Soil compaction caused by farm machinery and field traffic will be discussed at an upcoming event near Boone on November 14th. The event will cover methods to minimize this issue and mitigate any soil compaction that may have already occurred.
Kapil Arora, Field Agricultural Engineer with Iowa State University Extension and Outreach, tells RadioOnTheGo News soil compaction is a hidden enemy for most farmers.
“There’s really nothing on the surface other than the track marks, but it does impact yield. It does make moisture availability and fertilizer use questionable because it impacts root development. And under unfavorable conditions, you can actually get up to yield losses in the range of 10 to 20%. Under good years, you don’t really see that much impact because weather’s doing good. So there is soil compaction that happens due to how the soil conditions are and our farm machinery and the traffic we run through the field and also the tires do make a difference as well.”
Demonstrations of field equipment, including wheeled and track tractors, will take place during the event. Equipment will be driven over a specially constructed soil “lasagna” to demonstrate the amount of compaction caused by different pressures.
“We have stratified layers of gravel and dirt and we actually will drive some of the equipment over it and we’ll be able to see how the deformation on those layers actually happens. It’s not visible otherwise, but with these hands-on activities, you can actually see how far down compaction actually goes.”
The soil compaction school event will be held November 14th with check-in starting at 8:30 a.m. at the Field Extension Laboratory, located at 1928 240th St. near Boone. The program will start at 9:00 a.m. More information on this event can be found here.
