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https://www.no-tillfarmer.com/articles/11095-timeline-of-the-no-till-revolution

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By Mike Lessiter and Frank Lessiter posted on January 10, 2022 | Posted in No-Till Farming 101, Seeding & Planting, Equipment, Crop Protection, Residue Management, Nutrient Management, Precision Agriculture, Soil Health

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Thousands of small but compounding victories spurred no-till’s growth from 0 to 110 million acres in 60 years.

Success with no-tillage — a radical change in farming from conventional methods — came thanks to the vision, courage and dogged determination shared by many — and from every corner imaginable.

Ingenuity and an “against the grain” perseverance are omnipresent in the “no-till story.” From the testing and perfecting of new chemical formulations … to the researchers and extension agents who ignored their bosses and tirelessly studied the practice … to the salesmen who quelled their doubts upon hearing one “no” after another … to those who created the forums, associations, workshops and field days.

But most important are the farmers themselves, who constructed their own farm-shop innovations, subjected themselves to ridicule for their “ugly, lazy ways of farming,” faithfully stuck with an unproven practice and worked the problems out. Farmers’ willingness to share successes and failures were priceless in transferring know-how to the next curious farmer. Competition, ego and embarrassment were set aside for the greater good.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1830

• 250-300 labor hours are required to produce 5 acres of wheat with a walking plow, harrow, hand broadcast of seed, sickle and flail.

1837

• Blacksmith John Deere fashions a broken steel saw blade to a highly-polished moldboard from which sticky prairie soils easily slide off while turning under the furrow. He and Leonard Andrus start manufacturing steel plows in Grand Detour, Ill., before separating into different plow companies 10 years later.

1862-75

• Change from hand work to horses characterizes the first American agricultural revolution.

1905

• USDA sends plant explorer Frank Meyer to China to look for interesting seeds. He sends back thousands of seeds, cuttings and whole plants, including 44 varieties of soybeans. 

1926

• Irish mechanic Harry Ferguson patents the three-point linkage for farm tractors in Britain.

1928

• H.H. Bennett and William Ridgely Chapline release the USDA bulletin, Soil Erosion: A National Menace. Bennett will go on to be recognized as the “father of soil conservation.” Bennett asks: “What would be the feeling of this Nation should a foreign nation suddenly enter the U.S. and destroy 90,000 acres of land, as erosion has been allowed to do in a single county?”

• Guy Swanson’s great-grandfather in Wash. direct-seeds winter wheat into harvested pea ground left barren by stationary thrashers and steam engines. “It showed the possibilities of no-till, but it’ll be another 50 years before continuous no-till settles in the area,” Swanson says.

1930

• 15% of U.S. farms have adopted the tractor.

1932

• Shell Chemical pioneers the use of ammonia as a fertilizer, first in irrigation water and in 1939 for direct soil applications.

1934

• The Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station establishes its Dixon Springs substation and will become a major contributor to no-till research.

• Dr. H.H. Bennett, the “father of soil conservation,” delivers a highly publicized testimony on soil conservation. With a dust storm traveling from the bare fields of the Great Plains all the way to Washington, D.C., Bennett stalls his testimony until the dust clouds darken the sky over the U.S. Capitol. The Senate unanimously passes legislation to create the Soil Conservation Service (SCS), a permanent agency under USDA, Bennett heads until retiring in 1951.

1941

• Spurred by a wartime need for domestic sources of fats, oils and meal, the U.S. doubles soybean production from 1941 to 1942, passing both Manchuria and China to become the world's leading soybean producing nation, a lead maintained ever since.

1943

• Plowman’s Folly, authored by Edward H. Faulkner (an ag agent in Ohio), is released. “No one has ever advanced a scientific reason for plowing,” the book asserts. “The hottest farming argument since the tractor first challenged the horse was started by Faulkner's attack on the moldboard plow,” reports Time Magazine in its coverage of Faulkner vs. Walter T. Jack debate, an Iowa farmer, plow proponent and author of The Furrow and Us. Faulkner’s idea that seeds can be planted directly into residues from the previous crop motivates a soil conservation movement in the U.S. that would eventually take the form of no-till.

1944

• Purdue Univ. conducts the first row-crop tillage-planting experiments for leaving crop residue on the surface of the soil to control erosion. Project is initiated by ag engineer R.R. Poyner and agronomist Helmut Kohnke, both of Purdue, and USDA’s R.B. Hickok.

1945

• The amount of tractor power overtakes horsepower for the first time on U.S. farms.

1947

• Iowa farmer Ray Hagie invents the first self-propelled sprayer. This development would prove key to no-tillers who needed timely application on ever-increasing acreages.

1948

• Colorado farmer Frank Zybach invents center pivot irrigation. His “Self-Propelled Sprinkling Irrigating Apparatus” (patented in 1952) system consists of sprinklers attached to arms that radiate from a water-filled hub out to motorized wheeled towers in the field and eliminates moving pipes by hand. Valmont Industries buys the patent in 1953.

1951

• K.C. Barrons and his team of researchers at Dow Chemical report on the successful application of no-tillage techniques.

1953

• Based on R.R. Poyner’s patent, IH produces the first commercial no-till planter, the McCormick M-21 (2 rows on 40-inch spacing) at its Richmond, Ind., plant. The lack of weed control products at the time thwarts its success, and IH ceases production after 2 years. Only 23 of 50 units produced were sold.

1954

• The number of tractors on farms exceeds the number horses and mules for the first time.

1955

• The invention of the herbicide paraquat in the U.K. starts the modern no-tillage development in Europe and worldwide. This discovery leads the Imperial Chemical Co. to initiate research into farming without tillage. 

1956

• South Australian company Gyral, founded by Albert Fuss, introduces the air seeder in response to farmers who were unable to plant in more compact soil environments. The lightweight seeder was mounted on a Graham Holme chisel plow.

1958

• Atrazine is registered in 1958 by Ciba-Geigy for weed control in corn. It will be used extensively in the U.S. by the early 1960s.

1960

• Monsanto establishes an Agricultural Division.

1961

• Stauffer Chemical Co. patents glyphosate as a descaling and metal chelating agent, unaware of its use for its agricultural division.

• Univ. of Illinois agronomist George McKibben establishes plots in Dixon Springs, Ill., to begin no-till research in an effort to reform farming techniques during the production revolution.

1962

• Harry Young is the first in the U.S. to use no-till on commercial farmland. He modifies a mule-drawn 2-row planter to no-till corn on a highly visible 0.7 acre plot in Herndon, Ky.

1963

• Ky. farmer Eugene Keeton demonstrates the finger pick-up seed meter for planters and sells the design to John Deere.

1964

• Banvel herbicide (containing dicamba) is registered by the USDA.

1966

• Chevron Chemical releases paraquat in the U.S. for use as a burndown herbicide and to eliminate weedy plants in wheat fields.&

1967

• Allis-Chalmers introduces the first fluted-coulter no-till planter, the first commercially sold unit to find success.

1968

• The commercialization of Monsanto's Lasso herbicide is credited with beginning a trend toward reduced-tillage farming.

1969

• OSU researchers Glover Triplett and David Van Doren find mulch-covered no-till soils reduce surface evaporation, maintain soil moisture and create a favorable environment for root development.

1970

• UK soil scientist Bob Blevins starts no-till plots at the Univ. of Kentucky’s Spindletop Research Farm in Lexington. Longtime Univ. of Missouri professor C.M. Woodruff establishes a continuous corn no-till plot at the UM’s Sanborn Field. It’s believed to be the oldest continuing no-till plot west of the Mississippi River. Along with Ohio State Univ. (1962), these two plots are among only a few sites worldwide that have been continuously no-tilled for 50-plus years.

1972 - 2019

• The success continuous.  Full story can be read on https://www.no-tillfarmer.com/articles/11095-timeline-of-the-no-till-revolution

2020

• Cover Crop Innovators from Pa. no-tiller and cover crop expert Steve Groff.

• No-tilling corn in wider 60-inch rows opens room for grazing livestock.

• Cover crops is a hot experimental trend among U.S. no-tillers.

• Indigo Ag and Nori become two of the leading carbon market programs for farmers. Bayer also launches its Carbon Initiative, the latest in a string of recent environmentally focused initiatives by agriculture companies.

• The EPA proposes new measures to reduce risks associated with paraquat and better protect human health and the environment.

• Food company Kellogg commits to phase out the use of glyphosate as a pre-harvest drying agent in its wheat and oat supply chains by 2025.

• OSU soil scientist Rattan Lal (l), pictured with Bill Richards, is announced as the 2020 World Food Prize Laureate for his soil-centric approach to increasing food production that conserves natural resources and mitigates climate change.

• The Assn. of American Pesticide Control Officials (AAPCO) asks the EPA to ban the post-emergent use of four dicamba herbicides — XtendiMax, Engenia, FeXapan and Tavium — by the end of 2020.

• Exapta Solutions founder Matt Hagny dies during a mountain-climbing accident in Colorado. Management says it’s determined to carry on Hagny’s legacy and continue advancing no-till practices worldwide. 

• Corteva Agriscience spins off from DowDuPont, becoming a standalone company.

• A 2020 study of 6 tillage practices for corn at the Univ. of Illinois concludes no-till delivers the lowest average cost per acre, the lowest average power cost per acre and the lowest non-land costs of 6 tillage practices studied.

• Michigan State Univ. completes a 30-year ongoing study of long-term no-till at its Kellogg Biological Station. “Every year for more than 30 years, the yield in no-till treatments increased vs. tilled treatments,” reports MSU Ecologist Nick Haddad. “The findings drive home the importance of long-term studies because they reveal unexpected results. There were many slices of time when we would have gotten the wrong answer if the study had lasted less than 10 years.”

2021

• The 29th annual National No-Tillage Conference is held in virtual format due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

• The National Farmers Union (Canada) releases a study that details that Alberta and Sasketchewan no-till adoption reached 70% in 2016, "and may top 90% this decade." The near-total adoption of no-till by Canadian farmers since 1990 sequestered an estimated 13 million metric tons of CO2 in 2019.

• A 2021 study using satellite imagery, “The Extent of Soil Loss Across the Corn Belt” by Evan Thaler, Issac Larsen and Qian Yu, estimates that about 35% of the Corn Belt has lost most of its topsoil.

• President Biden in his address to Congress says: “When I think about climate change, I think jobs … Farmers planting cover crops so they can reduce carbon dioxide in the air and get paid for doing it.”

• The “Environmental Benefits of Precision Agriculture in the U.S. “ study (AEM, ASA, CropLIfe and TFI) reports “the cultivation of 10.2 million acres of cropland was avoided via more efficient use of existing land, an area equivalent to 4.5 Yellowstone National Parks.” The report also states that 15,000 tons of herbicide have been avoided due to adoption of precision ag technologies such as auto guidance, variable rate and section control. 

• No-Till Farmer introduces No-Till Passport, an online feature sharing conservation ag success stories from across the globe. 

• Green Cover Seed, headquartered in Bladen, Neb., announces the opening of a second location in Iola, Kan.

• No-Till on the Plains holds its 25th anniversary winter conference. 

• A poll of Soil Health Academy graduates reveals the majority are experiencing improvements in their operations’ resources and net per-acre profits within 2 years or less.

• Rodale Institute & Davines Group launch International Regenerative Organic Research & Education Center in Parma, Italy

• After 5 years, the National Corn Growers Assn. shuts down the Soil Health Partnership (SHP) due to lack of funding. The SHP teamed with farmers to collect data on soil conservation practices such as cover crops and reduced tillage.

• In the 2021 National Corn Growers Assn. Yield Contest, the top 3 finishers in the no-till irrigated category average 524.39 bu./acre vs. 382.37 for the conventional-irrigated category.

• Herbicide requirements continue to fall. While 10 pounds of herbicide were needed per acre in the early 1960s to make no-till work, farmers are using mere ounces per acre today. 

• CNH Industrial acquires Raven Industries. 

• Va.’s David Hula cements status as one of the all-time great corn-growers, achieving 602.17 bu./acre in the no-till irrigated category of the National Corn Growers Assn. 2021 Yield Contest. His no-till yields lead all 9 categories in the contest.

• National Corn Growers Assn.’s Contest no-till yields nearly 3 times higher than what the top yielders achieved in the program’s start in 1983.

• No-Till Farmer starts its 50th year in November 2021.

2022

• “Triple Crown of No-Till” celebrated at 2022 NNTC ... 60 years since first no-till plots in Kentucky, 50 years of NTF and 30 years of the NNTC.

• Amir Kassam, Theodor Friedrich and Rolf Derpsch present the Keynote Address at the 8th World Congress on Conservation Agriculture, Bern, Switzerland in 2021, highlighting the nearly half-billion acres of soils saved as a result of no-till/conservation ag.

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THANKS AND CREDIT AGAIN TO https://www.no-tillfarmer.com/articles/11095-timeline-of-the-no-till-revolution FOR THIS MOST INFORMING INFORMATION​​