Greg Amundson is doing conservation on a budget.

“Like most everyone else, I have to be careful how much money I spend,” says the 34-year-old farmer from Honeyford, N.D.

Amundson farms with his father, Ronald. They grow corn wheat, corn, soybeans and barley. Lately, Amundson has been trying to cut back on tillage to reduce soil losses from wind erosion.

“I hate seeing black snow in our road ditches,” he says, referring to blowing soil that often turns snowdrifts black in the winter.

When tilled and repeatedly frozen and thawed, some of the loam soils in the northern Red River Valley soils turn powdery in the winter. Strong winds easily pick up soil particles from tilled or bare fields and mix them with drifting snow. Amundson suspects the losses are much larger than they look.

David Franzen, North Dakota State University Extension soil specialist, confirms his fears.

“The eroded soil that is in road ditches each spring is a small percentage of the soil that is lost,” Franzen wrote in a recent North Dakota Crop and Pest newsletter. "I am astonished how many growers think that most of the soil lost from wind erosion ends up in their ditch, and all they need to do is scrape it out and put it back onto the field. The ditch silt is only a small fraction of the soil lost. Most of the soil lost to wind travels for hundreds and thousands of miles. Ocean researchers track the buildup of sediment on the ocean floor over time. Wonder where the sediment comes from? Your fields."

No more tillage
Amundson doesn’t routinely use a chisel plow or field cultivator anymore. He sometimes does vertical tillage, which leaves the surface covered with crop residue. He direct seeds into vertically tilled fields and no-till plants wheat, barley or soybeans into fields he doesn’t till. He is trying to strip-till corn. He also plants rye as a cover crop after harvesting small grains and early maturing soybeans.

5 ways to save
Amundson has held down the cost of trying and adopting new conservation practices five ways:

1. He watches Craigslist and most every other digital platform for good deals. Once he bought cover crop seed for just a couple bucks an acre.

2. He rents equipment when possible and buys used, not new, equipment. After a couple years of experience with the equipment, he might upgrade to a new machine. “I am doing that now with our strip-tiller,” he says.

3. He will quickly sell equipment if the practice doesn’t work for him. “If I buy and sell right, I can really limit the net cost,” he says. He’s even been able to sell some equipment for more than he paid for it.

4. If he tries a new piece of equipment and likes the results, he’s willing to sell what it replaced right away. It helps their balance sheet to minimize the amount of equipment on the farm. It also helps break old habitats. “You can’t go back to the old way if you’d don’t have the old equipment,” he says.

5. He applies for public and private grants, cost-sharing and incentive payments to take some of the financial risk out of trying new conservation measures. The technical help and advice that comes with the programs and grants can be valuable, too.

“I’m trying to keep the black soil out of our ditches,” he says, “but I need to keep the black ink on our balance sheet.”