Excerpt
The term conservation tillage is used to refer to any method of tillage that minimally disturbs the surface, leaving at least 30% residue cover after planting. As such, conservation tillage is one of the most widely adopted conservation practices. Conservation tillage is oftentimes coupled with a crop residue management program, which in the southeastern United States typically includes a winter cover crop for biomass production. Conservation tillage has been attributed with improving soil quality, reducing runoff, and reducing fuel costs. In the southeastern United States, conservation tillage has also been hailed with increasing plant available water and reducing the total number of irrigations necessary to produce a crop. Because many states in this region of the nation are facing water restrictions and severe drought conditions, conservation tillage shows promise as a sustainable, water saving practice.
In 2004, the Conservation Technology Information Center estimated that 4.55 × 107 ha (1.13 × 108 ac) of the nation's cropland has adopted some form of conservation tillage, an overall increase of 4.0 × 106 ha (1.0 × 107 ac) since 2002. However, at the present time, no national monitoring system is in place to continue these efforts on a regular basis. Natural resource inventory …
Footnotes
- © 2008 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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