Brelowski
Brelowski
Arable farmer Till Brelowski was always satisfied with his yields, but not with the high cultivation costs. That’s why he switched his farm to no-till – with a Novag T-ForcePlus 650.
Till Brelowski is a farmer with heart and soul. But since he switched his farm to no-till, he looks at his work with different eyes. “The changeover was a huge leap in quality of life for me,” says the 37-year-old. The reason: he spends significantly less time on the tractor because he no longer has to work the soil.
Instead, he uses the time he has gained for things that were previously often left undone due to the heavy workload. These are, for example, smaller variety trials on his fields, plant sap analyses or spade samples with root checks. “Optimizing cultivation and soil properties are the tasks of a farm manager for me. And not hours of digging,” says Brelowski.
Conventional cultivation with high yields and high costs
It was not a matter of course that he took the step to no-till. He has been running his parents’ arable farm in Sierksdorf, directly on the Baltic coast of Schleswig-Holstein, since 2017. With the farm, he initially also adopted the common crop cultivation concept in the region, which means a tight crop rotation with rapeseed, winter wheat and winter barley as well as conventional sowing, preceded by deep cultivating and ploughing.
With this approach, he achieved considerable yields, despite the highly heterogeneous, sandy-loamy soils with 25 to 70 soil points. Over nine tons of winter wheat and more than four tons of rapeseed per hectare were the norm with this conventional system, if there was no prolonged drought in between. “In terms of yield, I really couldn’t complain,” says Till Brelowski.
Nevertheless, he decided to switch to no-till in 2021. A step that was not easy for him. After all, he had grown up with the conventional cultivation system and achieved good yields with it. But at some point, the high costs and agronomic problems associated with the system could no longer be ignored.
Foxtail as a problem grass
Due to the high proportion of winter cereals, foxtail became a real problem on his land. The weed could only be controlled with several herbicide applications and high application rates. This drove up the input costs just as much as the intensive tillage. The high amount of stones on his fields was also a cost factor because the plow and cultivator shares wore out very quickly.
Today, Till Brelowski’s farm no longer has a plow or cultivator. Instead, he has invested in a Novag T-ForcePlus 650 with a working width of six meters. The Novag machine was his first choice because of its special qualities for no-till after cereals and catch crops. “We always have very large amounts of straw,” says the arable farmer. “The Novag demonstration machine coped with this by far the best. It had the fewest problems with Hairpinning.”
Even before switching to no-till, he had already started to grow more catch crops. Today, he uses mixtures with a high proportion of legumes, which he sows after winter barley and winter wheat. He has also included oats as a summer crop in his crop rotation, followed by winter oilseed rape.
No-till as a solution
After almost two years of experience and minor difficulties at the beginning of the changeover, Till Brelowski is now highly satisfied with the no-till system and the Novag technology. He sows all crops with the T-ForcePlus 650. “The field emergence is consistently great,” says the farmer happily. He also attributes this to the uniform seed placement of the Novag, which is not a matter of course on his heterogeneous soils.
In the past, he was often concerned about field emergence with conventional sowing. To conserve soil moisture, Brelowski sometimes even cultivated and sowed at night and chose days with as little wind as possible.
Stable earnings
The yields have also impressed him so far. In rapeseed, which is particularly important economically, he achieved a peak of 4.9 tons per hectare. In cereals, he achieved an average of just under eight tons per hectare, due to a long drought from the grain filling phase onwards. “However, the crop development up to that point led us to expect yields that were as high or higher than usual,” says Till Brelowski.
However, he is particularly pleased that he has achieved his most important goal: To significantly reduce cultivation costs. For example, diesel consumption has been reduced by 40 percent by eliminating tillage. He was also able to save many hours of tractor work and reduce the use of pesticides. “That’s why the bottom line is actually more,” explains Brelowski.
“An incredible number of earthworms”
He is also pleased with the visible improvement in his soils. He now observes “an incredible number of earthworms” on the fields and a more stable structure. As a result, the areas are easier to drive on, which was evident in the very wet conditions in the fall of 2023. The soils also absorb water better.
Another plus point for Till Brelowski is that the high amount of stones on the surfaces is no longer so significant because the Novag “copes with it very well” and the wear is manageable. At the same time, much less new material comes to the surface without the need for plowing and digging, which saves additional working hours on the farm. The annual collection of stones is now completed in two days, whereas it used to take two to three weeks.
No-till needs experience and patience
Despite the many positive developments, he is aware that implementing no-till is a constant learning process. “You have to know your fields very well, gain experience and develop a feel for the interrelationships,” says the farmer. This applies to the sowing date, for example. While he now sows ten days later in spring than before the changeover due to the slower warming of the soils, the winter crops are drilled ten days earlier.
He learned the hard way in his first year when he chose the usual sowing date and a heavy slug population damaged the slow-growing winter oilseed rape. “If I sow ten days earlier, i.e. in mid to late August, the oilseed rape quickly grows out of the slugs’ mouths. Fast and good juvenile development is the most important thing in all crops in this system,” says Brelowski. Overall, he has observed an increase in slugs in the course of no-till, but these can be safely controlled by using straw harrow and slug pellets.
Problem-free sowing in tall catch crops
He was particularly impressed by Novag when sowing winter wheat in waist-high catch crops. “I did that for the first time on my own farm in 2023. There were also some interested people from the neighborhood. They were very impressed,” says the arable farmer. “And the crop simply turned out incredibly well.”
Word of his positive experiences with the Novag no-till system has now spread to other farms in the region. In 2023 alone, he tilled around 600 hectares with the machine – and the trend is rising. “That makes me happy, of course. After all, the Novag is easily designed for 1,200 hectares a year and also has enough power for contract work,” says Brelowski.
But what he enjoys most is the time he has gained. “Today, I simply spend much more time on the things I want to do as a plant farmer,” says Brelowski. The employees also benefit from this. Even during the main harvesting season in summer, he can now give them more time off at the weekend. This has also given him new freedoms. In recent years, it was difficult to go to the nearby beach to swim in the Baltic Sea with his family during the hot harvest phase. Now he has the time to do so.
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