Farmers get more with less while saving fuel

Issue Date: March 26, 2008

By Ching Lee
Assistant Editor

Fresno County farmer Jim Couto designed this piece of equipment that enables him to till and plant with one pass through the field.

Like many motorists, California farmers are feeling a big pinch at the pump again. Diesel-fuel prices have soared just as many of them are working their fields in preparation for spring planting.

To reduce fuel consumption, more farmers are changing their cultural practices, even adopting methods that their Midwestern counterparts have used for years. Others are incorporating new technologies into their operations to maximize overall farm efficiency.

"I'm doing it to keep me in business," Fresno County farmer Jim Couto said of the changes he's made on his farm in Kerman.

He's one of a growing number of farmers in California who is shifting toward minimum tillage practices, which allow him to do fewer passes in the field with tractors and other equipment and thereby save not only fuel, but time and labor.

Couto, who grows cotton, alfalfa and corn, about six years ago began tinkering with the idea of creating a one-pass implement that could do tilling and planting at the same time.

He modified a standard strip-till implement by adding undercutting knives, disk hillers and ring rollers with rubber wheels for furrow packing. The knives enable him to shred the previous year's cotton plants underneath the soil so that they are dead and cannot host insects such as the pink bollworm over the winter season.

"So he's combined a number of tillage passages in a very strategic way in one pass, which is quite interesting," said Jeff Mitchell, a University of California Cooperative Extension cropping systems specialist who also chairs the Conservation Tillage Workgroup, which provides research and information to farmers about conservation tillage production systems.

Couto said he used to make 14 or 15 trips through the field every time he changed crops. With the new system, he can go through the field one time and rip the plants, pull the beds back and roll them back down for planting. He usually does one more pass to spray for weeds and another to apply fertilizer.

To further save fuel, he switched from using 30-inch beds to 60-inch beds and alternate row irrigation to push water across the fields. He found that the wider beds hold more water, allowing him to run his pumps less often.

Couto estimates he's saving around $130 to $150 per acre by using conservation tillage. He's also seen his yields improve, although that came with time. As with trying anything new, there is a learning curve, he said, and "the first two years in conservation tillage were tough."

With conservation tillage, farmers leave the stubble or plant residue on the soil's surface rather than plowing or disking it into the soil. The new crop is planted directly into this stubble. Strip-till is a variation on the theme in which the farmer tills only the portion of the soil where the next crop is planted.

Although farmers in the Midwest have been doing no-till and reduced-till farming for years to conserve moisture in the soil and control erosion, conservation tillage is still catching on in California, said Mitchell. Only about 2 percent of California farmers in 2004 were using conservation tillage systems, he noted, compared to less than 1 percent in 2002.

"It is going up, and it's going to be dramatically going up," Mitchell said of farmers who are considering adopting conservation tillage methods due to high fuel costs, labor shortages and tight water supplies.

Many farmers have been skeptical about trying conservation tillage because they fear increased weed problems. But the advent of biotech crops such as Roundup Ready cotton and Roundup Ready corn varieties has made it possible and practical for growers to control weeds by applying an herbicide rather than plowing, said Tom Barcellos, a Fresno County dairy producer who grows alfalfa, corn and wheat for his operation and other neighboring dairies.

Barcellos converted to no-till and strip-till practices in 2001 and said he's seen "substantial fuel savings" as well as other advantages.

"There's substantial benefit for the air," he said. "We probably reduced exhaust emissions by 55 percent or more with the reduced passes. And we've also reduced particulate matter from the dust."

Like Couto, Barcellos said conservation tillage has increased his yields because he's not compacting his soil and breaking down its structure.

"We get better root development and good water penetration," he said. "As the previous crop's roots break down in the soil, there's organic matter. We've actually seen an improvement in soil quality, and soil quality is what helps make your yields."

Jesse Sanchez, field manager for Sano Farms in Firebaugh, said he's seen huge reductions in fuel consumption and improvements in soil quality ever since the farm adopted a minimum tillage-cover crop system for its processing tomatoes.

Instead of flooding the fields and tilling it conventionally, the farm now uses drip tape irrigation and plants a winter triticale cover crop that is destroyed early with an herbicide. A strip-till method is then used in the center of the beds before tomatoes are transplanted. Minimum tilling of two or three passes are done in the fall following harvest.

Sanchez said the new system has reduced fuel usage by 75 percent to 80 percent. What used to take seven or more passes and nearly 13 gallons of diesel per acre during soil preparation has been cut to three field passes and 3.36 gallons of diesel per acre.

By using a cover-crop rotation, Sanchez said the soil is improving, and so are tomato yields. The cover crop increases organic matter in the soil, so the soil retains more water. It also provides the soil with more nutrients and minerals, he said.

"Before, we were moving the soil so much that we were losing CO2 and microbial activity," he said. "Now we're increasing microbial activity by using cover crops. The more microbial activity you have, the better soil you're going to have."

Fresno County farmer John Diener, who grows a variety of field crops, including wheat, cotton, alfalfa, sugar beets, tomatoes and other vegetables, said that the installation of irrigation pivots on his farm has eliminated the tractor passes necessary to do row irrigation, and that has resulted in considerable cost savings in fuel.

"We only plant the crop and spray the crop," he said. "Those are the passes we do with the tractors instead of putting all the rows in."

So far he has seen no yield reductions, and he's saving water and labor. He's now considering solar power for his farm to reduce his electricity bill.

Couto, too, is looking to change other areas of his farm to further cut his diesel consumption. He plans to install hydrogen generators on all of his diesel pump engines and tractors. He said he's hoping to save another 20 percent to 40 percent in diesel cost by using the highly efficient, clean-burning generators.

"We'll actually be burning water," he said.

At about $3,500 a pop, Couto said the project would likely cost him some $35,000 for 10 generators. But with his diesel bill last year running $360,000, he said the investment would pay itself off quickly.

"If I could save even 20 percent, it's a lot of money," he said.

(Ching Lee is a reporter for Ag Alert. She may be contacted at clee@cfbf.com.)

Permission for use is granted, however, credit must be made to the California Farm Bureau Federation when reprinting this item. Top