Great Bend Tribune
Published March 9, 2024
The drought monitor report as of March 5 is showing a slight increase to abnormally dry by about six percent. Only the southeast tip of Barton County is abnormally dry and the rest of the county is totally out of dry conditions as are Pawnee and Rush Counties. Southwest Kansas continues totally out of drought and Northeast Kansas is a mixture of mostly no drought and abnormally dry with a smattering of moderate drought and small area of severe drought. The six to ten-day outlook (March 12 to 16) indicates a 60 to 70% chance of likely above normal temperatures and 40 to 50% chance of leaning to above normal precipitation. The eight to fourteen-day outlook (March 14 to 20) indicates a continued 33 to 40% chance of leaning above normal temperatures and a continued 33 to 40% chance of leaning to above normal precipitation.
Last week’s column described what regenerative agriculture RA is. This week, how is it implemented? Remember, this isn’t a one size fits all approach and techniques vary by location, soil type, climate, and naturally are affected by weather.
- Cover Crops – The goal is to never leave the soil devoid of vegetation. What is possible depends on the factors noted in the previous paragraph. With a living root system, you reduce erosion, increase water-holding capacity, microbial biomass and health, improve soil structure, and long-term nutrient holding capacity and increase nutrient cycling. An added benefit to good cover crops is over time, the need for herbicides will decrease as they help choke out weeds and aid in vigorous crop growth and canopy closure. Depending on the operation, cover crops can serve as pasture for grazing. Here, where wind and water erosion can both be problems, cover crops combined with the next point also provide an overall more stable soil physical environment and helps buffer the soil form temperature extremes.
- No-Till Practices – The column has discussed no-till often. Long-term no-till, especially in conjunction with cover crops, decreases the need for herbicides, decreases soil erosion, improves soil structure, increases water infiltration while decreasing runoff, helps build organic matter, and increases soil water and nutrient holding capacity, and decreases evaporative losses. It also moderates the soil temperature environment.
- Composting/Building Soil Organic Matter – We have already mentioned the importance of organic matter in this and several previous columns. Most operations aren’t going to do large scale composting but cover crops and eliminating tillage build organic matter. Also adding animal manures helps. The advantage to proper composting is in the eliminating diseases, and for residues low in nitrogen, it eliminates the possible tie up of nitrogen as microbes break down the organic matter into humus.
- Added benefits include less fuel consumption and overall decreased input costs over time.
Next week: How RA can help mitigate climate change.