An innovative approach to farming practices is now currently being tested in Alberta to ascertain if it offers attractive advantages to producers.
Known as controlled-traffic farming (CTF), this process is a crop-production system with permanent traffic lanes where machinery tires travel each year. This approach restricts soil compaction to the permanent lanes and reduces the area of the field that is compacted compared to random traffic, resulting in improved crop yields. CTF uses a machinery system where as much as possible, all machinery uses a similar wheel gauge, the distance between wheels across the machine.
Peter Gamache, a former team leader with Alberta Reduced Tillage LINKAGES, has been hired as the CTF project co-ordinator by the Agricultural Research and Extension Council of Alberta.
Gamache explained the reasoning behind the CTF farming approach, which virtually eliminates a largely-unrecognized problem in many Alberta fields, known as compaction.
“Compaction, in an agricultural sense, occurs when you have implements or livestock or whatever, walking or driving over our soils. It tends to be worse when it’s wet, so when you get a wet harvest for example, or springtime and you get ruts, you’re basically compressing the soil. What that does is, you’re basically squeezing the air out of it, squeezing the water out of it. When we have frost in the winter that tends to break it up a little bit, but not totally. So, what we’re looking at is that in our regular cropping system, say in a direct-seeding system, we probably cover 50 per cent of the field at least, with tracks, in some places more than once. But between the seeder, the air cart, the sprayer, harvest-truck traffic, you’re covering a large part of your field. So, the potential for compaction, which will vary with moisture conditions and soil texture, is quite high. If you’re actually adding in a tillage operation or two, you’re maybe covering 85 per cent of your field. That’s not a problem until it impacts crop growth, and that’s what compaction can do.”
Key objectives of the project are to build a network of farmers, agronomists and others with CTF interest and expertise, assist growers that are implementing CTF, assess CTF in Alberta, develop resources for growers, conduct extension activities and develop a three-year CTF plan.
The move to larger and heavier equipment and random traffic patterns in most cropping systems has increased compaction issues, although the economic loss has yet to be quantified.
“Compaction has a lot to do with soil strengths — the stronger a soil is in some senses, the more compacted it might be,” said Gamache. “There’s a clear path, only so much strength to grow in richer soil, so if it’s too compacted that’s difficult for emergence. If it’s extensive, and compaction can go quite deep, depending on the moisture conditions, that also impacts root growth, and the ability of roots to explore soil. If it’s denser or compacted it has stronger strength. That can be an issue, too. Compaction generally impacts things like water infiltration and water-holding capacity, which is of course essential to crop growth. So, that’s why there’s the concern.”
CTF drastically reduces the percentage of area in a field that is subject to random compaction during the course of a growing season, according to Gamache.
“It’s trying to reduce the area that is compacted. That’s why the idea is to go to permanent travel lanes, so that you drive over the same spot all of the time. That gets very compacted, but if you have the right combination and width of equipment you may take your compaction, the area you drive over, from 50-plus per cent down to that 15-per-cent-or-less range. So, you’re isolating your compaction. You’re leaving then a large part of your field that is not exposed to traffic, other than a drill moving through it. So that’s really what we want to do — we want to reduce overall compaction, confine it to a certain area, and have the result be better crops from not driving on the field all of the time.”
Gamache indicated the idea for CTF has been most successfully implemented on a large scale in Australia. Robert Ruwoldt, one of Australia’s top no-tillers and CTF farmer, introduced the CTF concept to Alberta farmers at Direct Seeding Advantage in 2008, and again at FarmTech 2010. CTF systems have led to a 10-15-per-cent improvement in crop yields on a range of soil types across Australia.
“I think that was pretty much where they took it and ran with it. There’s areas in vegetable production, guys have had some of that kind of thing. But that doesn’t impact our typical farming here, our irrigated areas here. Australia have been the guys that have done most of the research, and have adopted this on about two million hectares. It’s small in a sense, but we think there’s potential for it to work in Alberta.”
By combining no-till and CTF into one system, farmers can increase net returns. CTF has the potential to improve soil structure, reduce overall compaction, increase soil water storage, improve infiltration, increase moisture use efficiencies, improve nutrient uptake, reduce pesticide costs, reduce fuel consumption and lower machinery investment.
There may be region-specific issues that arise with implementing CTF in Alberta that will need to be researched and solutions found, according to Gamache.
“Basically, one of the big things we think of is we’re improving soil quality. We’re creating a better environment for crops to grow in. So, the yields need to give you a bigger benefit than the costs that are involved. We think that can happen. But we still need to go out and see if that is a reality, or if there are places more suitable in Alberta than others. From a downside, there are of course the costs of getting involved from an equipment point of view, mainly the GPS (global positioning system), but the other stuff incurs some costs, too.”
Row spacing is the other big issue.
“Now, I’m not sure some of our guys are going to move too wide. Some guys in Australia are quite wide, like 15 and 30-inch rows. Thirty-inch rows, our corn guys here, that’s not unusual for them, but it certainly is for anything else, or most other things. Grain production, over 10, 12 is our most common. Some guys are concerned if we go to wider rows we’re going to drop our yields. And there’s some concern with the compacted rows, the driving tracks, are we going to experience some erosion issues? That’s something we need to keep our eye on.”
Currently, the CTF process would not be exclusive to any crops, added Gamache.
“Typical cereals and oilseeds, pulses, and I think there’s a lot of potential in the irrigated world. I think this is a really interesting project. Hopefully, we can get enough interest in it and keep it going. We’re starting with a fairly small number, but the good thing I think is that we’ve got lots of guys who are direct seeders/no tillers. There’s not a lot of sense to go into controlled traffic with the idea that you’re going to do a lot of tilling. You have to be thinking direct seeding, they go together. So, we see this as potentially a next move in the evolution of direct seeding.”
Adoption of direct seeding in Alberta is projected to be 12.08 million acres or 65 per cent of annually seeded acres by 2011.
Those interested in CTF can contact Gamache at 780-720-4346 or e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .