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No-Till Support
Blake Brown, director of the University of Tennessee’s Ag Research and
Education Center at Milan, Tenn., sharing details of the recent Milan No-Till
Field Day and it’s history.
Photo by John LaRose, Jr.
Milan Event Provides Tools To Implement Technology In No-Till
BETTY VALLE GEGG-NAEGER
MidAmerica Farmer Grower
MILAN, TENN.
Blake Brown, director of the University of Tennessee’s Ag Research and Education Center at Milan, Tenn., reported on the recent Milan No-Till Field Day held there.
“This event was started back in 1981 and went continuously through 2002 and at that point we started going every other year,” he said. “So this is actually the 29th event even though we’ve been going since 1981.”
The recent event is the first one that had to be adjusted because of rain in the morning. However, a good crowd came for the event.
“At 9 a.m. I heard we had 1,500 people here, so I’m pretty impressed with that, considering the weather,” Brown said.
The program was focused on how to implement all types of new agricultural technology into a no-till system. In Tennessee 75 percent of the acres are no till now, so the no-till concept is not new.
“Yet, we’re trying to focus more on how to implement the new technologies into a no-till system, whether that’s varieties or crop protection chemicals or utilizing drones in season in agriculture, soil management, cover crops, all those types of things. We have 15 tours today to cover a whole host of those topics. With so many people here talking about a lot of different topics, there’s a lot of good information being sent out to our producers and think it is a good event,” he continued. “We typically have people from 18 or 20 states and I think we’ll have a lot from all over today.”
Brown touted the West Tennessee Ag Museum located there where over several thousand artifacts, implements used by early west Tennessee settlers are housed.
“The museum has just undergone renovation last year and this building is about 25 years old so it was due for some upgrades; we have all new lights, heating and air and siding, and it’s open to the public. Today one of our tours in there is called ‘Farmers vs. Hunger’ and with the help of volunteers, we are packing today 32,000 meals, macaroni and cheese meal with soy protein to be distributed to area food banks. That soy component gives it some protein and provides a little more substance to the meal than just a plain mac and cheese meal. We are sponsored by Hunters sharing the Harvest, a local hunting group here in Milan, as well as Cargill, Tennessee Soybean Promotion Council and Farm Credit MidAmerica. So we have lots of volunteer labor, we’re going to have a lot of good meals there for those less fortunate in our community.”
The meals will be distributed throughout the region, Milan, Gibson County, but also outside that area. Jackson and Crocket counties will also benefit.
“This will be the third field day we have packed meals for the needy,” he explained. “We were contacted by Chuck Danehower, who is our Farm Management Specialist over in Lauderdale County about three years ago and he had worked with this group called Outreach Incorporated. They’re the ones we get all the food products from, and they’ve got volunteers that help coordinate that and we thought that would be a different way to publicize the benefits of agriculture.
“We’ve always focused on the production side and this is going to go to the end users. We got into it, realizing that this food insecurity is rampant, even in a small town like Milan,” Brown said.
“We have people right here that don’t have enough to eat and we often think that that’s a big city problem and it is, but in lots of our rural areas it’s an issue as well. So we’re going to do a little bit to alleviate that problem here today.”
Brown said the Milan No-Till Field Day is the place to be to learn the latest in agricultural development, particularly as it’s related to no-till.
“Milan is the place to be on the fourth Thursday in July. We’ve got some of the greatest scientists in the world doing work here. They are here to talk about the latest research they’re doing, they’re also available to talk off line about other topics. We try to cover what we think are some of the hot topics, but there’s a lot of things going on and we make our scientists available for the visitors here, they can talk off line and get great one-on-one information,” he said. ∆
BETTY VALLE GEGG-NAEGER: Senior Staff Writer, MidAmerica Farmer Grower
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