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The, Jack Farm Classroom
Conservation An Integral Part Of Silent Shade Planting Co.
BETTY VALLE GEGG-NAEGER
MidAmerica Farmer Grower
(Last of a two part series)
BELZONI, MISS.
Silent Shade Planting Company is totally committed to the conservation system of farming. Using variable rate, raising yields while lowering inputs, he finds he is getting more by doing less.
“We have one farm, a REACH farm, and we’re very proud of that,” said Jeremy Jack. “REACH stands for Research and Education To Enhance Conservation And Habitat. We're about halfway through setting it up, but when we're done we'll have an 800-acre farm that is completely enclosed; it will have till and water recovery that goes through the entire farm then returns back in the reservoirs. From the reservoir, the water can free flow back into the fields in a closed loop system. The water never leaves the farm.
“The one farm that we're working on now we use very little ground water,” he continued. “We had rice on it this year and we just got the system up and running, but we use very little ground water to irrigate our crop.”
Jack is also looking at the power usage for each gallon of ground water pumped by the booster pumps.
Getting more by doing less is what Jeremy Jack of Silent Shade Planting Company finds by using variable rate, raising yields
and lowering inputs.
Photo by John LaRose, Jr
“When our reservoirs get down low there isn’t enough free-flow gallons that we need per minute, so we have a booster pump on the system,” he said. “It costs twice as much to get a gallon of groundwater with the booster pump, than to get a gallon of surface water from the reservoir. So it’s much cheaper to get the surface water and if we can free flow it, the cost is just zero.”
He admitted there’s a huge up-front cost for constructing the till water ditch, making the reservoir, installing the underground pipe and the booster pump.
“Putting the whole system in is a very, very large cost. Each one is different. We actually took old catfish ponds and built them up and used reservoirs so that lowered the cost for us. Overall it’s a very expensive, long-term plan; but as farmers we have to start thinking long term. Where will we be able to get our water? How can we save our ground water for places where we cannot use reservoirs or surface water?
“We need to utilize all the assets we can to save the surface water, and then use the ground water as the backup, instead of using the ground water as a primary and surface water as a backup. We need to change our thought process and use it to save resources.”
Silent Shade captures rainfall and irrigation runoff. In a big rain event on the rice field, run-off from the rice field is captured and put right back in the reservoir.
“Another thing we’re doing is we’re looking at the water quality,” Jack said. “Mississippi State comes here and puts water quality samplers across the farm so we can see if there’s any nutrients coming off the field with the water. If there is, we want to know what the nutrients are that are going back on our fields; we can lower our fertilizer costs by using nutrient rich water. But we need to know whether it is just plain water or nutrient rich water that we’re using.”
Silent Shade is working as a partner with Mississippi State, Delta Farm, and YMD.
“Delta Farm is an organization of farmers and FARM stands for Farmers Advocating Resource Management,” Jack explained. “It’s a great organization that really pushes and all the farmers get together and they do a survey every year so you can see where your operation rates compared to all the other farms around here. It looks at best management practices (BMPs) to compare your practice to that of other farmers; and if you look at a lot of other farmers and they’re doing more than you’re doing that shows you ‘I should be doing this too.’ So it's a great peer group of Mississippi farmers.”
The idea for this organization came from farmers themselves. It may have started with a group out of Delta Council; and Delta Wildlife started Delta Farm which does a great job with a great staff that really helps on projects, as well as educating farmers. Silent Shade isn’t the only one in the Delta using reservoirs and till water ditches to collect and reuse surface water.
“As Mississippi farmers, we work really close with the organizations that I've named; but one of the front runners that I did not say the first time has been the USDA NRCS. NRCS has funded a lot of these projects. They’ve helped fund the project I’ve been talking about, they've designed a lot of these projects. They’ve been at the forefront, a pusher of it, and as a Delta farmer we’re very thankful that we have an organization like NRCS to help fund a lot of these conservation practices,” Jack added.
The 1,800 acre REACH farm is actually a rented farm, and the landowner is very excited about the project.
“We’re improving the property and it’s looking really good; we rent the majority of our farmland and I treat every farm that I rent like it’s one that I own because long-term it's best for our operation, best for the landlord and working together we are better by doing those things.”
Jack’s thoughts keep returning to the efficiency standpoint. He considers how to plant the crop the quickest and as efficiently as possible. It’s conservation from a different point of view.
“How little do you have to drive your tractor to get a big yield? How fast can you get one job done, so you’re not spending a lot of diesel fuel and man hours when it can be done more efficiently? If we cut out the corners, and save time by not turning around, how quickly can we do a great job? We don’t want to sacrifice the job we’re doing, but we don’t want any waste at all. We want to be 100 percent efficient on every job we do,” he stated.
Jack also focuses on some other efforts that really aren't typical farm agronomic priorities, but they’re very important to him.
“I focus on the technology and the efficiency, but outreach and safety are two big projects that we're pursuing,” he said. “Agriculture in general is one of the most dangerous jobs. You always hear of someone getting hurt and we don't give safety the prominence we should. There are so many times where – myself included, I've done this a hundred times – I can climb up here, I don't need the safety harness or don't need to take precautions. There are so many people that get hurt in our profession because we don't make safety the priority we should.
“As an organization, we're trying to make our organization safe, but also we want to show other farmers it's not that hard to work and be safe. Education is important, and being conscious about safety can save a life; and that life that you're saving might be yours.
Silent Shade Planting Company is in the forefront of outreach, sharing their farming expertise with others.
“We have a newsletter that we put out once a quarter and I wrote an article in the last one about efficiency,” he said. “We put it out quarterly, if anyone wants it they can go to our website (www.silent-shade.com) to read current and past newsletters.
“We have had a website for years, but it was a very poor website and we’ve just released our new website. We’re really, really excited about that, it looks really good and there’s a lot of good information on there. We’ll have a blog, and it’ll be a website that you'll go to quarterly or monthly and constantly look at the updates. We have very active Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest accounts; so we’re really trying to get out to the public, not just to our industry, our colleagues, but we really want to get to people that aren’t involved in agriculture.
“We want people from inner cities, those who don't live in a farming community, to come to our farm and let us show them what we’re doing, because we’re doing a good job. But we’re doing a poor job of telling everybody what we’re doing. We don’t want to be boastful; but I think it’s more important that we communicate with the public now, because there are so many people that are against us and we’re not against anybody. We’re just doing a good job and need to tell people and show them.
“We want to educate the public. That’s what we want to do, because that will make their lives better also,” he summed. ∆
BETTY VALLE GEGG-NAEGER: Senior Staff Writer, MidAmerica Farmer Grower
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