REGINA – There is enough economic incentive for farmers to switch from conventional to conservation farming, even without a yield increase, a University of Saskatchewan agricultural economist has found.
Most of the price benefit is due to the decrease in the cost of Roundup, said Richard Gray.
“zero till becomes less profitable if 1985 Roundup prices are used,”said Gray during a symposium on sustainable cropping held in Regina recently.
Roundup, the non-selective herbicide that zero tillers rely on to kill weeds and use as a desiccant, has dropped in price from $25 a litre in the mid-1980s to $10 a litre.
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He used a computer model to compare the costs associated with a conventional 1,600-acre, black-soil grain farm to the same farm under conservation farming.
In his model he assumed the farm already had an air seeder.
The switch to zero till included changing knives and adding packers to the air seeder and adding chaff-spreading equipment to the combine.
Research hastened by conservation
His research was spurred by the rapid rate farmers are adopting conservation tillage practices despite the fact that some of the technology doesn’t look economically feasible.
By building a model farm he wanted to identify the important economic variables which encourage farmers to switch to no till.
Short-run profitability was one variable. Yields for cereal crops under zero till have been shown to be from five to 25 percent higher at Agriculture Canada’s research substation in Melfort and zero to eight percent at the Indian Head station.
More tillage results
At Scott, the third Saskatchewan station, cereal crops grown under zero till yielded an average 11 percent more than those grown under conventional tillage, but oilseed yields actually decreased by six percent.
“The yield advantage is clearer in dry years than in wetter years.”
Under conventional tillage, Gray found the decrease in the price of Roundup was cancelled out by increased fuel costs. Under zero till, the primary mechanical savings was in the reduced running hours of tractors. “You can replace two tractors with one, or make one last longer.”
Gray said his whole-farm model showed the zero till farm was more economically viable, but he singled out the cheaper cost of Roundup as the main factor pushing that profitability.
