| Posted
January 12, 2007: Harvest records show last season’s
cost-slashing, soil-building, no-till organic corn yields
topped comparable tilled organic and tilled non-organic fields
here at The Rodale Institute.
Using an improved design of its no-till roller—and
only a legume cover-crop for fertility and weed management—the
Institute’s no-till organic corn plots produced 160
bushels per acre (bu/a), compared to 143 bu/a for tilled organic
plots.
This means the one-pass, roll/plant no-till system—with
no additional field passes until harvest—out-yielded
normally tilled and cultivated organic plots that experienced
eight or nine field passes (plowing, disking, cultipacking,
planting, two rotary hoe passes and two to three cultivator
passes). Yield on comparable chisel-tilled non-organic (conventional)
plots was 113 bu/a.
For full details of the system’s development here—and
how it’s spurring innovation with collaborators across
the country— check out our No-till
Plus section.
For the past 15 years, TRI farm manager Jeff Moyer has been
working with Dave Wilson (resident agronomist) researchers
and operations staff to actively problem-solve and develop
no-till and reduced-tillage applications that work in our
organic production systems. We continue to improve these systems
year by year. The 2006 results verified the benefits of improvements
made in the no-till system in seed placement and weed management,
giving us no-till yield superior to our normal organic system
for the first time.
The organic no-till figures show the competitive nature of
established organic grain crops—after the required organic
transition period and using well-selected crop rotations—compared
with non-organic production systems.
One of the myths about organic agriculture is the common
claim that organic yields cannot equal those of conventional
agriculture. For the past 26 years we have been growing corn
and soybeans in replicated, randomized large plots under organic
and conventional farming systems. Over the long haul, among
well-managed organic and conventional systems in our trial,
we have seen that crop yields between these systems are not
statistically different.
This key result was reviewed by panels of scientific peers
and published in the highly regarded international scientific
journal Bioscience (Pimentel et al. 2005).
This year’s excellent results with the “holy
grail” of organic cropping—organic no-till—show
further potential to improve yield using the innovative low-input
crop system where applicable.
Support needed to improve sustainable
systems
The long-term documentation from our farm’s unique
living laboratory provides results giving us the scientific
platform for testing the limits of organic production strategies.
It’s true that, in the short-term, organic transition
can represent a real management challenge to create healthy,
living soil using a suitable cropping system. The transition
also requires new marketing efforts to capitalize on new crops
and crop attributes.
Despite these challenges, our studies show that, over the
long run, well-executed and entrepreneurial organic agriculture
can be completely competitive with conventional methods for
yield and represents real opportunities for conventional,
sustainable and organic farmers alike.
Conventional agro-industrial food production has received
virtually all food and agricultural research support over
many decades. With a jump up to an allocated $3 million per
year for the current Farm Bill, organic research still receives
less 1 percent of the pie. We believe that with additional
research funding and attention, organic agriculture will surpass
the productivity of high-input agriculture.
Research, demonstration and field production at The Rodale
Institute are yielding important activities to improve our
agriculture and food systems. Imagine the potential of a more
broadly supported initiative. 
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