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  • From: Pete Vukovich <pvukovic1@yahoo.com>
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] No-Tillage
  • Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2008 11:08:28 -0800 (PST)

Certainly does. Seems like sandy loam would be fine without tillage, I'd worry more about clays or soils that have a hardpan near the surface. What sort of ploughing does west texas do currently? Whats the history and soil compaction (density) like now? Chisel ploughs seem to be less invasive, that might be a way to start if it isn't whats already being used.



--- On Mon, 12/29/08, Tradingpost <tradingpost@lobo.net> wrote:
From: Tradingpost <tradingpost@lobo.net>
Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] No-Tillage
To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
Date: Monday, December 29, 2008, 8:45 AM

Tilling reduces soil moisture, which you don't get enough of, and oxidizes
organic matter which we can never have enough of. So called dryland farming
isn't normally done without tilling. I'm a market grower in NE NM with
about 10" precip annually, less than yours. But I'm small enough to
drip
irrigate, and use permanent beds to cut down labor and costs, and mulch to
conserve moisture, and grow far more in a very small area. As a result my
costs are so low that my profit margin is over 90% retail, so I don't have
to get big to make it worthwhile. Over a larger area, labor and machinery
costs would eat me alive. I don't need to pay for either. I have no direct
fossil fuel inputs like fertilizer, pesticides or herbicides, unless you
count the gas to haul manure or get to markets. Plus I'm building soil
fertility instead of depleting it, and using a tiny fraction of the water
that industrial farming uses for the same amount of food production. This
is actually sustainable. Of course I didn't invent any of this, just trying
to follow what works from many others.

I'm working on more season extension techniques to get earlier and later
harvests of certain vegetables, but I'm not there yet.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

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

On 12/28/2008 at 8:10 PM mcoldiron wrote:

>I am a small dry land. market farmer in west Texas with an average annual
>rainfall of 17 inches. The soil here is a sandy loam. Do you think
>no-till
>can be managed under these circumstances?
>
>TxBeeFarmer (Mark)
>West Texas Zone 7b
>
>On 12/28/2008 2:12:40 PM, Tradingpost (tradingpost@lobo.net) wrote:
>> No-Tillage
>> Whole Systems Agriculture
>> October, 2004
>> http://netptc.net/flowermanoat/wSAgHTM/Pages/notillage.htm
>>
>> Since tillage is one of the more threatening agricultural practices to
>> sustainability, it is a puzzle to me how production systems that
include
>> tillage can also claim to be sustainable. Its practice goes back more
>> than
>> 6000 years to the very dawn of agriculture. An historical review of
>> civilizations that have flourished and crashed over this time will
reveal
>> that virtually all of them either depleted their own soil or were
>> defeated
>> in resource wars focusing on food; which is to say, soil. In 200 years
of
>> European style agriculture, the United States has lost a third of its
>> topsoil to erosion by wind and water--a direct consequence of tillage
and
>> a
>> fact known by just about every student who has taken an agriculture
>> course.
>>
>> Less known is the depleting effect tillage has on soil organic
>> matter
>> because of oxidation resulting from the admission of air by tillage.
>> This
>> oxidation, that is the burning up of organic matter, releases lots of
>> soluble nutrients so farmers get good immediate results at the expense
of
>> the soil's long-term, stored-up fertility. This is just like
withdrawing

>
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