Fatal 15 Vehicle Pileup On US-67 In Jackson County,Arkansas

South Texas valley and northern Mexico sugar cane crops once a year when the fields are burned off we can get the smoke all the way up my way some 250 miles away. Necessary evil of agriculture. Been down us77 and 83 many times when smoke was thick. Very scary but most natives down there now how to handle it since the farm's have been there for 100 plus years.

 

If it’s irrigated ground then the yield will be a lot more than dry land and with that much stubble it’s virtually impossible to no till crops. There might be alternatives to burning the stubble, but I couldn’t say what they are.

 

Maybe shred it or disk it.

 

Maybe. I’ve never seen the stubble from 150bu wheat, but I do know there aren’t many options for rice stubble. Out in CA they have tractors with thin metal wheels and they drive those back and forth across the rice stubble to work it into the ground before they do anything else with the field.

 

We used to use stubble rollers here as well as high crop tractors with the metal wheels. Grand Dad would use a stubble roller which is just a drum with points welded on it. Then disc it under come spring. Then run a du-all over it, broadcast the seed and use the du-all again lightly then run a smooth roller over it. Pull his levees and come back and put the spills in once he had a stand and had a plane fly Stam over it.

All he burnt was wheat in the spring cause it put something back in the ground. Wheat was always behind his group 4 beans which cut early. Fact it is it’s wheat planting time now. A 40 or so he would throw a little vetch in with it run a hot wire and move his cattle on to that for the winter. Get them off of it before the wheat split and still combine it. Yield would be down a tad but wintered his cattle cheap. He was a different breed, plowed his beans. I can’t ever remember seeing a trashy crop of any kind. Kept his ditches mowed and I never seen a not straight row of corn or beans. Took his tractors to the shed at night and got em greased etc before bed. Then check his oil and water in the a.m. He cleared a lot of what he farmed with a cross cut saw and a team of mules out of Belgian mares crossed with Mammoth Jacks. Made improvements to the farm every year such as worked on leveling it or laying irrigation pipe under ground little by little. I’ve seen him cover his neighbors garden with plastic and stakes then have the plane spraying at the butt crack of dawn because the wind is calmest at that time. The size of today’s operations, cost of fuel, seed and chemical demand a different approach.

 

There are a handful of farms down here that have been raking the wheat stubble and round bailing it for feed with pretty good success. They arn't leaving anything unused. If not the just disk it a couple times between planting times. The black clay we have is so hard and just turns to slick glue like mud when wet. We also have what we call potato rocks that grow from the ground endlessly to beat up the discs and rippers. Burning is never done unless a hay field has gotten to many mesquite or huisach trees or sticker burr underbrush to handle. Those seeds when eaten by livestock will just be spread around were the patties land so they are not good to have mixed with the hay.