Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Marty Kraft <martyk@allspecies.org>]

Thank you. You're getting to the reason I exposed my friend's words to a larger audience. A number of years ago I believe I heard of a trend in commercial agriculture to go to no till, with lots of dependence on biocides and artificial fertilizer. I think it was being sold to farmers as the next "thing" they should do. I believe I heard some reaction that the chemical companies were just selling the next fashion and that what was being called no till was little better than tilling. Both were chemical dependent.

It seemed like some time passed and I got excited about the ecology of the soil and finally realized how disruptive tilling was. I remember searching for information on no till and found only articles of applications to field crops. I could not find much information on no till vegetable growing. Maybe I just wasn't looking in the right places. I'm finding much more now.

To me, no till has a very positive ring to it. I don't quite get where my friend is coming from with his negativity toward the term "no-till". My question is not about how good no till is or is not, rather I am wondering how unique my friend's bad feelings about the tern "no-till" are. I try to communicate about these things to lots of people and I want to know when I use the term "no-till" my audience understands what I'm talking about. When I promote "no-till" am I promoting the use of chemicals? In a recent workshop that I helped organize I was careful to couple the term no-till with organic. Perhaps I should always couple both those terms in promoting good soil health.

Marty in Kansas City

=========

On Dec 15, 2007, at 7:38 AM, E. E. Mitchamore Jr wrote:

I'm troubled by the response of the person who initially responded to this article.  I've read the article several times and didn't notice any reference to herbicides or chemical fertilizers, and yet the commentator seems to view organic and no-till as opposing practices.  Why is that?

 

I've spent some time talking with Malcolm Beck, Texas' preeminent organic proponent, and these days he spends his time trying to move mainstream agriculture toward organic no-till.  He sees no-till as the only path that will allow a farmer to move from conventional farming to more sustainable practices while remaining financially viable.  This is from a man who has championed organic methods for more than 50 years.  So why would someone view no-till as contrary to organic?

 

E. E. "Mitch" Mitchamore
www.hillcountrynatives.biz

----- Original Message -----

From: TradingPostPaul

To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org

Sent: Friday, December 14, 2007 8:07 PM

Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] NO-TILL FARMING OFFERS A QUICK FIX TO HELP WARD OFF HOST OF GLOBAL PROBLEMS

A little logic. The effects of tillage versus no-till are the same
regardless of herbicide use. The ill effects of herbicides and/or other
chemicals are bad whether till or no-till is practiced. Apples and oranges.


paul tradingpost@lobo.net

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 12/14/2007 at 4:55 PM Marty Kraft wrote:

>Paul
>
>I sent this article to a friend and am including his response in this 
>email. Are we talking about commercial no-till vs an organic no-till 
>methods here? My friend raises organic wheat and is conscientious in 
>his work.
>
>Marty,
>
>You had better check your facts on this. The way no-till makes the 
>grade is by cheating on the soil tests. The main reason that KSU is 
>behind this is to sell new farm equipment and make a name for mr. 
>Charles Rice. There is more research showing that organic farming 
>will sequester more carbon than ANY other form of farming. And 
>another point, the no-till idea does NOT take into account the CO2 
>that gets released during the manufacturing of nitrate fertilizer. Of 
>course, organic does not use manufactured fertilizer.
>
>On Dec 10, 2007, at 6:16 PM, TradingPostPaul wrote:
>
>>
>> NO-TILL FARMING OFFERS A QUICK FIX TO HELP WARD OFF HOST OF GLOBAL 
>> PROBLEMS
>> http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/notill.htm
>>
>> COLUMBUS, Ohio - Increase no-till farming practices across the 
>> planet or face serious climate, soil quality and food production problems in 
>> the next 20 to 50 years. That warning from scientists appeared in the journal
>> Science this week.

>> Rattan Lal
>>
>> No-till farming helps soil retain carbon. Healthy topsoil contains
>> carbon-enriched humus - decaying organic matter that provides 
>> nutrients to plants. Soils low in humus can't maintain the carbon-dependent 
>> nutrients essential to healthy crop production, resulting in the need to use 
>> more fertilizers.
>>
>> A lack of carbon in soil may promote erosion, as topsoil and 
>> fertilizers are often washed or blown away from farm fields and into waterways, 
>> said Rattan Lal, the paper's lead author and the director of the carbon
>> management and sequestration center at Ohio State University.
>>
>> In no-till agriculture, farmers plant seeds without using a plow to 
>> turn the soil. Soil loses most of it carbon content during plowing, which
>> releases carbon dioxide gas into the atmosphere. Increased levels 
>> of CO2 in the atmosphere have been associated with global climate change.
>>
>> "If every farmer who grows crops in the United States would use no-
>> till and adopt management practices such as crop rotation and planting cover 
>> crops, we could sequester about 300 million tons of soil carbon each year."
>>
>> Traditional plowing, or tilling, turns over the top layer of soil. 
>> Farmers use it for, among other reasons, to get rid of weeds, make it 
>> easier to use fertilizers and pesticides and to plant crops. Tilling also 
>> enriches the soil as it hastens the decomposition of crop residue, weeds and other
>> organic matter.
>>
>> Still, the benefits of switching to no-till farming practices outweigh
>> those of traditional planting.
>>
>> Since the mechanization of agriculture began a few hundred years ago,
>> scientists estimate that some 78 billion metric tons - more than 171
>> trillion pounds - of carbon once trapped in the soil have been lost to
>> the atmosphere in the form of CO2.
>>
>> Lal and his colleagues estimate that no-till farming is practiced 
>> on only 5 percent of all the world's cultivated cropland. Farmers in the United
>> States use no-till methods on 37 percent of the nation's cropland, 
>> which results in saving an estimated 60 million metric tons of soil CO2 
>> annually.
>>
>> "If every farmer who grows crops in the United States would use no-
>> till and adopt management practices such as crop rotation and planting cover 
>> crops, we could sequester about 300 million tons of soil carbon each 
>> year," said Lal, who is also a professor of soil science at Ohio State.
>>
>> "Each year, 6 billion tons of carbon is released into the planet's
>> atmosphere as fossil fuels are burned, and plants can absorb 20 
>> times that amount in that period of time," he said. "The problem is that as 
>> organisms decompose and plants breathe, CO2 returns to the atmosphere. None 
>> of it accumulates in the soil."
>>
>> Lal admits that full-scale no-till farming practices are a short-
>> term fix, but it's one that will give researchers enough time to find 
>> alternatives to fossil fuels.
>>
>> "There needs to be a global effort to adopt no-till farming 
>> practices soon. Governments need to mandate these practices or to provide financial
>> incentives to farmers to adopt them," said Lal, adding no-till 
>> methods may reduce a farmer's annual crop yield by 5 to 10 percent, at least 
>> for the first few years.
>>
>> It's also tough to ask farmers who lack the necessary financial 
>> resources to switch to no-till methods, especially in African and Asian 
>> countries where no-till levels are the lowest, Lal said.
>>
>> "No-till isn't readily practiced in most of these areas due to the 
>> lack of available financial resources and government support," he said. 
>> "Farmers often lack the seeding equipment necessary to drill through crop 
>> residue. And many farmers use leftover residue from the previous year's 
>> crops for fuel or animal fodder. So the cultivated soil gets compacted or 
>> eroded by water and wind."
>>
>> Topsoil is also a lucrative commodity - an acre of it can bring in 
>> $1,300 for a farmer in India, where the first few feet of soil are often 
>> removed for brick making.
>>
>> "No-till farming isn't a substitute for finding alternatives to fossil
>> fuels," Lal said. "No-till is definitely a short-term fix, but it may buy us up to 50 
>> years to find alternatives to fossil fuels. If we don't heed this 
>> warning, our planet may change drastically. There's no other choice."
>>
>> Lal co-authored the paper with Michael Griffin, Jay Apt, Lester 
>> Lave and M. Granger Morgan, all with Carnegie Mellon University.
>>
>>
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