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PROFILE: George Ayres, Shortsville, N.Y.
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George Ayres: Vegetables,
fruit & grain. Shortsville, N.Y.
Photo by Patricia L. Ayres |
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NEW YORK FARMER REDUCES TILLAGE, CONSERVES SIGNIFICANT WATER
George Ayres is the kind of farmer who thrives on new ideas. Since
1977, he has, as he says, grown a bit of everything on his 600-acre
farm in New York’s Finger Lakes Region: strawberries, raspberries,
sweet and grain corn, pumpkins, soybeans, alfalfa for hay and small
grains. His diversity in crops is matched by his markets, which
include selling wholesale to a grocery chain under a low-pesticide
label, selling products in his daughter’s farm market and
offering pick-your-own berries.
It’s no surprise, then, that when his local Extension agronomist,
Jim Capron, told him the next big production innovation was planting
with zone till, Ayres was one of the first to try it. Zone till,
also known as strip till, focuses tillage in the crop rows, providing
4- to 5-inch slots into which a farmer later plants, leaving the
rest of the soil undisturbed.
“Jim pushed it here in New York ahead of the curve,”
said Ayres, who has been zone-till planting since 1996. “I
don’t do any other tillage between the rows anymore; I leave
all my crop residue on the ground.”
A main goal for Ayres was conserving moisture, and today the tillage
system plays a huge part. The area between the rows retains soil
cover with crop residue, which captures runoff and minimizes evaporation.
Ayres plants cover crops like rye each winter, so the rye residue
adds to soil organic matter, improving infiltration. Finally, the
ridges, which cut across the contour, act as runoff curbs.
Each fall, Ayres gets to work strip-tilling. With a rotary spreader
on his combine, he spreads crop residue as he harvests., Then he
creates mini-ridges across the slope, each with a narrow slot, with
a zone builder.
“It works really well,” said Ayres. “If we get
a deluge of heavy rain in late winter or spring, the ridges stick
up like a washboard and stop the water from running down. If we
get a real belly-washer, it goes down the slots, not the slope.”
Ayres spreads his labor using zone till, too. His extra field
pass in the fall means less work in the busy spring, when all he
does is burn down his weeds with an
herbicide and plant.
Ayres is a farmer-collaborator with a team of Cornell researchers
funded by SARE to examine ways to improve soil health. The team,
which is conducting research on dozens of New York farms, including
Fresh Ayr Farm, hopes to demonstrate how strategies such as cover
cropping and reduced tillage can improve soil quality.
In spring 2005, upstate New York experienced an unusually dry
May with little rain. At the end of the month, Ayres planted soybeans
into his ridges and was surprised that it was almost too wet in
the strips to run his planter. By contrast, a neighbor who had plowed,
disked and cultivated that spring, kicked up so much dust during
planting that Ayres couldn’t see him on his tractor seat.
“The secret to soil quality is never to have anything bare,”
Ayres said. “I don’t have heavy rains and flooding taking
the water and soil away.”
Compost |
Conservation Tillage | Cover
Crops
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