Soil, nutrient management continues family’s legacy

EMINGTON, Ill. — Conservation practices span generations in the Swartz family, and they continue to look toward sustainably improving their farm.

Craig Swartz, who along with his father, Gary, farm in the Vermilion River Watershed, spoke in a recent webinar of the family’s ongoing efforts to preserve the soil and keep the nutrients there for the crops.

The webinar was hosted through a partnership between the Farm Journal Foundation, Vermilion Headwaters Partnership and the American Farmland Trust, an organization working with local stakeholders to help identify conservation practices to achieve soil health and water quality goals.

“There are just so many things we can do to be better stewards of the land.”

—  Craig Swartz

Swartz is involved in the America’s Conservation Ag Movement, a public-private partnership bringing farmers and the sustainable community together to empower farmers to adopt profitable conservation and stewardship practices on their farms.

When did you start with your conservation farming practices?

“It goes back a lot of generations on our farm. Grandpa Swartz was always on the Soil and Water Conservation District board, my Dad has been involved a lot in conservation over the years, too, and we’ve always had that mindset of trying to get better.

“I can’t say I can take claim for getting started in conservation because it’s been instilled in our family farm. We always try to look towards those things that can better our farm. Strip-tilling and no-tilling and trying to work through cover crops is exciting to continue that legacy here at our place.”

There are numerous conservation practices to choose from. What do you recommend for those first starting?

“There are just so many places for information to get started. Obviously, the Natural Resources Conservation Service office was our helping hands to get started. There are a lot of resources available to us now through YouTube videos and from other farmers in the area.

“Here in the Vermilion Valley Headwaters, there are a lot of farmers that are practicing cover crops or strip-tilling, rebuilding waterways, putting in new waterways or terraces. I think it’s pretty easy to find somebody that implemented some practices whatever that might be.”

When evaluating these programs, how have you gauged success?

“I think it’s pretty easy to gauge success by economic return and looking towards the future of agriculture on our farm. It’s important to save soils for future generations. It may not be an upfront economic benefit, but it is long-term.

“It comes down to economics. We still have to make money and putting those practices in place to do better and to save our investments for future use.

“Cover crops are a great tool for conservation. There’s a lot of research that shows it’s tremendous. It holds the soil in place, taking some nutrients in and improving our water quality and our soil health. But there are so many other things that we can do out in farm country.

“A lot of the waterways in this area are 50 years old that need to be reshaped and rebuilt. There are places that farmers need to put new waterways in that have never gotten addressed. There are places for terraces and so many others.

“Another good example of a practice we can do is split nitrogen applications. I commend the farmers in our watershed. I think everybody is doing a great job with finding that economic benefit to splitting up nitrogen, putting more in the spring and summer than fall-applied. Fertilizer is another one we can diversify on. There are just so many things we can do to be better stewards of the land.”

How do you evaluate the use of equipment and technology and how it fits into your economic decisions?

“I think it’s pretty easy to tell. We use yield mapping to record all our applications of fertilizer, we’re using programs now to write our maps for variable rate fertilizer.

“Technology is a pretty important piece. It helps to control the economic value of trips across the field, anything that we apply or what we’re doing we can go back and look at yield data and decide if what we are doing is the right way.”

What are those metrics for you? Is it time savings? Is it bushels per acre? Is it the economic return on investment?

“There’s a lot to it. It’s not always bushels per acre. There seems to be a push by some that it’s all about how many bushels per acre you can grow of corn, soybeans and other things.

“But it comes down, too, if you can strip-till you can cut three trips across the field, you figure your depreciation on a tractor, your time for manpower and wear and tear on equipment — you have to evaluate those to make sure we’re doing the best we can.

“That’s the economic return that we look at. It’s not always finding that top yield. It’s about return on investment and our time. It has so much to do with economics and looking at the bigger picture of income instead of bushels per acre, maxing out what you can grow.”

If you could go back and start over in terms of conservation practices what would you have done differently?

“It depends on what kind of conservation practice it was. We’ve been doing buffer strips. That was an easy thing to do. Waterways were great and easy to do.

“When it comes to cover crops, it becomes a little more of a challenge. I wish we would have started on a smaller scale when we started. We started experimenting with those about eight years ago and we had some failures. It put a little heartburn in our tummies when we were thinking about doing some more.

“We’re finally getting back into that role where we’re experimenting again. We have some cover crops through the Environmental Quality Incentive Program, so we have a little financial backing to try it. We’re also doing some other studies with the Precision Conservation Management program here in the watershed.

“So, hopefully this go-around will be a little more successful, but looking back most of them were successful. We’ve had a good run with a lot of the stuff we’ve done and the choices we’ve made, but it’s not without hiccups.”

Are your practices on smaller or larger acres?

“When we started strip-tiller 25 years ago of so we started with a field or two and now we’re working toward almost every field being strip-tilled. The same with no-till soybeans, we worked into it. I think everybody does.

“You try something new and then you go with it and see how it turns out. To that, too, our failure was on a little bigger scale than we probably should have. You have to find something that works well for you.”

How long did it take before you saw a benefit of using cover crops?

“I think we saw benefits right away. We’ve seen a lot of erosion control. We’ve got a long ways to go to learn how to use them in our watershed, but we try to put them where we have some spots that wash in the gully erosion and that’s almost immediate.

“We have big rain events in the spring. That cover crop really holds that ground a lot better and keeps the ground from washing away. As far as yield, we’re working on trying to prove what the benefit is.

“We’re seeing a little bit, but we’re trying to work through the economics of the cover crops. Not necessarily on yield, but it’s an economic return on other investments that you’re not spending money on.

“In my mind going forward, anything that overwinters I think is more beneficial. I’m a big fan of the ryes and the stuff that will hold the soil all year long.

“Oats are OK, too. They make kind of a mat in the fall once they die-off that is beneficial, too, but it seems if we can keep that crop growing through the spring when we get our big rains makes a big difference. It’s still there to hold the soil at our critical times.”

How and when are you terminating your cover crops?

“We terminate as early as we can. We’re still kind of in the beginning phases of implementing it so we’re trying to get it killed sooner than later. Some people are trying to let it grow and get really tall, but it gets hard to manage, especially if you’re just getting into it, it can get away from you in a hurry.

“We’ve generally used Roundup in the past, but it does kill the rye kind of slowly, so we’re going to try to use some Gramoxone to get a faster kill on it in some places, especially in front of corn. We’re going to make sure it’s dead very quickly. We don’t worry about it so much for soybeans, its OK if it takes three or four weeks to die.”

What do you feel has been your most successful conservation practice?

“Our nitrogen program has been the most successful. We and a lot of growers in our area have been splitting up nitrogen applications. Not as much fall anhydrous gets applied.

“We’re side-dressing more. I’d say that’s probably the one that has stuck in my mind that is by far the most profitable. We’re keeping nitrates from going down into the tile lines for a longer period of time than say if we’re putting it all down in the fall.

“The next one on my farm is variable rate fertilizer. We have been able to cut our rates a lot and putting fertilizer where it needs to go at the right time in the right place.

“Cover crops are great, but they’re not at the top of my list. Cover crops are a fantastic tool, but we like to look at the big picture as far as conservation goes. It’s not just about cover crops. They’re beneficial, but if we look at stuff like variable rate fertilizer with really good economic return that’s what I like to see.”

How do you split up your nitrogen application?

“For most of our soils we’ll put on 80 or 90 pounds with a full rate of N-Serve in the fall. So, it’s more or less about a half or one-third rate of what we’d apply for the crop. Some other farms we’d put on our nitrogen with 32% in the spring with our chemicals before we plant. Then we’ll come back and side-dress the difference of what our nitrogen rate was for that field after the crop is up at V3, V4, V5. It works pretty well.”