I farm part time, and I also work in a public sector position which involves the environment and natural resources. I have had conversations over the more recent years with agricultural producers and I have also talked with various governmental agency staff. There are a variety of opinions out there on the benefits and the detriments to field tile. I could probably write an incredibly lengthy post on the topic itself. I would offer the comment that in our part of the country, with our heavy clay soils, installation of pattern field tile started escalating with the access to yield monitors in harvesting equipment. Following the run up and peak of commodity prices in 2012, tile was installed in our area in terms of miles, rather than thousands of feet. I will add one more comment that has fueled the installation of field tile. Looking at how and when we receive our rainfall, and the intensity of that rainfall, we no longer have most of our rain coming in showers and gentle soaking rains of an inch or less on rather frequent basis. We are in an era where we have torrential thunderstorms dumping inches in hours. This leaves massive pools and ponds on the landscape in need of draining in a timely manner, otherwise productivity will be severely impacted in a negative manner. If I was to think back about 10 years ago, and what my memories are from at least the 30 years I recall best, we had single, isolated events that came once every 15 years or 20 years, resulting in significant negative impacts to productivity. As I think about the most recent 10 years, these events have been more substantial, more frequent, and occurring practically on an annual basis. We have rivers, lakes, streams, marshes, and wetlands, which are all part of natures "storm water" system. These channels have been carved out over time based upon what the what runs off the landscape. We have single events of rainfall which are greater than the system can typically handle, and we have more water that must be artificially removed from the landscape in a rapid timeframe, so we have more and more water moving, creating more difficulty and hardship to those who live and work the land further downstream in the landscape. Margins are tight in agriculture, and by tiling we can help alleviate the variability in production caused by the changing precipitation patterns. Why I bring this up, is I feel we are in a "vicious cycle" of reacting to the changes in weather on the landscape as best we can, as ag producers, however it seems we are also sending some of those problems downstream, too. I raise this point because my family's farm is at the lower reaches of a watershed where water pools and floods due to the local "bottleneck" in the outlet. I feel we are going to have to really re-think where we can send this "storm water" once it drains off the landscape, especially since rainfall and flooding events seem to be more prevalent.
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Today's Featured Article - The Ferguson System Principal An implement cutting through the soil at a certain depth say eight inches requires a certain force or draft to pull it. Obviously that draft will increase if the implement runs deeper than eight inches, and decrease if it runs shallower. Why not use that draft fact to control the depth of work automatically? The draft forces are
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