Technology | Fall 2008
Lose the cultivator and lower your fuel bill.
The easiest way to reduce farm fuel consumption is by running your tractors fewer hours each season. But that’s easier said than done as some tractors, particularly those used in conventional tillage operations, log quite a few hours every year.
According to a University of Saskatchewan study, there is potential for serious fuel savings by converting from conventional tillage to no-till.
In the study, Nebraska Tractor Test Lab data was used to estimate average fuel consumption for three tillage passes across a field to control weeds. They compared that to one pass with a sprayer. Not surprisingly, tillage operations used six litres per acre more in total than the sprayer did. That’s a saving of over $7 per acre per season.
No-till, however, comes with other expenses, notably chemical costs. But as most producers using conventional tillage use herbicides too, does converting to no-till significantly increase chemical costs? “It wasn’t a huge jump at all,” says John Blair, a Saskatchewan producer who went through the transition.
Prior to the switch, Blair was making up to eight tillage passes a year over summerfallow fields. That meant each of the farm’s two tractors was accumulating about 500 hours per year and being traded off every five years. “Now we’re putting 300 hours on just one tractor,” he says.
With fewer engine hours, fuel consumption on the farm dropped drastically. “There was a lot less interest at the fuel dealership. Suddenly, we weren’t big customers anymore,” says Blair. But converting to no-till involved a leap of faith. “It’s a pretty big step when you were born and raised with cultivating,” he explains.
And although no-till is now the dominant practice in Saskatchewan, some areas of Manitoba and Alberta with higher rainfall still see predominantly conventional tillage. “The (no-till) technology is adapted to a drier soil bed,” says the University of Saskatchewan’s Cecil Nagy. But now there is a new incentive for those conventional tillage holdouts to consider converting. “With high fuel prices, I think farmers (in wetter areas) will be taking a second look at it,” he says. FF
