Discussion

UW NEWS

monkaiju: I realize this exact data might be novel, but haven't we know that till-reliant farming was detrimental to soil for a long time? The no-till people are a huge part of the permaculture movement, also theres always folks talking about how important fungal networks are and how they're largely destroyed by tilling.I mean even Karl Marx talked a ton about soil health and while he mostly talked about "metabolic rift" not tilling (that I know about) specifically it seems like a similar focus on short term output vs long term soil health.I guess I'm just not clear on if there is actually a new serious problem being "revealed" as the title says or just being substantiated further.

idontwantthis: If no till is better and tilling is work, why do farmers till? Why not do less work and have a better result?

Loughla: No till requires access to first world country technology to make work. No till in the United States and similar countries is very very very established practice. It's not less work by any means, it's just a different kind of work with different machinery.Source: was full time farmer until Grandpa died.I'm guessing less developed countries still till the soil? I have no idea.

huijzer: After Marx’s philosophy caused a famine that led millions to die, you think he has useful agriculture knowledge to teach us?

CrzyLngPwd: That heavy clay soil in the main photo looks awful.I have around 45 acres of heavy clay, poor agricultural land, which would look very similar to that if we allowed heavy machinery, or even an ATV, on it when it is sodden.

trusted_brother: Yes this is entirely true and we must ban farming immediately.

altairprime: Tilling requires less cognitive and logistical effort: you just apply calories to drag a blade through the soil and then dump seed in it. No-till requires things like “tracking the soil’s water retention levels”, “planting cover crops or even giving a field a year off”, and other such steps that in general can be summarized as “cost centers”.Given the economic climate, few non-corporate farmers can afford that investment without the collapse of their farm, and few corporate farmers (none at nationwide scale, afaik) are willing to invest in cost centers that threaten to decrease, rather than increase, their rate of profit growth year-over-year. One could absolutely make a case that regulatory investment in such things be imposed upon megacorp farms first, with their processes and technology made available by subsidy to smaller farms; it would be enough to structure the subsidy as inversely proportional to the acreage reaped for value, with some language ensuring that the cost of investment into land farmed by contract to a megacorp is paid to the land operator. To prevent certain abuses, they’d also have to modify farming contract law to make maintaining long-term use of the land an inalienable right, so that unsustainable output-quota farming contracts are unenforceable.This is an unlikely outcome in the U.S., but I still appreciate the researches providing more evidence in support of it.

lurk2: > Tilling requires less cognitive and logistical effort: you just apply calories to drag a blade through the soil and then dump seed in it. No-till requires things like “tracking the soil’s water retention levels”, “planting cover crops or even giving a field a year off”, and other such steps that in general can be summarized as “cost centers”.No-Till is one of those ideas like permaculture or Modern Monetary Theory that attracts emphatic advocates while going against conventional practice. It isn’t clear why it would just be being adopted now if it actually worked. Do you have any actual experience farming?

markdown: Because no-till doesn't scale. It's incredible for market gardening to feed the rich who can pay a premium at a farmers market, but it's not going to feed the world.

boccaff: The estimated area of no-till in Brazil is between 33 to 50 million hectares. It won't be hard for you to find videos of no-till corn being planted following soybean. There is also grass cover that is planted after the main crop season, that is later grazed. This cover stays till the next year and the new crop is planted without tilling. You may need to use "plantio direto" "milho safrinha" and "braquiária de cobertura" plus some translation.

heathrow83829: to till or not to till, that's the question. one way to look at is check the yields that result from dig vs no dig. Charles dowding did exactly that. for seven years he had two plots, one where he dug and one where he didn't. in each one he added the same amount of compost and grew teh same crops on both sides.Overall, the nodig plot harvest 10% more. but here's where it gets interesting. those yields were not uniformly spread across the vegetable types. if you dig into the data, you'll see, some did quite worse with dig and some did quite better. guess which ones did better on dig? Potatoes, Rutabagas, carrots and parsnips and cabbage all did better in Dig! roughly to the tune of about Potatoes 21%, carrots 21%, Rutabaga 14%, Cabbage, 11%, broad beans 10% better. it's all published in his books. Everything else did better with no dig. Shallots especially did 33% better with no-dig, ales 21% better, onions 22% better with no dig.