Excerpt
No-tillage cropping systems are known to provide many benefits to soils that can enhance production of grain crops. Many of the improvements to soils that result from no-tillage production such as increases in soil aggregation, water-holding capacity nutrient cycling, and biological activity are related to increases in soil organic matter. No-tillage systems are known to increase soil organic matter because of the absence of destructive tillage operations, the minimization of soil erosion losses, and the return of crop residue to the soil. Organic matter can be further enhanced by the addition of cover crops, perennial crops, and organic amendments into no-tillage rotations.
Organic farmers share many of the same goals for building soil organic matter, fertility, and the capacity for supporting soil biological activity and productivity as no-tillage farmers. In organic farming this is achieved through integrated systems that maintain living vegetation cover, return vegetative residue back to soils, and add organic amendments from external sources as needed. The dilemma for organic farmers is that these approaches for increasing soil organic matter also require tillage. Specifically tillage is required (1) to eliminate perennial legumes or winter annual cover crops before planting annual crops, (2 …
Footnotes
John R. Teasdale is a plant Physiologist at the Sustainable Agricultural Systems Laboratory, USDA Agricultural Research Service, Beltsville, Maryland.
- Copyright 2007 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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