By Lee Hart

Grainews Staff

One of the biggest challenges of switching from conventional to zero till farming is in your head, says a central Alberta farmer.

There can be peer pressure that encourages you to stay with tillage, says Jack Swainson, who farms west of Red Deer, but a lot of it is your own thinking.

“The main thing you have to accept is that black is no longer beautiful,” says Swainson, referring to tilled, exposed soil. “When I started back in 1996, there was always a concern about what the neighbors would think , but that may not be so much an issue today. To move into zero till farming you really have to be thinking outside the box.”

Swainson, speaking to producers at the 2008 FarmTech Conference in Edmonton, says he moved into zero till almost by accident. One year he was busy with other farming activities and had to contract a neighbour with a Concorde air seeder equipped with 16-inch sweeps to seed his farm. He saw how well that crop performed and switched his own equipment to zero till the following year.

“At that time it cost about $85,000 for a 36-foot Harmon drill which was a lot to finance,” says Swainson. “So to make it pencil out I also had to plan on doing some custom seeding, which I still do today.

“Custom seeding has advantages too, because often in working for other people you get to try a bunch of new ideas and they’re paying for it,” he jokes. 

Swainson now has his second drill, which is a 44-foot Harmon, equipped with 11-degree straight shanks, with single shoot openers set on 10.5 inch spacing.

Here are some of Swainson’s key points involving zero till farming:
• A good zero till seeding system will get you started, but it will take a few years for the benefits of improved soil quality to begin to materialize. Be patient.
•  You probably can reduce your line of equipment. Along with a tractor and the seed drill, he farms with a John Deere combine equipped with a straight-cut header. He has an older truck mounted sprayer he may use, if he can’t get a custom operator for spraying. He estimates switching to zero till reduced tractor hours by half.
• As crop residue breaks down in the soil over the years, soil organic matter and tilth will improve. Soil analysis show organic matter levels in Swainson’s fields have increased from about four per cent to more than 10 per cent in 10 years.
• As a person makes a move to zero till, he encourages them to be innovative in their thinking, and also to make use of services and support available through organizations such as   Ducks Unlimited. Technical advice is also available from producer groups such as Alberta Conservation Tillage and government extension services such as Alberta’s Reduced Tillage Linkages.
• Following a proper rotation is key to making a zero till system work. “Don’t let the markets dictate your rotation,” he says.  It is important for disease and weed control to include cereals, oilseeds, pulses and even forages in rotation.
With a proper rotation that includes pulse crops that fix nitrogen in the soil, Swainson has found over the years both his fertilizer and herbicide use has been reduced by about 20 percent.

“It’s not going to happen overnight or all in one season, so be patient,” says Swainson. “And also be prepared that not every year will be perfect. There will be some wrecks. But I think we all ran into some wrecks once in a while with conventional tillage systems, too.”