Strip-tillage provides a sustainable middle-ground alternative to zero-till, researchers say.

“We’re looking at practices including reduced tillage,” said OSCIA Director of Research Angie Straathof, “and strip-tillage is just one of those practices.”

“Strip-tillage is really just one practice in a whole systems approach that could be improving soil health.”

“We’re also seeing how strip-tillage, when used with other management strategies such as cover-cropping and organic amendment application are changing indicators of soil health.”

According to Straathof, the factors examined in the research include the soil’s ability to retain water, and its ability to support biological life.

“Really, where we have the opportunity to study where strip-till is effective and the different ways it enhances … soil health through reducing disturbances in the soil surface and also how it increases soil carbon sequestration by reducing the turnover of crop residue,” she said.

“Because crop residue is less disturbed, it also breaks down at a slower rate, so then the residue is available the following season or for many years to after that.”

The research also focuses on the yield and profitability of practices. She said that feedback has been positive among those who have tried it.

“Farmers who strip-till love strip-till,” she said “So, I think where we’re also using the on-farm program is to give them an opportunity to get their story told and to talk about, like, where their barriers to entry have been, maybe under which systems they’ve modified the approach they’re taking to strip-till and … the program gives them a platform to, share their story as well.”

She said it has also encouraged experimentation among participants.

“Where the program’s encouraging them to push the envelope a bit if they’re already really adept at using strip-till, its asking them ‘how would you still use strip-till but incorporate a little more advanced practices into the system?’”

These advanced practices, she said, could involve cover-cropping or introducing an organic amendment to increase soil carbon.

Other low-till options are similarly under examination at OSCIA.

“We’re also looking at some reduced tillage in livestock systems, for example, that use vertical tillage, or we do have full no-till systems that we’re also studying in the on-farm program,” she said.

“By having kind of a spectrum of those practices represented in the program, we’re able to say ‘this works well for these farm types, under these conditions’, but there’s no one-size-fits all approach.”

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Aubrey Lang spoke about his family’s soybean-soybean-soybean-wheat rotation, with a rye cover crop almost yearly, during a grower open house hosted by Petrolia-based Field Farms Marketing on June 22.

Lang’s late grandfather bought one of the first no-till drills in Ontario in the 1980s, and the family continues to follow in his innovative footsteps while cropping about 2,500 workable acres.

Why it matters: As Lang explained in a 2021 No-Till Farmer magazine article, a multitude of research shows that minimum tillage and cover crops benefit soil health and biodiversity.

The Langs have tried various options ranging from oilseed radish to oats since adding cover crops to their cropping toolbox. They now have approximately 95 per cent of their land with cover over the winter, either in the form of winter wheat or the rye crop they direct-seed into standing soybeans using a broadcast spreader just as the leaves begin to turn colour.

Typically, in the rotation, one field is left without cover over the winter because the Langs want one location that warms up and dries out early to start spring work without waiting for the soil under the rye to dry out.

Lang said sometimes they couldn’t even see the Amazone drill when planting beans in the spring because the rye cover could be 10-15 feet high. They spray the rye to kill it off before the beans emerge.

Lang told the FFM audience that this spring, as soybean seeding approached, he dug between two to three inches into the winter-bare field before finding moisture, whereas moisture was almost at the surface in the cover crop fields.

“This can be a detriment because it delays drying and warming in the spring,” he admitted. But it was a definite advantage this year, as evidenced by the high incidence of poor soybean germination across southwestern Ontario due to dry planting conditions.

There is typically a delay in germination compared to beans planted in bare soil, and “there are definitely risks involved because of the amount of residue with the rye,” Lang told the open house audience.

“The biggest challenge is getting the beans up.”

In a dry year, the rye can take up much of the moisture before they get into the field to plant the beans. Once the beans emerge, the rye residue “works as an ally with the beans” because it suppresses weeds and holds moisture by preventing evaporation.

To minimize crop loss and compaction, Lang uses a tramline system based on GPS where all the equipment — the spreader, the drill and the sprayer — has the same wheel spacings and follows the same paths in the fields.

Occasionally, less-than-favourable weather throws a curve in their seeding activities. If wet spring weather is getting late for soybean planting and the rye could soon head out, they spray it before and plant soybean through the residue.

In the fall, if dry weather causes poor germination in the rye planted prior to the soybean harvest, the rye is replanted with a drill after rain.

With the one year of wheat in the typical rotation, Lang explained, their “most expensive lesson” was leaving the wheat straw on the field to conserve nutrients.

“Slugs love cool, wet environments. If you don’t take off that wheat straw, it’s going to be a total slugfest because of all the residue,” Lang explained, adding the field was completely infested with slugs eating the pre-emerged soybean plants.

Even after replanting, there was still an almost complete crop loss. Now the Langs always harvest the wheat straw.

Several years into this rotation, Lang finds they “haven’t been putting a whole lot of nutrients into the soil over the years.”

Instead, they follow their agronomist’s recommendations and often opt for more seed-applied and foliar inoculants and innovative biological products than are typically used. Lang sees this as a more fossil fuel-efficient approach to boosting nutrient uptake than conventional fertilizers.

Lang believes the significant enhancement of soil biology and increased water-holding capacity from long-term no-till strategies allow crops to take better advantage of naturally occurring nutrient sources.

In addition, the Langs partnered with Ducks Unlimited and other conservation groups — through funding programs to preserve water quality in the Lake St. Clair watershed — to retire some of the gully bottoms and “protect ecosystems, create habitat and prevent erosion.”

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