For as long as Ryan Vos can remember, his family has chiseled bean ground and disk-ripped corn acres every fall.
Not this year.
With diesel averaging $6.28 per gallon across the U.S. this past week, the southwest Minnesota farmer is making a choice that would have seemed unthinkable just a few seasons ago – skipping fall tillage where he can.
“Fuel is just way, way, way too high,” says Vos, who farms with his father, Dale, and brother, Kyle, near Hadley, Minn. “We’re talking about fuel prices affecting the bottom line in ways we have never seen before.”
But the Vos family isn’t abandoning tillage. Instead, they’re taking a harder look at every acre and asking a simple question: Does this field really need a fall pass?
Tillage Where It Counts
This fall, the family plans to concentrate tillage on those acres where it provides the most value.
That includes corn silage ground hammered by chopper and truck traffic, end rows where equipment repeatedly turns and parks, and fields receiving manure where incorporation is necessary.
“We’re still going to do tillage on 60% to 70% of our ground,” Vos says. “I know that sounds high, but it’s only because we planted a lot more corn than beans this year. I would say 90% of our bean ground is not going to get tillage.”
That’s a significant change for an operation that traditionally tilled virtually every acre post-harvest.
Vos knows those untilled soybean fields will require attention next spring. The farm isn’t equipped for no-till, so he plans to make a light field-cultivator pass ahead of the corn planter.
“Our planters have to have a seedbed prepared,” he says. “We can’t just go in there and plant.”
For Vos, that makes the decision less about abandoning tillage and more about eliminating passes that aren’t essential.
The Cost Goes Beyond Fuel
The tough economics across farm country are impossible to ignore. Vos says one of his farm’s Quadtrac tractors pulling a disk ripper can burn about 400 gallons of diesel in a day. That can cost him more than $2,500 in fuel alone.
“When you’re knocking on the door of $7 a gallon diesel, how do you do that?” he asks. “Every day that tractor is not running is money in your pocket in the short-term.”
And fuel isn’t the only expense.
Drought-baked Minnesota soils have made this year’s tillage especially hard on equipment. Before receiving rain recently, Vos says the ground was so hard he was concerned about destroying shanks and points.
“Before this rain — the farm got 3 inches last week — that ground was so hard we were going to burn points off our disk ripper or shanks off our chisel plows,” he says. “One year we burned off almost three total sets on a disk ripper.”
Those replacement parts add up quickly.
“When you look at how much those points cost, how much the blades cost — fuel costs are just half of our problem,” Vos says. “Now, are we going to lose money on the back end? I’ll let you know next year.”
Don’t Ignore the Acres That Need It
Vos knows eliminating tillage across the board isn’t realistic for his operation.
Heavy traffic areas can create compaction that becomes a much bigger problem in the spring. Silage fields and end rows are two places where he believes addressing that compaction now makes sense.
“We’re caught between a rock and a hard place right now,” he says. “Fuel prices are too high, but we still have to have a good spring.”
That acre-by-acre approach is one University of Minnesota Extension educator Jodi DeJong-Hughes recommends for farmers reconsidering their fall tillage programs.
If tillage is potentially needed, she says, farmers should look for ways to accomplish the job with fewer and less aggressive passes.
“Sometimes farmers will do two chisel passes in the fall. Just try one pass instead,” DeJong-Hughes advises. “In addition to doing less passes, shallow up your tillage equipment to save on fuel costs and wear and tear on the tractor and points and shanks.”
Leaving more residue also provides benefits beyond reducing fuel consumption. Residue protects the soil surface and can help capture water and snow — an important consideration heading into what climatologists predict will be another dry, low-snow winter in Minnesota.
Spring Will Be the Big Test
Skipping a fall tillage pass doesn’t eliminate management. It changes when that management happens.
Mitch Harting, Iowa State University water outreach specialist, points farmers to resources such as the Iowa Learning Farms Whole Farm Conservation Best Practices Manual.
“The manual provides some decision trees to help farmers determine the right direction for their fields based on what their practices are and what they’re planning for next year,” Harting says.
For farmers who leave fields untilled this fall, Harting says spring management will be critical.
“Those acres will need to be managed more like reduced-till or no-till fields, with greater attention to soil conditions,” he says.
That will include paying extra attention to planter settings. More residue may require adjustments to row cleaners. Adequate downforce will be needed to cut through residue and maintain seed depth. Closing wheels should be set to firmly close the furrow to ensure proper seed-to-soil contact.
Harting also recommends offsetting the planter 3” to 4” from the prior year to avoid planting directly into the previous year’s rows.
Looking Beyond Tillage
Vos believes today’s high input costs require him to think beyond simply cutting tillage passes.
“You have to keep looking at the big picture,” he says. “If you just make decisions season by season, you’re going to end up sinking pretty fast.”
That’s one reason he’s beginning to experiment with cover crops.
This year, Vos planted a 30-acre test plot of cereal rye on silage ground. It’s his first attempt at using cover crops, and he’s taking a cautious approach.
“I’m just dipping my toe in the water with them,” he says.
The trial could serve a couple of purposes.
Vos wants to see whether cereal rye can help build biological activity in the farm’s hardpan soils. He also hopes it can provide additional grazing opportunities for his beef cattle.
Because of drought, the cattle came off pasture earlier than normal this year. Vos hopes to graze the cereal rye this fall, remove the cattle before they damage the stand, then allow it to recover for another grazing opportunity next spring.
It’s another example of Vos looking for ways to get more value from the acres he already farms.
A Tough Year Calls for Tough Decisions
For Vos, the fall tillage decision is ultimately about more than fuel and droughty soils. It’s about recognizing that when margins get squeezed, every pass, every gallon and every piece of iron deserves another look.
“This is hard not just for us. This is hard for everybody,” he says. “When farmers hurt, everybody hurts.”
That pressure is showing up in farmers’ outlook now and for the year ahead. A recent study co-sponsored by the American Soybean Association and National Corn Growers Association and conducted by Farm Journal found fuel and energy ranked as farmers’ top 2027 input concern. On a five-point scale, with 5 indicating “very concerned,” fuel and energy averaged 4.16.
For Vos, that kind of pressure makes it even more important for farmers to look at the whole operation — not just one input or one season.
And he wants farmers to remember there’s another part of the equation that can’t be measured in gallons of diesel or dollars per acre.
“The mental toll this takes on farmers” is something people don’t always understand, Vos says.
His message to other farmers is something he hopes they hear clearly.
“It’s OK to not be OK. It’s OK to ask for help. It’s OK to struggle,” he says. “Just know that we’re all in this together, and we all feel it. You’re not alone.”
