Brazilian no-tiller Charles Peeters believes that agriculture is part of the solution to global warming. The No-Till Passport series is brought to you by Martin Industries.
“Brazil feeds around 1.2 billion people on the planet,” writes Luiz Carlos Bergamaschi, President of ABAPA, “but little is known about how this was possible, and there are those who have no idea about our strategic role for the future of humanity. It was not the work of chance.” The No-Till Passport series is brought to you by Martin Industries.
Part of the opportunity for me to recently present the “S.H. Phillips Distinguished Lecture In No-Till Agriculture” at the University of Kentucky was the chance to spend the day talking with faculty members and graduate students from around the world. Phillips was a pioneer in the early 1960s in getting no-till started on a commercial scale. And he would certainly be proud to know no-till has grown to an astounding 288 million acres today around the world.
Controlled traffic, cover crops and continuous no-till are boosting yields and profitability in South America, Australia and elsewhere as worldwide no-till acres near 300 million.
To gauge the world’s supply of arable farming acres, an agricultural expert once compared Earth to the size of an apple, cut into 32 slices. The number of acres suitable for food production represents only one slice, and the apple’s skin represents the world’s supply of topsoil.
While much of the attention in the crop markets has been focused on wheat and corn, soybean prices have shown strength even while trading in a wide range during the past 2 months.
Long before cover crops became a hot topic among farmers, Wellman, Iowa, no-tiller Dennis Berger drilled cereal rye in the fall of 1978. Then in the spring of 1979, he used paraquat to kill the rye before no-tilling corn
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, we taught Brazilian farmers how to no-till successfully. Now, they’re kicking our butts in the worldwide export market due to lower cropping costs and a tremendous boost in no-tilled acres.
When several University of Kentucky agronomists and others headed to South America 35 years ago to show farmers there how to no-till, little did they realize that demonstrating this new technology would eventually turn Brazil into a major player in the world food market and a serious competitor for our grain exports. It’s not likely that they foresaw the eventual impact this would have on prices being paid to American farmers today.
When it comes to no-tilling Roundup Ready soybeans, your competitors in Argentina have a distinct advantage due to lower seed prices. The inability to enforce intellectual property rights has given that nation’s bean producers a comparative advantage.
While no-till was used on 17.5 percent of all ground in the United States and made up 47.9 percent of all acres that were farmed with conservation tillage last year, the adoption of this reduced tillage practice still has a long way to go.
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On this episode of Conservation Ag Update, brought to you by CultivAce, West Union, Iowa, no-tiller Loran Steinlage checks in with a harvest update, and explains why this fall will be one of his most educational harvests yet.
Needham Ag understands the role of technology in making better use of limited resources within a specific environment by drawing on a wealth of global experience to overcome the challenges facing today's farmers, manufacturers and dealers.
The Andersons grows enduring relationships through extraordinary service, a deep knowledge of the market, and a knack for finding new ways to add value as we have done for nearly 70 years.