Controlled traffic farming

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Controlled traffic farming (CTF) is a management tool which is used to reduce the damage to soils caused by heavy or repeated agricultural machinery passes on the land. This damage and its negative consequences have been well documented and include increased fuel use, poor seedbeds, [1] reduced crop yields and poor soil function in terms of water infiltration, drainage and greenhouse gas mitigation due to soil compaction. [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]

Contents

Controlled traffic farming is a system which confines all machinery loads to the least possible area of permanent traffic lanes. Current farming systems allow machines to run at random over the land, compacting around 75% of the area within one season and the whole area by the second season. Soils don’t recover quickly, taking as much as a few years (e.g., >5 years, particularly in soils without swelling-shrinking properties). [9] [10] [11] A proper CTF system on the other hand can reduce tracking to just 15% and this is always in the same place. CTF is a tool; it does not include a prescription for tillage although most growers adopting CTF use little or none because soil structure does not need to be repaired. The permanent traffic lanes are normally parallel to each other and this is the most efficient way of achieving CTF, but the definition does not preclude tracking at an angle. The permanent traffic lanes may be cropped or non-cropped depending on a wide range of variables and local constraints.

Achieving controlled traffic farming

Controlled traffic farming can be achieved on any scale but to get tracked areas to the minimum possible, there are three requirements:

Matching implement widths is a case of forward planning, or making sure that if anything doesn’t match now, its replacement will. It’s also the case that the wider the implements are, the less will be the tracked area. Growers often find they can use wider machines because without soil damage, they are easier to pull and in the case of cultivators, most likely don’t need to work anywhere near as deep.

Matching track widths is more difficult because grain harvesters often come with a track of 3 m or more and matching to these would make all machines very wide and often impractical to use on a daily basis. Matching to the harvester track works well in Australia where properties are often remote, there is plenty of space and road travel may not be too extensive. In other parts to the world, including most of Europe, alternatives have been found. These may not be quite as efficient in minimising the tracked area, but achieving less than 20% is still perfectly feasible.

In controlled traffic farming systems for vegetable cropping, track widths vary between 1.83 m (the 72” imperial standard) to customised systems of perhaps 3.2 m or more. Road transport with these wide systems can be difficult but their use in the Netherlands and Denmark is increasing and growers accept the constraints because of the advantages that the systems bring.

Keeping machines in exactly the same place is most easily achieved with a satellite guidance system based on an RTK correction signal and auto-steer. Only the RTK system can guarantee to keep vehicles in the same place year in year out and it also achieves the highest pass to pass accuracy of around ± 2 cm. Guidance systems have many other advantages and once a system of this nature has been adopted, the natural progression is to move to controlled traffic farming.

The generic advantages of guidance include much reduced overlap between passes of machines, particularly of wide cultivators which may overlap by around 10%. Although planters and drills use physical markers to match up between one pass and the next, cumulative errors can be large and non-cropped tracks created by these machines (tramlines) for chemical applications can often have an overlap of 5%. The implications of this are significant because tramlines are used for all chemical applications. A 5% overlap wastes the equivalent in increasingly expensive materials and through overdosing, damages crops and could lead to extra run-off and diffuse pollution.

Advantages

The main advantages are:

Disadvantages

More discipline is required in the field, and can increase journey times when removing large volumes of material, such as sugar beet or potatoes.

The initial investment in technology and infrastructure for a CTF can be high.

The implementation of CTF requires special equipment such as GPS control, precision farming technology and machines adapted to work on transport routes.

The transition to CTF may require a change in habits and working practices for farmers and workers. Education and training focused on new methods and technologies are key to successful implementation.

Future

Although controlled traffic farming is still in its infancy as far as adoption is concerned (partially because the enabling technology of satellite guidance is still relatively new), there is a better engineering solution that would reduce tracked areas to less than 10%. This is not a recent concept, having been pioneered by Alexander Halkett in the 1850s [15] and David Dowler in the 1970s, [16] but the concept of a wide span vehicle is becoming increasingly attractive because of the other advantages it brings. [17]

The concept is described in detail at controlled traffic farming Europe's wide span page [18] and achieves the low tracked area by virtue of using one of the same wheel tracks on adjacent passes. The system also reduces reliance on satellite technology because a guiding wheel track for the next pass is automatically laid down. With implements mostly contained within its wheel track, part width operations, for example ploughing or root crop harvesting, are perfectly feasible, whereas with existing tractor systems they are not.

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Wide span vehicle is a special type of farming vehicle that is much wider than a typical vehicle. Wide span vehicles can measure up to 10-metre (33 ft) wide or wider. The impetus behind wide span vehicles in farming is to reduce the amount of soil that becomes damaged from farm vehicles. Controlled traffic farming (CTF) is also aimed at solving this problem and both CTF and wide span vehicles can be used together to further improve land use.

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Soil compaction, also known as soil structure degradation, is the increase of bulk density or decrease in porosity of soil due to externally or internally applied loads. Compaction can adversely affect nearly all physical, chemical and biological properties and functions of soil. Together with soil erosion, it is regarded as the "costliest and most serious environmental problem caused by conventional agriculture."

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Tillage erosion is a form of soil erosion occurring in cultivated fields due to the movement of soil by tillage. There is growing evidence that tillage erosion is a major soil erosion process in agricultural lands, surpassing water and wind erosion in many fields all around the world, especially on sloping and hilly lands A signature spatial pattern of soil erosion shown in many water erosion handbooks and pamphlets, the eroded hilltops, is actually caused by tillage erosion as water erosion mainly causes soil losses in the midslope and lowerslope segments of a slope, not the hilltops. Tillage erosion results in soil degradation, which can lead to significant reduction in crop yield and, therefore, economic losses for the farm.

References

  1. ↑ "Precision farming - Soil compaction and controlled traffic". Archived from the original on 2010-07-24. Retrieved 2010-03-19.
  2. ↑ Soane, B.D.; Dickson, J.W.; Campbell, D.J. (1982). "Compaction by agricultural vehicles: a review. III. Incidence and control of compaction in crop production". Soil & Tillage Research. 2 (2): 3–36. Bibcode:1982STilR...2....3S. doi:10.1016/0167-1987(82)90030-7.
  3. ↑ Canarache, A.; Colibas, J.; Colibas, M.; Horobeanu, I.; Patru, V.; Simota, H.; Trandafirescu, T. (1984). "Effect of induced soil compaction by wheel traffic on soil physical properties and yield of maize in Romania". Soil & Tillage Research (4): 199–213. doi:10.1016/0167-1987(84)90048-5.
  4. ↑ Tullberg, J.N. (2000). "Wheel traffic effects on tillage draught". Journal of Agricultural Engineering Research. 75 (4): 375–382. doi:10.1006/jaer.1999.0516.
  5. ↑ Tullberg, J.N.; Ziebarth, P.J.; Li, Y. (2001). "Tillage and traffic effects on runoff". Australian Journal of Soil Research. 39 (2): 249–257. doi:10.1071/SR00019.
  6. ↑ Jones, R.J.A.; Spoor, G.; Thomasson, A.J. (2003). "Vulnerability of subsoils in Europe to compaction: a preliminary analysis". Soil & Tillage Research. 73 (1–2): 131–143. Bibcode:2003STilR..73..131J. doi:10.1016/S0167-1987(03)00106-5. hdl: 1826/3360 .
  7. ↑ Hamza, M.A; Anderson, W.K. (2005). "Soil compaction in cropping systems. A review of the nature, causes and possible solutions". Soil & Tillage Research. 82 (2): 121–145. Bibcode:2005STilR..82..121H. doi:10.1016/j.still.2004.08.009.
  8. ↑ Håkansson, I. (2005). "Machinery-induced compaction of arable soils. Incidence – consequences – countermeasures". Reports from the Division of Soil Management. Uppsala: Department of Soil Sciences (109). ISSN   0348-0976.
  9. ↑ Radford, B.J.; Yule, D.F.; McGarry, D.; Playford, C. (December 2007). "Amelioration of soil compaction can take 5 years on a Vertisol under no till in the semi-arid subtropics". Soil and Tillage Research. 97 (2): 249–255. Bibcode:2007STilR..97..249R. doi:10.1016/j.still.2006.01.005.
  10. ↑ McHugh, A.D.; Tullberg, J.N.; Freebairn, D.M. (June 2009). "Controlled traffic farming restores soil structure". Soil and Tillage Research. 104 (1): 164–172. Bibcode:2009STilR.104..164M. doi:10.1016/j.still.2008.10.010.
  11. ↑ "The potential of controlled traffic farming to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and enhance carbon sequestration in arable land: a critical review". Transactions of the ASABE: 707–731. 22 June 2015. doi:10.13031/trans.58.11049.
  12. ↑ Ball, B.C.; Parker, J.P.; Scott, A. (1999). "Soil and residue management effects on cropping conditions and nitrous oxide fluxes under controlled traffic in Scotland. 2. Nitrous oxide, soil N status and weather". Soil and Tillage Research. 52 (3–4): 191–201. doi:10.1016/s0167-1987(99)00081-1.
  13. ↑ Wolkowski, R.P. (1990). "Relationship between wheel-traffic-induced soil compaction, nutrient availability and crop growth: a review". Journal of Production Agriculture. 3 (4): 460–469. doi:10.2134/jpa1990.0460.
  14. ↑ Wolkowski, R.P. (1991). "Corn growth response to K fertilization on three compacted soils". Soil & Tillage Research. 21 (3–4): 287–298. Bibcode:1991STilR..21..287W. doi:10.1016/0167-1987(91)90026-T.
  15. ↑ Halkett, P.A. (1858). "On guideway agriculture: being a system enabling all the operations of the farm to be performed by steam power". Journal of the Society of Arts (7): 41–53.
  16. ↑ Chamen, W.C.T.; Dowler, D.; Leede, P.R.; Longstaff, D.J. (1994). "Design, operation and performance of a gantry system: experience in arable cropping". Journal of Agricultural Engineering Research. 59 (59): 45–60. doi:10.1006/jaer.1994.1063.
  17. ↑ Chamen, W.C.T.; Watts, C.W..; Leede, P.R.; Longstaff, D.J. (1992). "Assessment of a wide span vehicle (gantry), and soil and crop responses to its use in a zero traffic regime". Soil & Tillage Research (24): 359–380. doi:10.1016/0167-1987(92)90119-V.
  18. ↑ "CTF Europe's wide span page". Archived from the original on 2010-05-26. Retrieved 2010-03-19.
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