Nine Year Study To Focus On Unusual Rotations

In recent years we’ve heard a lot about the green movement, or attempts to conserve natural resources and to find suitable alternatives to oil. Growing crops to determine their worth as a biofuel has become a focus for scientists and likely will continue to take precedence in the coming years.

A group of researchers at the USDA/ARS Northern Plains Agricultural Research Lab in Sidney will collaborate on a long term study that will look at rotations using oilseed and pulse crops in rotation with more traditional area crops, and whether these rotations will benefit farmers over a long period of time. “We’ve seen more emphasis on biofuels research within ARS from the national level and as fuel prices rise, interest among the general public continues to grow as well,” says Dr. Bart Stevens, research agronomist. “We’ve designed a study to investigate the implications of incorporating biofuel crops into our rotations. We want to see if these rotations will help reduce weed and disease pressures, how well these crops produce, how they affect long-term profitability and what impact they have on soil quality and the environment.”

He continues, “We are currently conducting an irrigated crop rotation study in Sidney at the Montana State University Eastern Agricultural Research Extension Center and we will also begin a similar study at our Nesson Valley research site. Both studies include crops that can be used for biofuel production. We also conduct cropping systems studies at our dryland sites near Sidney and Froid but those studies will focus on incorporating more oilseeds into the rotation because we see dryland systems as a logical fit for oil crops.”

For the irrigated study at Nesson Valley, the researchers will use corn and soybeans in the rotation, along with energy sugarbeets and barley. “We chose corn and soybeans to use in the study with barley and sugarbeets because of grower interest in these crops.” Stevens says. “Corn and soybeans have undergone genetic development that makes them more suitable for this area. These crops not only are edible, but they can be used as biofuels as well.”

Using crops for biofuel brings to mind the old question of food versus fuel, and what is the best way to use our shrinking agricultural lands. Stevens points out that this study does not address this question, but that corn does serve a dual purpose. “We can grow corn and soybeans for fuel or for food,” he comments. “Farmers need diversity in their rotations because of disease and weed problems. Soybeans provide nitrogen benefits to the soil, and corn is very flexible. We can grow corn for use as food and still use the stover, or leaves, stems, and stalks, for biofuel. Corn is truly a dual purpose crop. We will also use energy beets in this study, not regular beets, as again, energy beets have potential to contribute to biofuel production.”

Because corn and barley are both susceptible to a disease called fusarium, researchers want to investigate the ways of including these two crops together in a four crop rotation without causing this disease to get out of hand. “We want to see if we can get the right sequence and we want to determine if a rotation of energy beets, corn, soybeans, and barley will work,” Stevens remarks. “We also want to see if barley production is affected when soybean is grown the previous year.”

He adds, “Our ultimate goal is to reduce costs and enhance profitability for farmers while protecting the natural resources that we all depend on.”

Because this is a large research project that requires multiple test plots, Stevens and his colleagues will spend this year setting up the study. They then will do two full rotations over the course of the next eight years. “We’ll plant all crops each year to account for environmental conditions,” Stevens says. “We also will grow all crops under conventional tillage and compare it to the same rotations using no till.”

He concludes, “This will be a large study with a lot of test plots required but we hope that when it is completed we will have provided information that will benefit area growers. We will provide updates at annual field days as the studies progress.”