NO-TILL HERO  -  John Young

John Young is a grain farmer from Herndon, Kentucky in Christian County.  He owns 450 acres of land but farms a total of 2,800 acres of which he harvests, by double cropping, approximately 4,000 acres of crops per year.  He grows corn and double cropped wheat and soybeans.  He crops mostly B and C slope land on Crider, and Pembroke soils, as well as A and B slope land on Nicholson, Baxter, Nolin, and Robertsville soils.

John’s family was the first to no-till corn in Kentucky and one of the first to no-till in the nation.  His father, Harry Young Sr., started no-tilling in 1962.  He used a home rigged Allis Chalmer planter and planted .2 acres of corn.  Now, some 45 years later, almost all John’s grain crops are no-tilled.   In fact, John has a field on his farm that has had some form of no-till on it for 45 years.

The main reason John’s father started no-tilling was to eliminate soil erosion.  Other benefits realized were labor savings, less horse power requirements and diesel fuel savings.  John says, “The biggest benefits I see today are erosion control, labor, and timeliness of operations.”  Over a 10 year period John has measured the increase in organic matter content on his no-till fields from 1.9% to 2.5%.

Over the years, machinery and weed control issues have been obstacles John’s family has had to over come.  Many years ago the Young family constructed seed hoppers to get over more acres and adapted anhydrous ammonium applicators with larger diameter shanks to work for no-till.  They have also had problems with Johnsongrass, Morning Glory vines, etc.  Now, with the advent of modern no-till equipment and the development of over the top chemicals, no-till farming is much easier and practical.  John says, “Martin Row Cleaners have greatly assisted no-till farmers by enabling no-till planters to get seeds in the ground”.  John also feels that weed control is much more effective if a 2 mode action mixture of herbicide is applied for weed control.  A mixture of glyphosate and a broad leaf weed killer is very effective at controlling most weed problems making no-till a practical approach for grain production.  John doesn’t believe weed control will become more of a problem in the future for no-till producers if chemical weed control herbicide mixtures are applied properly and new crop plant varieties such as Round Up Ready corn and soybeans are developed.

John now no-tills all corn and soybeans into previous crop residues and is beginning to do the same with wheat.  He says, “New varieties of wheat that are somewhat more resistant to Head Scab disease enables me to drill my wheat after corn instead of using minimum tillage”.

John does a limited amount of tillage at the end of his rows where soil compaction occurs and where ruts occur in fields from harvest equipment traffic in wet years.  John uses a para plow or no-till ripper to deal with his compaction issues at the end of his rows and disks only those specific areas of his fields that need it when ruts develop from harvesting equipment.

Agriculture sustainability is a topic of interest to John.  He feels no-till is one of the keys to having a sustainable agriculture.  “No-till will protect and maintain the soil resource base while allowing for the more intensive and productive agriculture the nation will need in the future to produce food and biofuels like ethanol”, says John.

John feels that more landowners haven’t adopted no-till for a variety of reasons.  Some farmers have traditionally plowed the ground and don’t want to change and some farmers enjoy plowing ground and operating tillage equipment.  He questions if these landowners have taken a serious look at the bottom line profit between tilling the land and no-tillage.  He assures me that no-till is more profitable.

John’s advice to producers wanting to convert from conventional or minimum tillage to no-tillage is to study recommendations from their Land Grant Universities, Extension Service and neighbors who are already implementing a no-till system.  He also recommends easing into it by only no-tilling 10-15% of their crop the first year.  He says a positive attitude toward no-till is very important.  You need the attitude that no-till is working for others and it can work for me also.  He does caution that some soil types are less adaptable to no-till.  No-till implementation and success is more difficult on soils with high water tables or wet natured soils.  He also states that, “During drought years no-till has an advantage over tillage or minimum tillage because the soil has more residue on the surface protecting the soil from drying out”.

John Young – Christian County

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