CIAS Director Rick Klemme, CIAS economist Don Schuster, and Josh Posner from the UW-Madison Agronomy Department analyzed the economic results from the trial. Josh Posner deserves a great deal of credit for leading the formation of this project and for building the project's network of collaborators, observes Klemme. This Research Brief describes the overall study design. The profitability of the cash grain and forage cropping systems will be discussed in upcoming Briefs. The continuous corn system relies on high chemical inputs and uses only chemical fertilizers based on soil tests.
Land is fall chisel plowed and prepared with a field cultivator prior to planting.
Mechanical cultivation is used in addition to herbicides and insecticides for weed and insect control. The continuous corn system was a fairly common system for southern Wisconsin farmers at the beginning of the trial due to a now defunct federal feed grain program, Schuster says, but now it is less common. Only chemical fertilizers are used with the nitrogen credit from the soybeans applied to corn. Herbicides and insecticides are used to manage pests in the corn and bean crops. Soybeans are drilled in 7.5-inch rows into corn residue.