Small grains production: diversifying rotations in the Upper-Midwest
A project to profitably cut chemicals with small grains and cover crops
Vast expanses of the twin monocultures of corn and soybeans have invited a widening array of insects, diseases and weeds. These predictably have built - and will continue to build - resistance to chemical control over time.
Antagonists to crops pose new threats to farmers. They come at a time when regulations under The Food Quality Production Act may remove many common, widely-used pesticides from corn and soybean production.
- Western and northern corn borer
- Corn root worm
- Soybean cyst nematode
- White mold
- Brown stem rot
- Persistent weeds
All of the above are showing increasing resistance to common pesticides and crop rotation as a control mechanism.
Concern over ground and surface water pollution from leaching and runoff of chemical inputs is rising toward new regulation. Breaking disease and pest cycles with expanded rotations, can cut reliance on chemicals and overall costs.
What can small grains do for farms, farm income?
Can new cash grain crops make sufficient contributions...
- In the health and yield of corn and soybean production?
- In overall soil fertility and retention?
- In improved nutrient management?
- In the spreading of labor costs and time?
Can they help maintain or improve the profitability of conventional production?
Answers to these important questions can only come from farmers. These questions will go unanswered, misperceptions will prevail and the mentality toward small grains will remain 100 years old, unless farmers are willing to:
- Try expanded rotations in fields they farm;
- Experiment with cover crops for nitrogen credits;
- Learn to market alternative grains and meet market expectations for quality;
- Study for themselves the impact diversification has on their soil; their yields and production; their ability to break disease, weed and pest cycles; the spreading of their labor costs and time
Finding answers in on-farm project in 3 states
Michael Fields' USDA Fund for Rural America project has aimed to help farmers who want to arrive at their own answers to these intense challenges. It has aimed to help them face the serious economic and agronomic pressures that are increasingly linked to limited rotations.
The production strategy in this project has confronted these challenges head-on, taking advantage of new cropping system flexibility to adopt diversified, value-added, integrated production systems.
- Diversification can reduce agronomic risk and income fluctuation
- Value-added commodities can increase farm income
- On-farm enterprise integration can cut production costs and environmental impacts
- New or better- integrated markets for quality grains can increase farm incomes
This project has focused on cash grain production of high-grade oats, barley and winter wheat -- grown with cover crops to diversify widespread corn-soybean rotations.
Meeting small grain challenges in market place
While demand for small grain commodities remains stable, production in the United States has fallen drastically. In the past 30 years, federal farm policies, trends in agribusiness and radical shifts in livestock production and agricultural research dollars have all turned cash grain production toward corn and soybeans, and away from small grains.
Food processors and malt houses, while still concentrated in the Upper Midwest, go to foreign markets for more than 50 percent of their small grains needs.
This project has sought to diversify Upper-Midwestern cropping systems by re-introducing small grains - with cover crops - into the now conventional corn-soybean rotation.
To help farmers deal with challenges they're facing in the field and the economy, new long-term cash grain strategies are needed. To remain competitive internationally, to restore their role environmentally as good stewards of soil and water resources, to enhance the economic life of rural communities - farmers, grain handlers and food processors must work together, find and try new alternatives.
Michael Fields Agricultural Institute, a public non-profit facility for research and education, has worked with the UW-Center for Integrated Agriculture Systems, the UW Agronomy Department and others in this small grains project. About 50 farmers took part in a four-state area. Funded by the USDA-Fund for Rural America, farmers in this project received:
- Production guidance and assistance
- Advice and information on varietal selection
- Scouting in the field for pests and diseases
- On-farm demonstration and research
- Support in pooling and barge-load lot marketing efforts
- Block production to meet large market volume demand
- Negotiations with food and feed producers
- Tips on storage, handling and transportation
- Coordination and communication between growers
Fundamental changes in cropping patterns, farming practices and land management - such as this project has targeted in 3 years of on-farm trials - are essential if nitrogen and phosphate being applied across the vast central region of the United States are to be truly brought under control and their potential for leaching remedied.
Row crop farming has increasingly and steadily focused on continuous corn production or a narrow corn-soybean rotation. This has meant conversion of millions of acres from more diverse rotations. It has radically increased need for and reliance on chemical inputs in agriculture. Plantings of small grains - oats, barley, winter wheat - have thus seen their annual acreage totals steadily tumble across the Upper Midwest.
Returning these small grains to production as cash grains could mean wider use of green manures and cover crops such as red clover; reduced erosion and leaching of chemical fertilizers; and greatly diminished need for pesticides and herbicides. Domestic markets for these small grains must be recaptured and expanded. An effort must also be undertaken to demonstrate their contributions to profitability as well as their ecological advantages.