By Brian Hefty

I know the weather is dry in most areas of the country, but that is exactly when you want to tile.  I had a farmer tell me recently to “set up irrigation in a flood year” and “tile in a drought year”.  Not only is it less expensive to get done at those times, there are usually fewer roadblocks or issues that arise.  You or your family will hopefully be farming that land for many years, and both irrigation and tiling are long-term great investments.

TILE DOES NOT HURT YOU IN A DROUGHT YEAR.  I’ve heard some people wondering whether or not tile has hurt them in this dry year.  If anything, it has helped.  For example, this spring when we had huge rains and high water tables, tile helped keep the water table down, allowing roots to penetrate deeper and prepare for this dry summer.  Remember that all tile does is lowers the water table.  It does not remove all the water from the soil, only the excess.  If the water table is low, the tile doesn’t run.  While this year is dry, think about how many times excess moisture has hurt your farm, at least in areas of fields, over the last 20 years.  In most of the northern U.S. it is staggering how much high water tables have hurt crop production year after year.  Yes, in a dry year tile isn’t going to do much for you, but how often is it this dry?  Since tile doesn’t hurt you in a dry year, why not prepare for our average year, which includes excess moisture almost every spring?

Here are my top 4 tips if you want to tile this fall:

  1. Get your own tile plow.  This piece of equipment has paid back faster than any other equipment we’ve ever bought on our farm.  Even if you add in the cost of a stringer cart, a backhoe, and getting set up with RTK GPS, you should be able to recoup all of your investment in a couple weeks.  Here’s the very simple math.  If you put in just 10,000 feet of tile per day (we commonly do 15,000+ per day on our farm) and you save 50 cents per foot vs. having your tile custom-installed, that’s $5000 per day.  If you tile for 12 days, that’s $60,000…easily enough to pay for all your tiling equipment and then some.  Plus, you are in complete control of when you want to tile and where the tile goes.  Tiling is simple and easy thanks to modern technology like the Intellislope or AGPS control systems that allow a computer to control your tile plow and install tile more accurately than ever before.
  2. Get your tiling approvals and permits now.  This is what takes all the time in a tiling project.  There’s almost nothing to putting a bunch of pipe in the ground.  It’s coordinating everything with your neighbors, NRCS, highway departments, and others that often takes months to complete.
  3. Get plenty of tile on hand.  Every field we’ve tiled on our farm has required more tile than my initial projection, because as I have quickly learned, you can never put in enough tile.  We always add an extra spot or put the lines a hair closer together than we had planned.  Especially with today’s commodity prices, your tile investment comes back faster than ever.  Odds are high there will be enough drain tile to go around, at least early this fall, despite the severe shortages we’ve seen the last couple of years.
  4. Don’t give up.  I have talked to farmers all over the country who will say, “I can’t get tiling done in my area” or “I can’t tile certain parts of my farm”.  There is always a way to get it done.  It might not be simple or easy or inexpensive, but it’s all worth it when it gets finished.  For example, our poorest drained land required the greatest investment.  I first had to work with the landlord for over 3 years before we came to an arrangement she was happy with.  We then had to put a lift station in 20 feet deep because of the lay of the land.  We invested over $1000 an acre and a lot of effort to get this done, but without it, we wouldn’t have much of a crop on that ground this year.  Right now, the crop there looks great, and right over the tile lines it looks the best.  We have a USGS monitoring well in that field, so I have data to show how much and how quickly we are able to lower the water table.  I can also see how quickly the water table rises when we get big rains like we did this spring.

I know it may seem like a crazy time to be talking about tile, but I will guarantee you we will have wet years again.  When we do, you’ll see that tile investment really pay off.  For that matter, even this year our tile lines ran and without them, our crop roots wouldn’t be nearly as deep.  Those deep roots we’ve got now are helping us tremendously, since we’ve gone 2 months with almost no rain.  Tile pays.