Future Tense

Eric Ollila, AgBio Communications

Dwayne Beck, Ph.D., the manager of SDSU's Dakota Lakes Research Farm, has been one of the forces behind the development of the no-till agricultural system. Now he is among those hoping to both redefine the system and take it to a new level.

SDSU scientist and South Dakota Hall of Famer strives for a new system of agriculture

In early September, Dwayne Beck, Ph.D., the manager of South Dakota State University’s Dakota Lakes Research Farm, was speaking to a group in Chamberlain about the work he has done in agriculture over the last 30 years. The members of the audience were diverse, but they seemed to be quite interested in his presentation. Beck said he was pleased with the audience’s reaction, especially considering whom he followed that day: a certain former major league baseball manager and South Dakota native. “It’s always hard to follow Sparky Anderson,” he said.

Beck and Anderson, along with nine others, were in Chamberlain to be inducted into the South Dakota Hall of Fame. While the achievements of all of the inductees are notable — among them are philanthropists, business leaders, self-sacrificing volunteers, and community leaders — it is Beck who may have had the largest effect. His methods have been called revolutionary and visionary, and the results of his work can be seen not only in South Dakota but also around the world. As a driving force behind what many call “no-till,” but which he prefers to call a “system of agriculture,” Beck has been a cheerleader, player, and coach.

The son of a farmer, Beck was born into agriculture. Following his graduation from high school, he attended Northern State and majored in chemistry and physics. After receiving his bachelor’s degrees in 1975, he taught chemistry and physics in Gettysburg. While there, he was, like many young teachers, strapped for funds. To help make ends meet, he took a part time job bagging fertilizer. Through that part-time job, Beck met the people that would serve as colleagues and mentors. “I met Darrel ‘Red’ Pahl, Darrel DeBoer, and Paul Carson, from SDSU, and they were doing a project aimed at calibrating water use and nitrogen fertilizer needs for irrigated corn grown along the Missouri River,” said Beck. “They needed somebody to take data, and that was me. By the end of the summer, they were saying I really needed to go back to graduate school.”

After he began his graduate studies in the summer of 1978, and while continuing the nitrogen calibration research under the supervision of Carson, Beck noticed excessive runoff occurring in irrigated fields. Subsequently, DeBoer began looking at methods to reduce that runoff, and Beck and several others played roles in the study. Beck said what they found was surprising: “The primary thing we found was that if you did no tilling, the water went into the ground better — not what everybody thought at the time.”

That tillage/runoff discovery was the first step in the development of no-till, which was the first step in the development of a system of agriculture that Beck says is both economically and environmentally friendly. “The thing we’re known for, they now call ‘no-till,’” said Beck. “I don’t like that term because one can be a ‘no-tiller’ by simply eliminating tillage and not making the other changes we have made to the systems. These changes include everything from crop rotation design, to equipment development, to fertilizer placement, to cover crops, and many other factors. We’re doing a very specialized system that happens to include no tillage.”

When Beck speaks of the development of both no-till and a larger system that utilizes no-till, he uses an analogy that centers on a chain — call it “weak-link analysis.” Instead of formulating an entire system, putting it into place, then trying to repair its faults, Beck, Leon Wrage, Pahl, DeBoer, Carson, and others approached their work in a more piecemeal fashion. “We started looking at things from a systematic standpoint,” he said. “We would look for a component that would work, not necessarily all of the components that work. As you go, you make a stronger chain. The process is ongoing.”

From 1978 until today, Beck and many others have continued to work on their system of agriculture. Together, they have developed and/or invented the tools, techniques, and knowledge that have allowed for tangible results. For example, between 1991 and 2007, the increase in crop production in an area that stretches from the James River Valley to the Missouri River, an area in which the agricultural system that Beck helped develop plays a large part, increased by over $650 million. “There is some technology (seed and herbicide developments) that has helped,” Beck said of the increase in production, “but if they were still doing tillage like they did in the 1980s, they couldn’t produce the volume that they do now.”

Beck and his colleagues at Dakota Lakes Research Farm are not content to sit back and happily watch the results of their work; they plan to continue on in the quest for a system of agriculture that truly works with and models nature. “We are working toward a system of an agriculture that’s not dependent on fossil fuels, that’s not degrading to the ecosystem, but is still profitable,” said Beck. “We have a goal here at the farm to be of no-net-use of geologic carbon (fossil fuels or organic matter) by 2026. Environmentally, it’s the right thing to do.”

In watching the crowd in Chamberlain nod at Beck’s remarks, perhaps Sparky Anderson thought he had a tough act to open for.

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