No-till Again

No-till Again

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
I picked up the paper the other day and on the front page there was a headline saying no-till farming is growing in popularity. First of all, no-till is not new. I have been doing stories on it for years and the farmer cited in the newspaper article said that this will be the 30th season of no-till planting on his 3000 acre farm where he grows wheat, barley and alfalfa. I looked on our website, aginfo.net, and put no-till into the search box and at least 20 stories came up, some dating back to 2005. Every one of the stories praises the benefits in terms of saving water, soil health, weed reduction, reduction in erosion and it goes on. So why doesn’t everybody use no- till? At one point scientists and ag producers alike thought that no-till might increase chances of disease. Listen to what was written in one of our reports: Researchers at the Cook Agronomy Farm near Pullman, WA expected to see a lot of disease problems in wheat fields when they switched from conventional to no-till but that is not what happened. Hans Kok, an Extension Specialist for Conservation Tillage: “In areas like Tennessee we’ve had no-till happening since the 1950’s and 1960’s. In the Plains no-till was adopted in the ‘80’s and ’90’s”. And apparently it is taking off big time in the West.
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