|
Posted January 12, 2007: Harvest records show last season’s cost-slashing, soil-building, no-till organic corn yields topped comparable tilled organic and tilled non-organic fields here at The Rodale Institute.
Using an improved design of its no-till roller—and only a legume cover-crop for fertility and weed management—the Institute’s no-till organic corn plots produced 160 bushels per acre (bu/a), compared to 143 bu/a for tilled organic plots.
This means the one-pass, roll/plant no-till system—with no additional field passes until harvest—out-yielded normally tilled and cultivated organic plots that experienced eight or nine field passes (plowing, disking, cultipacking, planting, two rotary hoe passes and two to three cultivator passes). Yield on comparable chisel-tilled non-organic (conventional) plots was 113 bu/a.
For full details of the system’s development here—and how it’s spurring innovation with collaborators across the country— check out our No-till Plus section.
For the past 15 years, TRI farm manager Jeff Moyer has been working with Dave Wilson (resident agronomist) researchers and operations staff to actively problem-solve and develop no-till and reduced-tillage applications that work in our organic production systems. We continue to improve these systems year by year. The 2006 results verified the benefits of improvements made in the no-till system in seed placement and weed management, giving us no-till yield superior to our normal organic system for the first time.
The organic no-till figures show the competitive nature of established organic grain crops—after the required organic transition period and using well-selected crop rotations—compared with non-organic production systems.
One of the myths about organic agriculture is the common claim that organic yields cannot equal those of conventional agriculture. For the past 26 years we have been growing corn and soybeans in replicated, randomized large plots under organic and conventional farming systems. Over the long haul, among well-managed organic and conventional systems in our trial, we have seen that crop yields between these systems are not statistically different.
This key result was reviewed by panels of scientific peers and published in the highly regarded international scientific journal Bioscience (Pimentel et al. 2005).
This year’s excellent results with the “holy grail” of organic cropping—organic no-till—show further potential to improve yield using the innovative low-input crop system where applicable.
Support needed to improve sustainable systems
The long-term documentation from our farm’s unique living laboratory provides results giving us the scientific platform for testing the limits of organic production strategies.
It’s true that, in the short-term, organic transition can represent a real management challenge to create healthy, living soil using a suitable cropping system. The transition also requires new marketing efforts to capitalize on new crops and crop attributes.
Despite these challenges, our studies show that, over the long run, well-executed and entrepreneurial organic agriculture can be completely competitive with conventional methods for yield and represents real opportunities for conventional, sustainable and organic farmers alike.
Conventional agro-industrial food production has received virtually all food and agricultural research support over many decades. With a jump up to an allocated $3 million per year for the current Farm Bill, organic research still receives less 1 percent of the pie. We believe that with additional research funding and attention, organic agriculture will surpass the productivity of high-input agriculture.
Research, demonstration and field production at The Rodale Institute are yielding important activities to improve our agriculture and food systems. Imagine the potential of a more broadly supported initiative. 
|
