No-till farming improves soil stability

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-05/usdo-nfi051110.php

Public release date: 11-May-2010

Contact: Don Comis
[e-mail]
301-504-1625
http://www.ree.usda.gov/">United States Department of Agriculture-Research, Education, and Economics

No-till farming improves soil stability

This release is available in http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases_ml/2010-05/aaft-t_1051110.php">Spanish.

A joint Agricultural Research Service (ARS)-multi-university study across the central Great Plains on the effects of more than 19 years of various tillage practices shows that no-till makes soil much more stable than plowed soil.

The study was led by Humberto Blanco-Canqui at Kansas State University at Hays, Kan., and Maysoon Mikha at the ARS Central Great Plains Research Station in Akron, Colo. ARS researchers Joe Benjamin and Merle Vigil at Akron were part of the research team that studied four sites across the Great Plains: Akron; Hays and Tribune, Kan., and the University of Nebraska at Sidney.

No-till stores more soil carbon, which helps bind or glue soil particles together, making the first inch of topsoil two to seven times less vulnerable to the destructive force of raindrops than plowed soil.

The structure of these aggregates in the first inch of topsoil is the first line of defense against soil erosion by water or wind. Understanding the resistance of these aggregates to the erosive forces of wind and rain is critical to evaluating soil erodibility. This is especially important in semiarid regions such as the Great Plains, where low precipitation, high evaporation, and yield variability can interact with intensive tillage to alter aggregate properties and soil organic matter content.

Tillage makes soil less resistant to being broken apart by raindrops because the clumping is disrupted and soil organic matter is lost through oxidation when soil particles are exposed to air.

A paper on this research was published in a recent issue of the Soil Science Society of America Journal.

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ARS is the principal intramural scientific research agency in the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

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[rrneck]

1. Definite advantages

but there are liabilities as well.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8305812

The chemicals used to supress weeds are petrouleum based, so as oil runs out another solution will have to be found. And of course, plain old corporate greed infects everything.

[Warpy]

2. It's been a rough tradeoff because no till farming has required Roundup

to keep the weeds down and the yields up. Keeping the weeds down otherwise will mean labor intensive practices like hiring people to go out and pull them or disturbing the soil by frequent cultivation.

[Webster Green]

3. Mulch.

Organic mulch works great with no till. There will be very few weeds, and it helps retain moisture, reducing water usage.

Eventually it breaks down and adds nutrients to the soil.

[pansypoo53219]

4. too novel.

logic doesn't matter. only profit.

[Chulanowa]

8. Pretty standard for most ideas of how to "fix" global warming

There has to be profit somewhere in the lines. Don't cut fossil fuel use! Instead pay into the mineral industry, to put a sulfur particle sunscreen into the upper atmosphere! Don't stop using products with CFC's, just pay a company to inject its excess Ozone into the air above the south pole!

[OKIsItJustMe]

6. Organic no-till leads to updating of Farming Systems Trial

http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/20080529/gw1

Organic no-till leads to updating of Farming Systems Trial

Rodale Institute combines two groundbreaking projects to push the envelope on how agriculture done right can curtail climate change.

By Dan Sullivan

Rodale Institute farm manager Jeff Moyer rolls a hairy vetch cover crop.

Beginning this growing season, the Rodale Institute began combining two exciting projects—organic no-till and the Institute’s long-term Farming Systems Trial (FST)—to see what complementary and synergistic benefits might be produced. This initiative is assisted by funding from a Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) grant.

Now in its 28th year, the FST has compared conventional farming using Penn State Agronomy Guide input recommendations to both legume- and manure-based organic systems. Results have shown organic yields to be within 5 percent of conventional yields in most years and the organic systems outperforming the conventional system in years of extreme weather patterns such as drought.

In 2002, Rodale Institute also designed, built and began experimenting with a no-till roller-crimper, which allowed for the marriage of two best management practices—http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/introducing_a_cover_crop_roller">organic farming and no-till. The roller allows for the mechanical killing of cover crops without conventional no-till’s typical reliance on herbicides. The resulting living-mulch mat acts as a barrier against weeds, conserves moisture, protects the soil, provides an extensive rhizosphere (root zone) for beneficial microorganisms, and—in the case of leguminous cover crops such as hairy vetch—provides a source of nitrogen to the cash crop. Rodale Institute’s own success with this system was followed by an http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/no-till_revolution">ongoing NRCS-funded project that paired farmers and researchers across the country using the no-till roller approach under a variety of conditions and cropping systems.

Research has shown that both organic and no-till cropping systems have the capacity to store significant amounts of carbon. What has not been quantified to date is the carbon storage potential of combining the two systems—that is, determining the long-term capacity of agricultural soil to store carbon if the combined approaches of composting, cover cropping, crop rotation and no-till methods are implemented.

...

[Warpy]

7. Interesting!

For Rodale's work in developing and promoting organic farming methods, I can almost forgive them for Prevention Magazine.

[Webster Green]

9. The guy is one of my heroes.

He's been doing this stuff like...forever.

[Warpy]

10. His books were my guides

back in New England when I had several organic gardens of various sizes.

He didn't tell me how my cats would react to fish emulsion, though!

[Webster Green]

11. Yeah, bears are attracted to fish emulsion too.

I had a ten foot tall plastic greenhouse, with freshly fertilized plants in pots. The bear raked through the plastic starting about seven feet above the ground. I guess he left when he didn't find any actual fish.

[Arkansas Granny]

5. Organic farming, even with tilling the soil, is an even better method, according

to this article, also by ARS and the USDA.

Organic Farming Beats No-Till?

Organic farming, despite its emphasis on building organic matter, was thought to actually endanger soil because it relies on tillage and cultivation—instead of herbicides—to kill weeds.

But Teasdale's study showed that organic farming's addition of organic matter in manure and cover crops more than offset losses from tillage.

From 1994 to 2002, Teasdale compared light-tillage organic corn, soybean and wheat with the same crops grown with no-till plus pesticides and synthetic fertilizers.

In a follow-up three-year study, Teasdale grew corn with no-till practices on all plots to see which ones had the most-productive soils. He found that the organic plots had more carbon and nitrogen and yielded 18 percent more corn than the other plots did.



http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/2007/070710.htm