No till

No till

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
Conventional farming practices include using implements such as discs, plows, chisels, harrows, sprayers and drills to prepare the soil for planting a single crop. Depending on the crop, four to eight passes are made over the same field to establish that crop. The end result of repetitive disturbance is topsoil that has been worked into a fine powder, which is easily and rapidly lifted into the air with even the slightest of winds, creating extreme soil erosion events.

There is an alternative though, and it's more sustainable. No-till farming is the practice of placing the next crop's seed and fertilizer into the ground through the previous crop's stubble or residue.This does a couple of very important things. First, it leaves the soil undisturbed as the drill moves through. Second, no-till farming protects and retains topsoil moisture, making it available to plants. Research shows that for every conventional tillage operation where the soil is disturbed, up to a half inch of moisture is lost. Add up the three or four tillage operations and the moisture loss is significant.

One of the techniques used in drier areas is called deep furrow planting. Much of this type of planting occurs on fields where there's a winter crop one year and the field stays dormant the following year. The fallow fields are continually worked during the summer to prevent vegetative growth in order to protect moisture from being removed. But studies have clearly shown that bare soil can have temperatures 40 degrees or higher than soils covered with vegetation or even stubble for shade.

Increased soil temperatures and evaporation can quickly dry the soil. There is an alternative though, and it's more sustainable. No-till farming is the practice of placing the next crop's seed and fertilizer into the ground through the previous crop's stubble or residue. This does a couple of very important things. First, it leaves the soil undisturbed as the drill moves through. Second, no-till farming protects and retains topsoil moisture, making it available to plants. Research shows that for every tillage operation where the soil is disturbed, up to a half inch of moisture is lost. Add up the three or four tillage operations in a conventional system and the moisture loss is significant.

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