Nathan Brause has done the math, and he says his approach of scaling back and streamlining offers better profit potential, especially in these days of lower corn and soybean prices. The long-term advantages of no-till and cover crops are important as well. “We need to make sure our land ends up better than when we started farming it. If it’s not, we’re all fooling ourselves,” he says.

Brause, who farms 1,600 acres in Crawford and Richland counties, began reconsidering his farming practices about 10 years ago when he was using a couple of 300-horsepower tractors. Farmers often buy tractors and then never consider their cost per acre or cost per bushel, he explains. But he was renting the tractors from his grandfather at $50 to $60 per hour, which made him realize how high his equipment costs really were. Besides reducing his horsepower, he also has re-evaluated his fertilizer costs, and has looked for ways to eliminate wait time for himself and his employees during harvest. “We’re streamlining and cutting budgets and making the farm as efficient as possible,” he says.

By switching from strip tillage to no-till, Brause was able to eliminate the need for a 300-horsepower tractor to pull the strip-till rig. “You don’t need that giant tractor when you’re doing no-till,” he explains. “We’re not burning extra fuel, and we’re getting the job done.” He uses a 220-horsepower tractor for planting, but he could get by with even less horsepower, he says.  His 40-foot, 16-row corn planter can be pulled with 150 horsepower and so can his 40-foot, 32-row soybean planter. “We can do the job with a $65,000 tractor,” Brause says.

For harvest, a larger machine has proven to be more efficient for Brause. He had been using a combine with an eight-row corn head, but last year he bought a used combine with a 16-row corn head. With the smaller corn head, he was not making good use of his employees’ time, he says. Now when he’s combining corn, he usually has two people running grain carts and two people running semis to get the grain from the fields to the bins. He likes to shell corn at about 3.5 mph and unload on the go. The system minimizes wait time. “Everybody is fully efficient,” he says.

For the coming year, Brause wants to upgrade his 700-bu. grain cart with a 1,000-bu. cart, to improve efficiency even more. By buying used equipment, he keeps costs down, he says. “I don’t want new stuff.”

Cover cropping
Brause began using cover crops on his land eight or nine years ago, and has tried various planting methods and seed mixtures. He’s tried both aerial seeding and seeding into standing crops with a high clearance rig and drop tubes. Seeding in September or August seems to give the best chance of achieving a good stand and improving soil health, he says.

Brause uses different seed mixes depending on the needs of the field. For instance, on ground that will be going into corn, he prefers more legumes to provide nitrogen. Depending on the weather conditions, some species do better some years than others. However, including rye in the mix ensures a stand. “In the worst-case scenario, I know the rye will come,” Brause says. Balansa clover will also carry through the winter and grow in the spring, even if plants aren’t obvious in the fall, he adds. “Come spring, that stuff takes off like a rocket.”

The return on investment for using cover crops isn’t quick, Brause says. “It takes time to bring soil health back.” However, tillage and intensive farming locks farmers into a cycle that requires continual use of purchased inputs, such as fertilizers and fungicides. “Everything is supplied by the co-op,” Brause says. “The soil should have all these things to begin with.” Degraded soils with low organic matter may produce good yields with high inputs, but the cost is too great, he adds. “It’s not working because it’s degrading the soil as we do it.”

Instead, Brause is working to build his soil tilth and organic matter while lowering input costs and aiming for lower yield goals. “I’m happy with 180 to 200 bu. corn,” he says. The highest yields aren’t necessarily the most profitable, he says. He’s able to reduce his input costs by buying less commercial fertilizer and using chicken manure and cover crops to enhance fertility.

For his no-till corn, Brause applies a pop-up fertilizer and then applies 28% UAN three times during the growing season using y-drops to place it close to plant roots. He’s been producing corn with 0.8 lbs. of N per bu. and is working toward reducing the rate further to 0.7 lbs. per bu.

Using no-till and cover crops has helped Brause improve degraded ground while also protecting soil from erosion. For instance, one 95-acre field his grandfather bought in 2004 was low in fertility and covered with foxtail. Corn yields on one side of the field were only about a third what they were on the other. Brause began using cover crops and applied chicken manure as fertilizer along with 28% UAN for nitrogen. Now the field is averaging 215 bu. of corn per acre and the yield variation within the field is only about 30 bu. “It’s very uniform and the soil is a lot better than when we started,” Brause says.

When soils are kept covered with growing plants all year, soil loss is almost entirely eliminated, even during heavy rains. “I really like where we’re going,” he says. “I think this is the future of agriculture — where there is no run-off.”