The brothers grew up on a tobacco farm, left farming when they became adults but decided to come back to it in the 1970s. They said the economics of switching from conventional tillage to no-till became evident after growing a few crops of cotton.
“That first year we got a half inch of rain between May 18 until the second week in August, which is much like our crop this year,” said Mike Haddock. “We made a little over 600 pounds per acre. After that first crop was ginned, we felt if we could make 600 pounds of cotton with no rain, imagine what we can do when we do get rain?”
Lindsey, this year's Mid-South winner, says the trick to keeping cotton production profitable for his farming operation along northeast Arkansas' Crowley's Ridge is keeping those good soils on the farm.
Most years, Lindsey is concerned with sheet erosion from water leaving the ridge, a geologic structure rising several hundred feet above the landscape.
“If you farm close to Crowley's Ridge, then you are going to have a continuous battle with soil erosion, not necessarily because the slope is so bad, but because you get so much water from the 3- and 4-inch rains that come in an hour or an hour-and-a-half,” he said.
Lindsey has installed dozens of drop pipes and drop inlets on the farm, including several V-shaped terraces around 21-inch drop pipes to hold water longer and facilitate flow into the drop pipes. He's also built berms to divert water into ditches to keep it from washing through the fields.
Click here to view more:
National Cotton Council of America
20240830145952.gif)
.jpg?tr=w-120,h-60,c-at_max,cm-pad_resize,bg-ffffff "UBM China (Shanghai)")
-Ltd..jpg?tr=w-120,h-60,c-at_max,cm-pad_resize,bg-ffffff "Thermore (Far East) Ltd.")
