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ARS Home » Plains Area » Lincoln, Nebraska » Agroecosystem Management Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #396246
Research Project: Evaluating Management Strategies to Increase Agroecosystem Productivity, Resilience, and Viability

Location: Agroecosystem Management Research

Title: More diverse crop rotations improve yield, yield stability, and soil health

Author
item Wagner, Susan
item Jin, Virginia
item Schmer, Marty

Submitted to: Experiment Station Bulletins
Publication Type: Experiment Station
Publication Acceptance Date: 10/20/2021
Publication Date: 10/25/2021
Citation: Wagner, S.E., Jin, V.L., Schmer, M.R. 2021. More diverse crop rotations improve yield, yield stability, and soil health. Experiment Station Bulletins. Available: https://cropwatch.unl.edu/2021/more-diverse-crop-rotations-improve-yield-yield-stability-and-soil-health.

Interpretive Summary: Crop rotation has been used by farmers for generations to improve grain yields by regenerating the soil and breaking the cycles of weeds, animal and insect damage to crops. Our long-term study in eastern Nebraska, along with several other long-term studies in the US and Canada, showed that crop rotation management had stronger agronomic and soil health benefits compared to synthetic N fertilizer alone. Fertilizer use, while beneficial, was no substitute for using crop rotation. In the long-term, rotating two or more crops can improve agronomic performance and soil health, and boost farm profitability by reducing N fertilizer input costs.

Technical Abstract: Farm profitability from grain production is an age-old concern of farmers. Improving yield stability is also an important management strategy to counteract weather extremes (i.e., heat waves, droughts, flooding) that stress both crop growth and farm profitability. Farmers need reliable information about the effectiveness of crop rotation and fertilizer management that involves many years of data to account for the year-to-year variability in growing conditions. Here, we share the results from a long-term rainfed no-till crop rotation and nitrogen (N) fertilizer systems study conducted by the USDA Agricultural Research Service at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Eastern Nebraska Research and Extension Center (ENREC) (Table 1). While producers typically increase fertilizer amounts for continuous crops, fertilizer inputs were determined by the crop phase present during the year of application to maintain experimental uniformity.