ARTICLE: Better Know a Farmer: No-Till Expert Bill Crabtree
The following is an excerpt of Layla Katiraee's article via Biology Fortified, "Better Know a Farmer: No-Till Expert Bill Crabtree."
In this issue of “Better Know a Farmer”, I contacted Bill Crabtree to learn about “no-till farming”. If you’re saying to yourself, “No-till? What are you waiting for? Till when? It doesn’t make sense” then you’re not alone. Bill has an awesome website which highlights his expertise in this field (get it?? Field? Because he’s also a farmer? Amazing pun!!). He lives in Western Australia (WA), but he provides consulting services worldwide helping farmers adopt no-till farming. He’s actively engaged in social media using the very apt twitter handle @NoTillBill, so we “met” through Twitter and he kindly agreed to answer my questions, both serious and humorous, on no-till farming.
Q: What’s your background and training? What do you grow on your farm?
A: I grew up on the land, I was doing night shift ploughing our very sandy fragile soils to 3 AM with no cab, no lights, and a modest jacket at the age of 14 on the south coast of WA. I went to University of Western Australia twice – B.Ag.Sci and M.Sci and now enrolled in a PhD in No-Till at same university. Eight years ago after energising the no-till movement for most of my life and helping farmers make lots of money at 47 years old, I realised I needed a retirement plan as $200,000 in assets was not going to go far. So, with the help of Rabobank, I borrowed very heavily, bought a farm in the driest region of the globe, and have been 100% cropping on the desert’s edge not far from Yalgoo – East of Geraldton in Western Australia. It was risky but it has paid off. The only profitable crop in this heat and dry is just wheat. So, in contrast to my agronomic training, I have been growing continuous wheat for 8 years and it has been a huge success with no-till and full stubble retention. I grow a little of canola, triticale and lupins, but 95% wheat [Layla’s Note: if you don’t know what triticale and lupins are, you’re not alone :) I had to look those up!]
Q: What’s no-till farming? Why is it important?
A: It is seeding with less than 20% topsoil disturbance with narrow metal openers (sharp 12 mm narrow points or discs) and with no soil cultivation after the last crop. [Layla’s note: I wanted to add a picture of tilling equipment for farming but couldn’t find a freely available image, so you can see one here on the John Deere website]. Tillage, or cultivation, used to be needed to soften the soil enough to be able to evenly place seeds at the right depth in the soil and for mechanical weed control. Neither of these factors are now required due to better mechanical tools and herbicides. Within a few years of no-till the soil softens through organic residue retention that feeds the bugs in the soil which make the soil spongy and ready to rapidly soak up heavy downpours of rain. This softer/spongy soil can then store more water at depth and mitigate against droughts. Symbiotic plant root relations also form that are otherwise destroyed by tillage, fungi are increased as the decomposition of the organic matter becomes more of a steady release of energy into the soil food web that is very complex and not well understood but well appreciated by farmers. [Layla’s Note: Bill has a YouTube video on this topic which you can view here.]
No-till has many other immediate farm benefits also, including less fuel use, better timing, higher whole-farm yields and greater economic efficiencies.