Tillage translocation and erosion by the disk plow

Excerpt

One of the major threats to the sustainability of agriculture across the Americas is that posed by erosion processes. Soil erosion is the result of three processes: wind, water, and tillage. Tillage erosion is the loss and gain of soil that occurs within a field as the result of tillage practices. Tillage erosion occurs whenever the quantity of soil transported out of an area of the field is different from that transported into that area, and is a function of the erodibility of a landscape and the erosivity of the tillage system used on that landscape. Consequently, soil degradation by tillage erosion is expected to be most severe in regions where intensively cultivated vegetables, such as potato (Solanum tuberosum L.), are grown on steep slopes.

In Costa Rica, potato production is concentrated on the slopes of Volcán Irazú, to the east of the capital San José. In this region, producers typically use an arado de disco (disk plow) as the primary tillage tool on fields with slope gradients <30% (on steeper fields, manual and animal-powered tillage are used). Our results revealed that the arado de disco moves large quantities of soil across great distances. After a single tillage pass, the…