2018 Farm Outlook

2018 Logan County Farm Outlook Magazine LINCOLN DAILY NEWS Oct. 25, 2018 Page 31 In Logan County many farmers do indeed use crop rotation on their farms. One farmer shared that soybeans will use the fertilizer that is left over from his corn crop. Soybeans fix nitrogen to the soil that corn can use the following year. This saves on fertilizer costs. Another local farmer shared that he crop rotates because there is less chance for diseases and you don’t have to use as much fungicide and insecticide. Rotation, also keeps this farmer from having to till a lot of acres. In Logan County most tillable farmland is put into corn or soybeans with little difference in total acres of either corn or soybeans. Comparing numbers of acres planted in corn or soybeans over a range of years does not determine how many acres might be in rotation, but you can see small fluctuations which may be related to a planned rotation, or may be related to other factors, such as more favorable markets. What might be asserted from the comparative information is that just as seen in the over-all U.S. figures, there are not dramatic changes between how much corn and how much soybeans are planted in Logan County from one year to the next. A field study of crop rotation conducted from 2003–2011 in Iowa contrasted three rotation systems: n The two-year maize/soybean rotation received fertilizers and herbicides at rates comparable to those used on nearby farms. n There was a three-year maize/soybean/small grain plus red clover rotation. n The four-year maize/soybean/small grain plus alfalfa-alfalfa rotation managed with lower synthetic N fertilizer and herbicide inputs and periodic applications of cattle manure. The research evidenced less costs in nutrient and pesticide inputs with higher yield benefits from crop rotation: “Grain yields, mass of harvested products, and profit in the more diverse systems were similar to, or greater than, those in the conventional system, despite reductions of agrichemical inputs. Weeds were suppressed effectively in all systems, but freshwater toxicity of the more diverse systems was two orders of magnitude lower than in the conventional system. Results of our study indicate that more diverse cropping systems can use small amounts of synthetic agrichemical inputs as powerful tools with which to tune, rather than drive, agro ecosystem performance, while meeting or exceeding the performance of less diverse systems.” A three-year comparative of Logan County corn and soybeans Total yield Acres planted Acres harvested Bushels per acre 185,000 182,000 213.0 38,830,000 156,500 155,800 64.7 10,087,000 200,500 199,300 2017 Corn 2017 Soybeans 2016 Corn 219.4 43,723,000 2016 Soybeans 138,000 137,000 66.6 9,156,000 2015 Corn 196,000 194,500 172.8 33,602,000 2015 Soybeans 140,500 140,500 56.6 7,955,000 CONTINUED