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Saving The Soil
In addition to the 45 different talks there were also 70 or 80 exhibitors where farmers
could learn more about tools to help them.
Photo by Jack Thompson
Milan TN Field Day Message Over Years Has Yielded Acres Of Success
BETTY VALLE GEGG-NAEGER
MidAmerica Farmer Grower
MILAN, TENN.
No-till farming has caught on in West Tennessee, mainly because of the purposeful effort to educate farmers about the results of constant tillage put forth for 37 years at the Milan No-Till Field Day.
“Back before the advent of no-till, West Tennessee was known to have the highest rates of soil erosion as anywhere in the United States,” said Blake Brown, Director of the Ag Research and Education Center at Milan. “On our sloping land, we were losing over 30-40 tons of topsoil per year.”
That’s when a concerted effort to spread the word that something should be done to save the state’s soil began. The means to do that was the Milan No-Till Field Day which was begun in 1981. Brown reviewed the history of the event recently when the 30th Milan No-Till Field Day was held.
“This is the 30th Milan No-Till Field Day, not the 30th annual, but it’s the 30th event,” he said. “This event was started in 1981 as a means to teach people how to no-till. A lot of the early no-till work was done right here in Milan.
“So in 1981 they decided to have a field day to teach people how to use this new system. There were about 1,700 people who showed up which was unheard of at that time, so they did it again the next year. This continued and we ran continuously from 1981 until 2002, then we switched to every other year. That’s the reason why the 30th event doesn’t line up with what would be something like 37 years.
Brown finds it “pretty significant” that this event has lasted this long. The most recent statistics for Tennessee show that this year only four percent of Tennessee acres are farmed with a conventional tillage system. The rest, over 80 percent is farmed by no-till and an additional 16 percent is farmed with some other form of conservation tillage. The total no-till or conservation till in Tennessee this year is 96 percent.
Today the event focuses not so much on trying to teach people to no till because 90 percent plus of the people are already doing that. Instead, the focus is more education to help farmers incorporate all types of new technology for agriculture into a no-till system that in use on almost all of the acres.
“So we’re talking about seeds, fertilizer, chemicals and pest control, soil fertility and nutrient management,” Brown explained. “We also have tours on forestry and beef cattle because many of our farmers have forest land or beef cattle. We have 16 different research tours this year. Each tour has three or four presentations.”
About 45 different talks were presented so lots of information was available to farmers. The only thing the event provides is information. There also were 70 or 80 exhibitors where farmers could learn more about tools to help them.
“We feel like we’re a source of up-to-date, unbiased, accurate information and our goal is to get that into the hands of our producers,” he summed.
A pleasant day, lots of people, a trade show and endless information made the event a huge success. ∆
BETTY VALLE GEGG-NAEGER: Senior Staff Writer, MidAmerica Farmer Grower
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