No-till Vs. Conventional tillage agriculture

A detailed Summary of No-till Vs. Conventional tillage agriculture

To till or not to till that is the question? This may seem like a silly pun on one of Shakespeare's famous lines, but this is a very valid question with many farmers across the land today. No-till, or conservation tillage is a increasingly popular means of working the land by preparing a micro seed bed 2-3" wide. When compared to conventional tillage where soil is inverted and mixed, conservation tillage seems very low impact. And this low impact way of preparing and for crops helps the soil to develop better structure and reduce erosion among a host of other benefits.

No-till is defined by Hall as, "(that) which refers broadly to different approaches for reducing the amount of soil tillage before planting and after harvest." While this is a very generalized definition this is the basic idea behind no-till agriculture.

Conservation tillage research started in the 1940's, following World War II. Just as plant growth regulators (herbicides) were being developed, (Gorman, 117). Herbicides are essential to no-till agriculture because without them conventional plow tillage is the only way to kill weeds that compete with crop plants. But at first no-till didn't really catch on.

By the early 1970s only eight percent of al

Several factors timed the shift from plow tillage to conservation tillage over the last 25 years these include availability of effective and safe herbicides, increase in energy costs, decrease in available farm labor, and growing public concern over soil and water conservation and environmental pollution (Gorman, 117). But perhaps the catalyst for this rapid adoption of no-till agriculture was the increasing cost of fuel in the 1970s with the oil embargo.

Organic mulches also aid in the development of soil structure. The decomposing of the organic matter speeds up aggregate formation and stability. Earthworms are also usually found under organic mulches because of food availability and the relative soil temperature and moisture conditions. These earthworm burrows and the protection from surface crust formation result in better soil aeration, than soil with no mulch (Gorman 113).

Conservation tillage uses much less fuel than traditional tillage because of its very nature. With conventional tillage the soil is plowed and churned to mix lime, fertilizers, and crop residues into the soil. This churning of the soil also helps to kill competing plant species. Plowing, discing, harrowing, and other traditional means of seed bed preparation of the soil must be done prior to planting, during the growing season, and after the crop has been harvested

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Category: Science