CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Fewer passes of equipment and less tillage may improve a farmer’s bottom line according to a recent report from Precision Conservation Management (PCM). PCM was founded by the Illinois Corn Growers Association in 2015 in support of the Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction Strategy (NLRS). It now has a network of more than 500 farmers. Also sponsored by the Illinois Soybean Association, PCM aims to identify conservation practices that effectively address environmental issues while also protecting a farm’s financial bottom line. 

“What we do differently from some of the other incentive programs out there is we help farmers to understand the economics of these conservation decisions,” said Greg Goodwin, PCM director.

In June, PCM released the results of nine years of data collected from the field in an effort to educate growers about the need for reduced tillage. 

According to the data, the most frequently observed tillage systems on the most profitable acres were one-pass light tillage for corn (one pass with low-disturbance tillage) and no-till for soybeans. “This same trend was seen for fields with both high and low soil productivity ratings throughout Illinois. In both cases, less than 4 percent of the most profitable fields were managed with 3 or more tillage passes. Strip tillage has also shown promise as a profitable option with corn production in recent years,” according to the PCM data summary.

“Adopting less tillage and fewer passes is something that can be done without hurting your bottom line, and should improve it,” said Dirk Rice, a Champaign County farmer and charter PCM participant. “This information and data is not coming from a company trying to sell you something. These are real numbers from real farmers. The more farmers you can get involved, the more valuable the data is.” 

Benefits of PCM membership include access to the latest farmer-driven data that can help producers make the leap to more conservation tillage and other nutrient-sequestering field practices such as cover crops and bioreactors. It also includes access to the latest university research into nutrient application rates and recommendations. 

“When you see your numbers aggregated with a bunch of others doing the same or similar practices and compare them to people who are taking a different approach, you can see when you are on the right track,” said Rice, who estimates that his total farm tillage is now around 90 percent no-till (soybeans) or single-pass (corn). 

“As planting equipment gets better it makes it much easier to do this,” he added. “When you look at how much (money) per acre farmers are projected to lose in 2024, it makes more sense to look at doing some things differently. The whole premise of PCM is that the financial aspect is critical. Farmers have to know that these practices will not cost them money and ideally will save them money.”

“Our current number of farmer-cooperators is around 520 who have enrolled roughly 515,000 acres. All of that is data-collected on a field by field basis. The base provides a pretty good sample size,” said Goodwin. “That said, we definitely have the capacity to add more farmer-cooperators and are actively looking to enroll more farmers — and not just farmers who are already adopting conservation practices. We want to reach out to farmers taking all different kinds of approaches. We will actually pay farmers just to participate in our program and just do the benchmarking exercise.”

Farmers receive compensation of $500 from PCM during the first year of enrollment. An additional $250 per year is paid for an additional year of enrollment. “What that does is it kind of compensates them for sitting down with us and sharing their management data. The information they provide is entered anonymously into the database and aggregated with the others,” Goodwin explained. 

A new survey of PCM farmer-cooperators revealed that 64 percent of farmers who don’t already use reduced tillage practices are likely to reduce or eliminate tillage based on the results of the data and recommendations published by PCM in June. 

Learn more at: www.precisionconservation.org.