Why Use Conservation Tillage?

Why, indeed? If conventional tillage was good enough for dear old Dad, why isn't it good enough for you? After all, conventional tillage has served to feed and clothe us well for many years.

Let's stop for a moment and consider the "conservation" part of this term. What kinds of things might you want to conserve?

The most obvious answer could be natural resources - soil, water, air. We want to pass these on to our children and their children. With an ever-expanding population, we have to be able to clothe and feed all those new people.

What next? How about time? Do you have enough? With conservation tillage, you won't be spending as much time running a tractor across your fields.

With all that extra time, you might like some more money to spend. When your equipment is not having to be in operation, you save money on fuel, labor and wear and tear. To paraphrase a famous fellow, "A buck you don't spend, you get to keep."

What about yields, you say? Won't they decrease if you don't "stir the dirt?" There are many cases where a strict "no-till" operation can cause subsoil compaction that will affect moisture absorption and drainage and will prevent the root system of your plants from having a good loose, moist zone to grow in.

No one method of farming is right for every farm. If there was, there wouldn't be such varied choices in tillage such as conventional, reduced, mulch, ridge, strip (zone), zero (no-till) and so on.

From our point of view, a reasonable method of tillage that saves the resources that we are all interested in and will still provide for good yields is a "reduced" tillage method. The model discussed here primarily involves row crop production, but can apply to other applications as well.

Residue from the previous crop is left on the soil surface. A subsoiler* device such as our Paratill^® or TerraTill^® is used to break up any "hardpan" caused by traffic and tillage during the season. In this state, any moisture accumulated from rains or snows can be stored in the bed and subsoil in preparation for the next planting. This tool does not incorporate residue or mix soil - this preserves your subsoil organic matter from decaying prematurely, being released in carbon gas form when exposed to oxygen. Bedding tools, such as buster-type lister plows or disc bedder attachments can be used to build up the existing bed in the same pass. Fertilizer placement tools can be installed to allow deep fertilizing at the same time.

In a "stale seedbed" arrangement, the same row locations are used from year to year. Because the tractor passes through the field along the same paths each time, the "traffic lane" areas that the tires roll over can be left firm for better support and traction while the root zone areas are loosened to promote growth. Another advantage is that you don't have to turn the ground over listing it, thereby reducing the exposure of your field to losses of organic material and moisture.

A bedding tool such as our Disc Bedder will build up and reshape beds in-place while burying standing, shredded stalks for faster decomposition.

Before planting, a bed preparation tool like our Prepmaster^® can be used to prepare a clean, smooth seedbed. In addition, herbicides or other chemicals can be "banded" in the bed where you need them. This combines with your other conservation methods to save money and to cut down on the amount of herbicide needed.

After the crop has been planted, it most likely will need some kind of cultivation. We and other manufacturers provide equipment for mechanical as well as chemical cultivation. The specific method used will depend on your conditions and preferences.

Following harvest, the old stalks can be shredded or left standing, depending on your crop and conditions.

In Summary: This method of tilling allows you to keep the beneficial aspects of conventional tillage, while reducing the financial and physical input required to produce a crop and at the same time preserving precious natural resources.

For more information on our view of conservation tillage in row crop applications, see our Reduced Tillage Row Crop System page.

* A subsoiler loosens the soil under the surface to promote water infiltration and root growth. Other terms for this type of equipment and operation include: chisel, parabolic ripper, paratiller, paraplow, ripper, tiller, sub-surface tillage and soil loosening.

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