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SOIL HEALTH IN PRACTICE - REAL SOLUTIONS FROM REAL FARMERS

Cattle as the Cash Crop the most successful agriculture systems are developed by
mimicking nature, perhaps we should strive to emulate the
Farming on the High Plains has always been an adventure. native prairie when designing our agriculture systems.
Limited rainfall has made the raising of grain crops risky,
with some years being productive and other years of com- One such producer who is mimicking nature is John Nis-
wonger of Wallace, KS. John has transitioned much of
plete failures. Strategies developed for dealing with the infre- his farm from the typical wheat-fallow-sorghum-fallow
quent rain were deep, frequent tillage, and fallowing. Deep
tillage was proposed to loosen the soil as deep as possible system, to a sequence of continuous cropped mixtures of
grazed cover crops. BMR sorghum-sudan (summer graz-
for “better” water infiltration and storage. Fallowing was in-
tended to manage water by preventing plant growth for long ing) and forage sorghum (winter stockpile) are mainstays
of John’s mixtures due to their high production and effi-
periods to raise a better grain crop the following year. cient use of water. Winter annual forages like wheat are
In hindsight, these practices were colossal mistakes. Till- also incorporated into the system to provide high quality
age oxidized soil organic matter, which decreased soil wa- green feed in late fall and early spring. The native grass
ter-holding capacity and led to collapsed soil aggregates pastures of the area are incorporated into the grazing
and pore space, significantly decreasing water infiltration. system, using an adaptive multi-paddock grazing system,
Fallow was also counterproductive as we failed to realize so that pastures are grazed intensely once during the early
that preventing plant growth robbed the soil of vital root ex- part of the growing season and then allowed to recover
udates responsible for producing soil organic matter. Thus, until after frost, when they can be grazed in the dormant
fallow didn’t “rest” the soil, it starved it. Together, tillage season. This late season rest has allowed his pastures to
and fallow have depleted our soils on the High Plains and develop from primarily buffalograss into stands of big
made them a shell of what they once were. The recent move bluestem and other tall grasses.
to no-till in the area over the last couple decades has helped Wheat in the system can be grazed in dry years, or in wet
moisture availability, but fallow is still an integral part of
the system and is an impediment to improving the soil. The years can be allowed to produce a grain crop. Legumes are
included in the mix to provide nitrogen, and since graz-
problems inherent in this system are erratic yields, high ing returns most of the mineral nutrients back to the soil,
weed control costs during fallow due to herbicide resistant
weeds, the need for chemical fertilizer to sustain yields, and fertilizer requirements are very low. Weed control costs
in this system are also low, because the most troublesome
high harvest cost per bushel due to low yields. All of these
factors combine to make grain cropping on the High Plains weeds like kochia and Palmer amaranth are actually very
good forages and are readily eaten, which turns them into
a very marginal enterprise economically.
an asset rather than an expensive menace. Most impor-
tantly, moisture is converted very efficiently into money.
John reports that the economics of his operation have
improved dramatically since this transition. He is raising
a cow-calf pair on four acres of cropland and two acres
of native pasture and feeding very little hay. Almost the
Photo by Dale Strickler entire needs of the cowherd are met by grazing alone.

A sample grazing sequence in a system like this might in-
clude the following:

Here is proof of a broken water cycle with standing runoff water from a recent rain C Winter: graze on a stockpiled mix of primarily nonheading forage
while the surrounding soil is powder dry and blowing. Poor infiltration caused by sorghum, with sunflowers, guar, and collards added for protein.
tillage is the root cause of both the wet hole and the powder dry upland soil.
C Spring: winter annual mix based on rye, triticale, or graze-out wheat.
Why did we go down this route? It was because we thought C Early summer: native grass.
we HAD to grow water intensive grain crops which makes
no sense in arid areas. The native vegetation was mostly pe- C Late summer: sorghum-sudangrass, pearl millet, cowpeas, sunn-
rennial grasses and deep-rooted forbs that produced very hemp, mung beans, buckwheat, and okra.
little seed (which requires more moisture) and was har- C Fall: dormant native grass with protein supplement.
vested by ruminant animals like bison and antelope. Since C Late fall: winter annual mix if it develops enough for fall grazing.

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