After winning a statewide soybean yield contest, Kelly Forck points to years of no-till and fertility buildup preceding the contest as significant contributors to the win. Taking notice in the soil, he believes, helps bring more noticeable yield.

Topping the Missouri Soybean Association yield contest in the no-till category was a little bit of a surprise for Kelly Forck. The contest plot got planted late, and after planting, the weather swung from one extreme to the other. But one constant was that the soil on the Forck farm was ready and able to produce a bumper crop--for soybeans, 70.19 bushels per acre.

Forck, who along with his father and brother, farms in the Missouri River bottoms north of Jefferson City, believes that keeping soil at its optimum fertility and building tilth--even in high-organic-matter river bottoms--will lead to consistently better yield.

One reason the Forcks use long-term no-till is for efficiencies at planting. Kelly is a fireman, his father, Mike, is a county commissioner and his brother, Keith, works for Missouri's Department of Natural Resources.

Forthright about the utmost challenge with river-bottom farming, Forck said that you don't have a crop if you don't have proper drainage. And they've worked at that over the years. But aside from the obvious need for drainage, Forck said having good fertility and soil structure helped in the contest. He added that in addition to time savings, the soil is the goal with no-till. And as most no-tillers will report, soil improvement takes time.

"You don't see the benefits for about 5 years," he said. "And we can see the difference on the end rows. We see compaction in traffic areas, so we try to stay off the ends."

But in the decade or so they've kept fields in no-till, Forck said that there has been noticeable change in soil structure.

"We started no-till in the bottoms in the early 90s," said Forck, "And after [the flood of] 1993, it was like starting over. Last year we had a penetrometer out. Our fields tested about the same as nearby tilled fields. The difference was when you got to a certain depth, you could detect the plow pan in the tilled fields."

Loren Luebbert, assistant manager at the Jefferson City MFA Agri Services Center, said that the Forcks' approach to tillage in the bottom is unique because they are long-term no-tillers. "You'll see farmers who no-till beans but then go back to conventional tillage when rotating back into corn," he said. "Not many will be in a constant no-till rotation."

The soils in the field the Forcks farm are variable--from sandy to a much tighter "gumbo." Forck said that the challenge with no-till is that they will need to plant corn and soybeans at the same time in order to hit dry enough and warm enough soil conditions for corn emergence.

"Our heavier soils are slow to dry," he said. "But you can plant more quickly into the sandy soils."

What about concerns that frequent fertilizer applications can get tied up in the top, shallow layer of soil in a long-term no-till rotation?

"We haven't seen much tie-up," said Forck. "We did 3-inch increment soil tests down to 9 inches and they showed up having about equal fertility."

Keeping soil fertility at its optimum is the other half of the Forcks' formula. When they won the yield contest this year, it was a conquest of variables--some controllable and some not. The wild card, of course, is weather. What can be controlled is available crop fertility. The Forcks recently finished a 6-year buildup phase for their farm. Now they apply removal rates of fertilizer for each crop they plant.

Luebbert said that he's helped the Forcks with fertility management over the years. With their fertilizer plan, soil tests for phosphorous and potassium come back at the top of the charts.

"One reason to keep the soil at optimal fertility levels," said Lyndon Brush, MFA staff agronomist, "is that if you have the right fertility and the right weather hits--delivering the sunlight and moisture--you know that P and K won't be a limiting factor for yield."

Forck said that the farm's corn yield goal was 150 bushels per acre years ago. That goal was attained and up until recently, the new goal had been 165 bushels per acre. With successive years at the 165 range, the Forcks have adjusted the yield goal to 180 bushels per acre. "But we're not hitting it yet," said Forck.

Brush said that adjusting yield goals is a good idea, especially if a grower has hit the goal for several years. "If you only fertilize for an average yield, over time, you'll probably go below average. You'll never be able to push that field to the limit in an ideal year," he said. "Forck is willing to make the changes that push yields in those fields. That's a good approach."

Brush said that river-bottom land may have naturally high levels of phosphorous and potassium due to deposition during floods throughout history. But if fertility levels are not dramatically above the optimal level, using crop-removal rate fertilizer application is a sound way to employ a fertility "savings account."

"If you use soil as a savings account, you can withdraw that P and K with high fertility removing crops and not miss much yield. When you build up fertility, you can draw out on the years when cash might be tight. But some people consider building to optimal fertility and applying consistent crop removal rates as an insurance policy that rules out fertility as a yield robber when all the other variables line up for a good year."

Forck said that without their fertility plan, their yields wouldn't be on the rise.

"We wouldn't be where we are without putting down the fertilizer. That's quite obvious, and, of course, variety selection is a major contributor," he said, giving a nod to the MorSoy 3991N that put the Forcks atop the Missouri no-till soybean yields.

And, he said that once you see yields like these, you want to replicate them at every chance.

"We're working with precision farming, too, to build management zones and fine-tune our fertilizer," said Forck. "Fields like the one where we had the soybean plot could roll off some pretty good corn. Once you've made that high yield, you know the potential is there. You've done it."