Pictured above: Broadening. In his experiments with 60 “rows for uncultivated corn, Chris Teachout saw a slight loss of yield for corn, but measured higher amounts of above-ground nitrogen and biomass in the wider rows compared to 30” rows.
Chris Teachout and his family have been using protective measures on their farm since the 1980s, and the farm has not been operated for the past two decades.
Implementing No-Till alone is not easy. But Teachout hasn’t rested on his laurels as he tried new practices to improve production and profitability beyond maintaining a basic rotation of corn, soybeans, and small grains.
According to Teachout, being willing to look at problems in a different way requires getting out of the rut. He is a licensed helicopter pilot and often talks about the training and thinking process that pilots use to analyze and fix problems rather than focusing on the danger of the moment.
When growers face a challenge, “we tend to face that problem head on. We want to focus on the solutions to the problem. “
1 Stop baking bottoms
Teachout knows the importance of having full armor with residue on your floors. He achieved this by first not incorporating soybeans into grain rye and then mixing cover crops into corn to improve biodiversity.
A reward for land cover was the mitigation of extreme soil temperatures, which allowed it to produce productive crops when they might otherwise have been burned.
He pocketed a year …
Comments are closed.