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When Matt Hagny talks about the benefits of long-term no-till there is no compromising. He doesn’t mean tilling only after wheat or just zone tillage or vertical tillage. Tillage, any tillage, “causes soil productivity to decline,” the Kansas crop agronomist told members of the Innovative Farmers Association of Ontario at their annual conference here last week. Doing just a little tillage simply means you’re “screwing up a smaller volume of soil,” he added.
When a nutrient deficiency occurs, the crop typically has telltale
visual symptoms—at least to the skilled eye. That's not
the case for the micronutrient molybdenum (Mo), said crop
consultant Matt Hagny, who recently discovered a fairly
widespread deficiency of that micronutrient in clients'
fields from central Kansas to Nebraska. His investigation
into mysterious wheat and soybean symptoms may have implications
as far as Iowa and central Illinois.
Molybdenum—or more precisely the lack of—may be robbing yields from a surprising number of fields. Research conducted by Matt Hagny, who runs Pinnacle Crop Tech (www.agronomypro.com), a consulting service based in Wichita, Kan., discovered deficiencies of molybdenum, an essential micronutrient, while searching for the cause of pale green plants despite adequate nitrogen levels in clients’ wheat fields. “Ordering molybdenum testing was a shot in the dark,” Hagny
says. Correction/Update: Since these articles were written, Hagny has discovered that soil applications of Mo are totally ineffective on the types of clays found in Kansas soils, except where the Mo is applied in a band with P fertilizer. Apparently in some parts of the world, soil Mo applications (with water as a carrier) are effective, as stated by several authorities on the subject. |
