By Brian Hefty

In the spring of 2007, I had finally had enough.  For many years, we had been farming around wet holes, delaying planting, re-seeding, getting stuck – you know what I’m talking about.  That spring we were farming 35 fields, and we only had 3 that we could plant straight through.  Even though many people said tiling wouldn’t be approved, couldn’t get done, would be difficult to “get past” the neighbors, and a load of other garbage, we decided to move forward.

That fall, we got our own tile plow and got started.  If this is something you have been considering for a while, I want to give you reassurance that this is the right move, and it needs to happen today.  Here are the top concerns we had and how we overcame them:

  1. NRCS won’t approve it.  Nonsense.  NRCS is in favor of tiling because it is a conservation practice.  Tiling is proven to reduce erosion (40% to 60% depending on the study you look at), so why wouldn’t they support it?  If you have problems with your local NRCS agent, talk to the regional, state or national people to get it done.  If you want, you can bypass NRCS, but we prefer to see you work with them rather than against them.  Just keep pushing.
  2. Neighbors won’t allow it.  If you have a water problem upstream of your neighbors, they have an even worse problem.  They are looking for a solution just like you are.  If you help them fix their problem while you are fixing yours, you will be the hero, not the enemy.  It’s all in how you approach your neighbors.  Try to help them solve their problems first, and be willing to contribute more than your fair share financially.  That’s right.  Give your neighbor the better deal.  In the grand scheme of things, you’re only talking about a few dollars, and what’s the right thing to do with your money?  If you can use your money to help others, isn’t that what we are all called to do?
  3. There’s nowhere to go with my water. Yes there is.  It may not be close by, though, which means you may have to work with 10 neighbors instead of 1.  I know this means more work, but so what?  Take the time to meet with your neighbors and get it done.  They will all be appreciative of the end result.  Certainly, some people will be hesitant, but once the tile is in and working, all their concerns go away when their land becomes more productive and more valuable.  There are two things that appeal to almost every landowner:
    1. Making their land better.
    2. Making their land worth more money.

    Tile helps with both.

  4. It’s going to be expensive.  In our operation, we’ve tiled almost every field, and almost every one of these has given a one-year payback.  That’s 100 percent ROI annually if you are running the math.  The only farmer who won’t tell you his tile pays big-time is the farmer who is trying to buy your ground cheap so he can tile it and make it productive.
  5. You can’t tile in-crop.  About 75 percent of the tiling we’ve done has been in-crop.  If your crop is less than a foot tall, you will likely see yield gain, not loss, going through the field with a tile plow.  This has been our experience and the experience of those who have done it.  Plus, think about tiling on a June day compared to tiling after harvest in November.  In June, the day length is far longer, the days (and the soils) are warmer and your traction is better.  All this means more productive days.  We often get three to four miles of tile in per day in June compared to one to two miles in per day in November.
  6. Tile will hurt you in a dry year.  That’s ridiculous!  The only time I’ve seen tile affect things slightly to the negative in a dry year is when the farmer put all his tile too deep.  All tile does is lower the water table and remove excess water.  In the Dakotas, we recommend tiling at 3 feet deep.  Why lower your water table down to 4 or 5 feet when you only get 20 inches of rain per year?  We have found that even in a dry year our best yields are over the tile lines.  If your tile lines are at 3 feet, a water table higher than that is ALWAYS BAD – even in a dry year.  A high water table kills roots, kills beneficial soil microbes, damages soil structure, delays organic matter mineralization, and hurts yield – even in and especially in a dry year.  Think about it.  When does your crop need deep roots the most?  In a dry year!  By the way, if it is dry in your area this year, now is the perfect time to tile since you can get into anywhere you want on your farm.  Plus, in dry years tile is cheaper, contractors are less busy, and the NRCS can get out more quickly to inspect your fields.
  7. Our ground is too heavy to tile.  No it’s not.  However, the heavier your ground, the closer together your tile lines need to be.  It usually takes a few years for water to find its fastest paths to your tile lines, so time will help.  Also, you may need to reduce the compaction in your soil or add lime or gypsum to help the porosity.
  8. I don’t have time to tile.  On our farm, we have found tiling to be a job that pays $500 an hour.  If you have that many other jobs in your operation that pay you $500, you have more than enough money to hire someone else to do your tiling.  For us, tiling pays more than almost any other job on the farm, so we make the time to do it.  As soon as the planter shuts off in the spring, start up the tile plow and go until your crops are a foot tall.  That should give you 4 to 6 weeks of good tiling.  After wheat harvest in the late summer is another great time, so many farmers who want lots of tiling done seed 25 percent of their farm each year for 4 years into wheat.  After 4 years the whole farm is done, allowing for corn and soybeans to go into every acre again.
  9. Tile is bad for the environment.  The opposite here is true.  Tiling, when done without inlets, is perhaps the best thing possible a farmer can do for the environment.  Proper tiling reduces erosion, reduces flooding, makes downstream water quality better, increases the food supply, reduces the need for tillage, reduces the need for pesticides since crops will be much healthier, etc.  Educate yourself and then share the message.

I understand it is a lot of work to talk to the NRCS, your neighbors, and others.  I had to go through the same thing.  All I can tell you is 7 years after I had reached my boiling point, things have completely changed on our farm, and they will for you, too.  We now plant straight through every field, even in wet years.  We now get significantly higher yields without replanting or getting stuck.  We can now use less tillage when we want, as our ground is drier and warmer each spring thanks to the tile.  I know you have probably heard us talking about tile a lot in the last few years, but the reason why is because it has made us so much money on our farm and made our lives so much easier.  Nothing pays better for us each year than tile – not herbicide, fertilizer, fungicide, variety selection or anything else.  If you have ground you know needs to be tiled, the best day to get started is today.