue to reduce erosion.
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U. of Del. compares costs of tillage
It’s cheaper to operate than the
moldboard plow, provided
secondary tillage isn’t increased to
prepare the seedbed, says
Williams.
Various disk implements are
available for cutting surface
residue and shallow tillage, while
subsoilers can till up to 2 feet deep
where compacted subsoils impede
root development.
Then there’s no-tillage, which
offers growers some attractive
alternatives to plowing the soil. It
helps conserve soil moisture,
reduce soil temperatures and
decrease soil erosion by both wind
and water. But most attractively,
it reduces labor, machinery and
fuel requirements, three expensive
inputs. This system has allowed
fanners to expand their cropped
acreage without having to increase
their machinery investment
substantially, the specialist says.
The University of Delaware
Cooperative Extension Service and
Agricultural Experiment Station
began field studies in 1973 to
compare the differences in
machine energy requirements for
various tillage systems to grow
com on Coastal Plain soils.
Williams presented a summary of
this research at the annual Mid-
Atlantic No-Till Conference in
Timonium, Md., last December.
“We started with two In
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tractprs with a vacuum gauge on
the intake manifolds calibrated
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Ti deters
Equipment
against a PTO dynamometer and
fuel meter,” Williams said. “This
gave us engine horsepower and
fuel u>e in the field.” A drawbar
dynamometer provided implement
draft requirements.
“That first year we found that 60
horsepower-hours per acre were
required for moldboard plowing,
one disking, one springtoothing
and planting on a loamy sand soil,”
he said. Substituting a chisel plow
for the moldboard plow lowered
the requirements to 46 horsepower
hours per acre, whereas no-till
com planting required only 8.6
one-seventh of the moldboard plow
system.
No-till also took only about a
sixth of the fuel and a third of the
labor of the moldboard plow
system. Chisel plowing saved 1.1
gallons of fuel per acre and 0.21
hours an acre over moldboard
plowing. These figures don’t in
clude spraying.
“By 1974 we were able to obtain a
97 PTO HP Minneapolis Moline
G 955 diesel tractor with more
sophisticated instrumentation for
these machine system com
parisons,” Williams said.
Using this, the relationships
between no-till and chisel plow
systems were ver similar to those
obtained with the gas tractors.
Chisel plowing required 40.6 more
horsepower-hours per acre, 3.25
more gallons per acre of diesel
fuel, and 0.45 more hours of labor
than the no-till planter. This
comparison also didn’t include
spraying, which would slightly
lower the difference, since no-till
generally requires a larger volume
of spray material per acre than
clean tilled soil.
University of Delaware
agricultural engineers have also
evaluated the inputs and yields for
subsoiling to a depth of 15 inches in
the row at planting.
“Draft increased as speed and
depth of subsoiling increased, with
inclined shanks requiring less
draft than parabolic shanks,”
Williams reported. “Subsoiling
could require up to 35 additional
tractor PTO horsepower per row
or shank. Benefits of in-row sub
soiling on Coastal Plain soils have
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incaster Farming, Saturday, March 24,1984—P31
been highly variable in both no-till
and clean tilled systems. No-till,
however, has averaged about a 7
percent increase in yields over
clean tilled systems. Yields are
usually increased in dry years
because of moisture con
servation.”
The savings no-till offers in
machine energy, fuel and labor
can have a number of economic
implications in a farming
operation.
“Saving over 3 gallons of diesel
fuel an acre is perhaps not as
critical now as during the energy
crisis, but the $1 per gallon saved
can help pay for the additional
chemicals required,” he said.
Saving 0.4 hours of labor per
acre can be a cash saving of
another $3 per acre at a labor rate
of |7.50 an hour. However, he
pointed out, this is no saving unless
the labor is put to another
productive use such as planting
more acres.
The biggest savings with no-till
come from reduced machinery
investment over a period of time.
“You have to decide what this can
mean to your operation,” Williams
said. “New tractors currently sell
for about $4OO per PTO HP. If no
till allows you to eliminate a 100
HP tractor, that’s $40,000 less
capital investment. With another
$lO,OOO less for tillage implements,
your fixed machinery costs may
drop $l5 to $2O per acre.”
From 1980 through 1982, farm
machinery depreciation in the U.S.
exceeded investment by a total of
$ll billion. “Certainly most of this
came from delayed purchases
because of depressed farm in
come. However, some must have
resulted from increased con
servation and no-tillage prac
tices,” the specialist said.
“In a comparison of machine
systems, no-tillage will win out
every time because fewer
machines are required,” Williams
concluded. “Many other factors
must be considered as well, when a
cropping system is analyzed. But
in the final analysis, one thing
seems sure, there will be more no
till in’B4.”
BRUNING
.■] WV.V.. i,