By Maynard van der Galien

In the past 30 years, innovative farmers have turned their attention to soil conservation. Many who have adopted no-till, like it. There are some farmers for whom no-till hasn’t worked. Others are in the process of implementing it. And some are doing minimum tillage, ridge tillage and other new tillage methods.

In no-till agriculture, farmers plant seeds without using a plow to turn the soil. No-till minimizes soil disruption. Crop residues are left on the fields after harvesting and this acts as a mulch protecting the soil from erosions and maintaining soil productivity. Seeds are sown using special machines that penetrate through the mulch to the undisturbed soil below, depositing the seeds through a slit in the soil where they germinate and surface as a new crop.

The real saving is on fuel –no plowing and no trips over a field with a disk or cultivator.

A down-side to the no-till method is that a no-till drill or seeder is quite expensive, it’s big and it requires a 100-plus horsepower tractor to pull it. A bigger down-side is the required increased use of expensive herbicides and pesticides to deal with weeds and bugs that plowing would have minimized. That’s the scary part.

No-till agriculture is currently practiced on only seven per cent of agricultural land world wide. Eighty-five per cent of this no-till land is located in North and South America.

Of the top five countries with the largest areas under no-till, the U.S. ranks first, followed by Brazil, Argentina, Canada and Australia.

Embracing no-till has been especially difficult in developing countries in Africa and Asia, because farmers there often use the crop residues for fuel, animal feed and building materials.

In Europe, an absence of government policies promoting no-till, along with elevated restrictions on pesticides and herbicides among other variables, leaves farmers with little incentives to change their tillage practices. Government in Europe do not encourage no-till (unlike in the U.S.) and there are many restrictions on herbicide and pesticide use. The increased usage of the chemicals in no-till agriculture is something to consider.

Another reason many farmers in some countries (and in the Pacific north-west U.S.) have shied away from no-till is because the elevated moisture levels associated with no-till can promote soil-borne fungal diseases that tillage previously kept in check. The discovery of new crop diseases has sometimes accompanied the shift to no-till.

Plowing is the traditional method of preparing the land for sowing and planting crops. This turning of the soil buries crop residues, animal manure and weeds, and also warms and aerates the soil. But on light soils plowing also leaves the soil susceptible to erosion by wind and water and leads to degradation of agricultural land, posing a global threat to food production and to rural livelihoods, particularly in densely populated developing countries.

Western Australian farmers established the West Australian No-Tillage Farmers Association (WANTFA) in 1992. Even though 86 per cent of their growers practice no-till, it has had its problems.

No matter what, no-till has quickly taken over from the traditional way of planting crops.

Experts I spoke with on no-till say farmers have to give it three years before they can see results. Some farmers get discouraged after the first or second year and they go back to plowing the fields. They lost out what they could have accomplished by going back to plowing.

It takes a few years for the soil to change with no-till. Crop residue takes much longer to decompose. The soil doesn’t warm up as quickly as it does with tilling the soil. Tilling also enriches the soil to hasten the decomposition of crop residue, weeds and other organic matter. Still, experts say, the benefits of switching to no-till farming practices outweigh those of traditional planting.

Some experts say farmers can afford to have a reduced yield with no-till –during the first few years.

One crop advisor said he believes in no-till when it’s done under good conditions, but not in fringe growing areas and not on cold, wet untiled fields.To till, or to no-till? that is the question.