California’s San Joaquin Valley is home to several of the most productive dairy counties in the nation. During the past six years in this region, tillage practices associated with winter wheat and triticale and summer silage corn have undergone major changes by dairy producers using conservation tillage (CT) approaches.

Surveys of CT practices that are tracked every two years by California’s CT Workgroup indicate that the CT practices of strip-tillage and no-tillage were used on about 20 percent of silage crop acreage throughout the central San Joaquin Valley (SJV) in 2008, while in 2004, they accounted for only about 2 percent of the acreage.

The CT practices of four innovative SJV dairy silage producers were recently showcased in public field days that were hosted by leading CT famers.

Click here to see more photos and read the full article at Progressive Forage Grower.