Compaction a concern on Idaho beet farm

To reduce compaction, the Harpers put triple tires on their New Holland TJ tractor.

“Our ground needs a lot of deep tillage.”

The Raft River Valley in the mountains of southwest Idaho isn’t the easiest place to farm, but nonetheless, Gary Harper and his son, Darin, have a successful operation growing 3,100 acres of sugar beets and wheat.

“Our ground needs a lot of deep tillage,” Gary explains. “We have compaction problems here. It’s quite a challenge to get it to produce.”

The Harpers farm on a fine, light-colored clay-loam. It has a high salt content, giving it a pH of over 8.0, and only two percent organic matter.

“Because of the fineness of the ground and the salt, the soil hardens pretty easily,” says Gary. “We have to do quite a bit of tillage to keep it going.”

Gary Harper runs a 3,100-acre sugar beet and wheat operation in Malta, Idaho with the help of his son, Darin.

Pivot irrigation supplied by deep wells maintains the local sugar beet industry. Two crops of wheat are followed by a year of sugar beets. The beets are processed at Snake River Sugar Co-op, formerly known as Amalgamated Sugar.

Harper Family Farms

Harper Family Farms is located near Malta, in southwest Idaho. Gary started his farming career there in 1972. He and his wife, Susy, farm with their son, Darin. Darin returned to the farm in 1999 after earning a degree in finance at Utah State University. The Harpers also have two children still at home, Jill and Jonathan, and three other adult children, Jennifer, Holly and Nolan.

The Harper’s farm program demands a four-wheel-drive tractor that can do hundreds of hours of heavy disk ripping each fall. To reduce compaction, the Harpers put triple tires on their bigger tractors. They’ve also simplified field operations, doing less tillage and accomplishing more when they do go over the soil.

Gary says, “We use the bigger tractors to dig the soil, to smooth it and pack it back down.”

Time to trade?

In the fall of 2001, Gary and his son, Darin, were talking about whether it was time to trade their New Holland 9882 4WD tractor for one of the new TJ model tractors just introduced by New Holland. The big blue, 350-hp 9882 had nearly 2,800 hours on it.

“I really liked that tractor. I liked the weight; it wasn’t too heavy.

The Harper family: Susy and Gary Harper (center); their children Jonathan and Jill (left); Darin and his wife, Tayna, and their children, Brandon and Christopher.

Because we’re irrigated, and our soils are clay-loam, we don’t like compaction,” Gary says.

To that point, the 9882 had required “hardly any” service other than routine upkeep. On the other hand, interest rates were the lowest they’d been in many years. And the new TJ models had some pretty attractive improvements – especially in the cab.

Using farm records and Darin’s computer skills, the father-son team worked up a long-term report on operating costs for the 9882 and for its predecessor, which Gary had used for about 10 years. They also did cost projections on keeping the 9882 another three years, and on operating a new TJ. They did all this with allowances for depreciation and final sale value.

“I had all the papers in the file. Darin put it all on computer and compared costs per year. Darin helps me with the decisions quite a bit now,” Gary says. “I used to make all those decisions alone, but now I talk with him about it.”

Both Gary and Darin concluded it was a good time to trade.

Gary says, “We were in the realm where we should be trading. It looked like our costs on a yearly basis wouldn’t change much, whether we traded a little sooner or kept that old tractor. We did anticipate a few repairs on the old tractor. As we stretched that out and looked at every time we might make a trade (in the next few years), it seemed real favorable to go ahead and trade now.”

The Harpers put their new TJ375 4WD tractor to work last spring. They had about 2,200 acres to disk ahead of the grain planter. The tractor was also put to work to loosen up the soil in front of the sugar beet drill. They seeded 864 acres of sugar beets.

The heaviest work, however, comes in the fall. After the harvest is off, they attach an 18-foot DMI disk (New Holland model ST770) ripper to their biggest tractor. During the next three weeks, it will work about 2,500 acres of the wheat and beet land. The unit has two rows of rippers that dig 16” to 20” deep, and a set of disks in the front. Behind it, they pull a Flexi-Coil packer.

Gary says he’s impressed with how much tractor cabs have improved for the operators.

“There’s more glass, more room. The view is a lot better. You see where you’re going better and you feel less confined,” he says. “We enjoy having controls on the arm rest, on the swivel seat. Having that climate control is a real plus, too.”

Time will determine whether it really was the best time to trade. However, Gary is confident now that it was a “right” move for a whole different reason. Darin’s help in making the decision to trade was invaluable to his Dad.

Gary says, “We’re starting to become a family operation again. That’s what I really like.”


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