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  • From: road's end farm <organic101 AT linkny.com>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] No-till in the organic mainstream
  • Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2007 10:28:07 -0500


On Jan 28, 2007, at 12:20 PM, TradingPostPaul wrote:

It's interesting to see influential sources coming around on the subject of
no-till. Mainstream organics is beginning to admit digging, tilling, and
cultivating degrades soil structure and organic matter.

"Mainstream organics" has known for quite some time that tillage can cause problems, and minimizing tillage is certainly encouraged by most.

To the best of my knowledge, nobody has come up with an entirely no-till organic system that works for annual crops. I'm just back from the NOFA-NY conference, at which this subject came up in at a session on soil health I attended. There were a number of highly experienced people in the room, some of whom had been working on this, but without success. It's possible to reduce tillage significantly, but getting rid of it entirely is a different matter.

Several people mentioned that, (as has been my own experience), killed cover crop mulch systems are a disaster if herbicide is not used, unless they are tilled at about the point at which the herbicide is applied in non-organic systems. Extremely heavy straw etc. applications might work on a home garden scale, but the amount of mulch needed (I can guarantee that four or five inches won't do it, if you have significant weed pressure to start with) makes this prohibitive on a farm scale; though mulches are helpful in reducing tillage needs.

Every organic discussion that I've heard for years has emphasized caution with tillage: staying off wet soils; reducing the amount of tillage; choosing the tillage equipment that will do the least damage in the particular situation when tillage is required (which equipment that is in a given case depends on a lot of factors); mulching and cover cropping (including underseeding) to protect soils and soil life; etc. Many growers have had significant improvement in soil tilth and organic matter since converting from conventional systems to organic, even though they are using tillage in the organic systems.

Those who want to do further research on no-till organic: this is certainly an area worth working with. But don't bet a significant portion of your crop on a system till you've tried it a couple of years on a small portion first.

-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 5 mostly
Fresh-market organic produce, small scale



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