
USDA Researchers Help
Farmers Preserve Tennessee Valley SoilsBy Tara
Weaver-Missick August 24, 1999Auburn, Ala., Aug. 24U.S.
Department of Agriculture and Auburn
University scientists are teaming up on a joint project to help cotton
growers correct soil problems in the Tennessee Valley, which includes Tennessee
and parts of Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky, Georgia, North Carolina and
Virginia. Although the land is very fertile, the soils in this area are heavily
eroded and heavily compacted, and plant roots dont extend very deep into
the soil, said Agricultural Research
Service Administrator Floyd P. Horn. About 60 percent of the soil in
the Valley is highly erodible. Years of conventional tillage, coupled with
little crop rotation, have severely depleted the soil organic matter, in some
areas to less than 1 percent. Conservation agronomist Ben Moore with USDAs
Natural Resources Conservation Servicein Troy, Ala., has worked with Valley farmers to help them comply with
conservation management alternatives required by the Food Security Act of 1985.
Growers who followed these conservation practices in earlier years had reduced
yields. Thats mainly because crops previously grown under
conservation tillage were not as competitive as those grown under conventional
tillage, Moore said. Agronomist D. Wayne Reeves and agricultural engineer Randy L. Raper, with
ARS National Soil Dynamics
Laboratory, in Auburn, Ala., were asked to help growers develop soil
management systems that would protect the soil from erosion, which also allows
them to maintain or improve cotton yields, reduce input costsand
improve soil quality. In field studies, Reeves found deep tilling to 17 inches and planting a rye
cover crop in fall increases yields and reduces soil compaction. Three-year
average yields for this system were about 1,040 pounds of lint per acre. Our best conservation tillage treatment gave yields that were 14
percent higher than conventional tillage and 18 percent higher than no tillage
without using a cover crop, the system Tennessee Valley farmers adopted when
they first went to conservation tillage, Reeves said. "At current
prices for cotton, fall deep tillage in combination with a rye cover crop paid
for itself more than three times over." An in-depth article appears in the August issue of Agricultural
Research magazine. The story is also on the World Wide Web at: http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/aug99/tenn0899.htm Scientific contact: D. Wayne Reeves and Randy L. Raper, ARS
National Soil Dynamics Laboratory,
Auburn, Ala., phone (334) 844-4666 [Reeves], (334) 844-4654 [Raper],
[email protected],
[email protected]. U.S. Department of Agriculture | |