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Remaking the Past to Improve the Present
By
Carol L. Spence
LEXINGTON, Ky., (Oct. 24, 2007) – Drought, rain, heat or cold,
there’s one thing a farmer can count on -- weeds. For the
organic grower or the small vegetable producer who might be
looking for a sustainable solution to that problem, a University
of Kentucky horticulture professor has been tinkering with an
answer.
Director of the College of Agriculture’s sustainable agriculture
program, Mark Williams, has spent much of this past growing
season modifying older farm equipment to meet the needs of
farmers who practice sustainable production methods. Using two
older tractors, an Allis Chalmers G designed prior to World War
II and a 1964 Farmall 140, Williams welded new technology onto
these workhorses of farming, creating reasonably priced
cultivators suitable for small acreage production. He used the
organic portion of UK’s Horticultural Research Farm to test his
innovations.
“We’ve been trying to develop a production system that is
appropriate for the scale that we’re doing and the type of
diverse crop production that we’re growing,” he said. “We’ve
taken a few of these older tractors that we can get fairly
reasonably priced and work really well for our system, and we’ve
brought in cultivating tools that are fairly new, so they
cultivate in a different way than the tools that were originally
on these tractors.”
Those original tools were designed for deep cultivation. Since
their heyday, farmers have learned that turning over so much
soil can have a negative impact on its structure and microbial
life.
“Deep cultivation puts you in this cycle of continuing to
cultivate over and over,” Williams said. “You might be killing
the weeds on the top of the soil, but you’re bringing up weed
seeds from the bottom all the time. So newer cultivators take
this knowledge about how we can farm in a way that’s as gentle
as possible to the soil, while being as effective as possible.”
Williams belly-mounted a row of basket weeders onto the Allis
Chalmers G tractor, which only penetrate a half inch into the
soil and can cultivate three rows simultaneously. The Farmall
140 displays a row of spider cultivators mounted beneath the
tractor, as well as a row of seeders on the back. With that
array, Williams and his fellow UK farmers can seed three rows on
14-inch centers, then later go over the field with the G to
cultivate between the rows and with the Farmall for in-row
cultivation. The trick, he said, is the belly-mounted system
that allows the driver to look straight down at the cultivators
and thus get closer to the crop than could normally be done.
“To me, what this really speaks of is this idea of taking
appropriate technology from the present that utilizes a lot of
our scientific knowledge, like this cultivator, and applying it
with the wisdom of the past, and that’s this tractor that was
developed back in the 1940s,” Williams said.
Ben Abell, lead farmer for UK’s community supported agriculture
project at the farm, has been working closely with Williams on
the modifications.
“With some simple modifications to the cultivation system and
investment in cultivation, you can vastly increase the acreage
that you’re cultivating and decrease the time it takes to
cultivate that acreage,” he said.
“What we’re trying to do is set up a model that small farmers
can emulate. Decreasing labor costs and increasing cultivation
and harvest efficiency is one of our big goals out here and
obviously this tractor increases cultivation efficiency,” Abell
said, indicating the Farmall.
“We’re not setting up an agricultural system here that you have
to go out to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on the
equipment,” Williams said. “You can use existing equipment,
maybe modify it by adding cultivating tools that are appropriate
for this type of farming, where we can do mechanical cultivation
but in a very mindful way of how it impacts the soil.”
Those interested in learning more about Williams’ modifications
can contact him at 859-257-2638.
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Contact: Mark Williams, 859-257-2638
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The UK College
of Agriculture, through its land-grant mission, reaches across
the commonwealth with teaching, research and extension
to enhance the lives of Kentuckians. |
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