What is No-Till Farming? Learn with Kiss the Ground

This article was written for, and accepted by, Kiss The Ground in 2021. It was part of a larger series on regenerative farming approaches that never was published. All my staff contacts are no longer employed by the non-profit. In 2024, as none of these articles have been published, I decided to self-publish it. I very much enjoyed my collaboration with Dr. Landers, a pioneer in Conservation Agriculture who continues to be full of curiosity and energy in his 80s.

Authors: Dr. Thorsten Arnold and Dr. John Landers

No-till agriculture is recognized as a keystone method for Conservation and Regenerative Agriculture movements – practiced globally on over 200 million hectares (over 490 million acres) – and is especially impactful if combined with other soil management tools, such as cover crops, crop rotation, and livestock integration.

What is No-Till Farming?

No-till methods are farming practices that rely on minimal soil disturbance for planting and fertility management. For millennia, farmers have turned the soil prior to seeding, using a plow, disk, or tiller. These methods chop up the soil and disturb living soil organisms, especially fungi. No-till farmers instead use a No-Till drill or planter to cut the mulch and insert the seed and fertilizer into the ground at the right depth with only minimal soil disturbance, or by transplanting living plants.

No-till farming is a whole-farm management approach that uses no-till methods with the intention to minimize soil disturbance. This farming is more than no-till methods for seeding or transplanting – farmers must rethink their entire production process in ways that ensure soil health and fertility, manage weed and pest pressure, and handle crop residues and mulches.  With the right planning and management, no-till farming can revitalize the symbiotic power of living soil organisms.

There are several approaches that use no-till methods such as Zero tillage, conservation agriculture, and minimal tillage. Zero tillage systems avoids any mechanical disturbances of the soil and require that crop, cover crop, and weed residues remain on the soil surface for natural decomposition. Conservation agriculture is defined as a holistic approach that includes zero-tillage [^[1]], with many overlaps with Regenerative Agriculture [^[2]]. Many farmers combine no-till methods with occasional tillage in minimal or reduced tillage systems.

Why Do We Till our Fields?

We’ve relied on tillage to grow food since humans settled permanently. Domesticated oxen started pulling simple wooden plows as early as 3800 B.C. in Egypt, Europe, Mesopotamia, India, and China. The first iron plows were found in China, about 500 B.C. – a technology that was essential for transitioning cultures from nomadic lifestyles to permanent settlements.

Tillage helps food production in several aspects. Plowing clears and levels land quickly for seeding or planting. By turning grasses, plowing uproots, and kills existing vegetation, buries plant residues, manure or compost. Plowing also aerates and warms the soil. With increased exposure to oxygen, plant residues and dead soil microbes can quickly decompose. This oxidation process releases carbon dioxide into the air and plant-available nutrients into the soil. Explained plainly – plants seemingly grow better on tilled soil.

With these and other benefits, plowing and other tillage methods may have been the single most important innovation for enabling urban life. Increased yield and the use of animals for traction enabled the division of labor that characterizes modern civilizations and allowed for the development of hierarchic governance and a concentration of power in urban centers.

With all these benefits above, why “no-till”?

Damage of Conventional Tilling

The short-term benefits of tillage and agrochemicals are accompanied by serious, long-term damage to the soil as a living system. Soil is best understood as a highly diverse and vibrant ecosystem that lives between mineral soil particles. Soil microorganisms depend on high soil organic matter (SOM):  complex gooey carbon molecules open spaces between the soil minerals, like mortar that keeps a house together. This pore space is the habitat of soil life: it provides a diverse habitat for a myriad of organisms,  allowing water and air to flow. Fungal filaments create a dense network of biological information cables and transport pipes – the soil internet (^[3], or link to another blog). Each time that tillage disturbs the soil,  our machinery rips apart these cables and pipes, and weakens the soil fungi. Each time, tillage diminishes the organic matter – the mortar that holds pore spaces open, the glue that keeps the soil structured.  While tillage aerates the soil immediately, as soil spaces collapse, the flow of air and water flow soon breaks down. To recover its structure and ecology, soil then needs long rest periods, e.g. by planting cover crops or pasture.

With regular tillage, soil aggregates break down, the glues and gums that hold them together are oxidized, pore spaces collapse, and soil carbon is lost to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. The soil becomes compacted and ever-less able to absorb and hold water and nutrients. The living community of soil organisms loses its biological diversity. Key functional groups of the soil microbiome disappear, especially higher organisms and the mycorrhizal fungi that lived in close symbiosis with plant roots and create the carbon glue that structures soil. As living organisms disappear and their residues decompose, soil color changes from a rich brown or black to a faded, greyish color, as can be observed on most tilled soils. As soil texture deteriorates from crumbles – or aggregates– to dust, soil minerals are easily eroded by wind and water. Agricultural chemicals accelerate this process: fertilizers inhibit the feeding of soil organisms by plants and accelerate the oxidation of soil organic matter, and herbicides trap key micronutrients that are no longer available to microbes. Fungicides and other toxins directly kill soil organisms, the Earth’s living skin slowly turns into lifeless and compacted dust.

With dysfunctional soil ecosystems, the interplay of soil and crops no longer can function. For their health, plants are highly dependent on symbiotic relationships with soil microbes (especially fungi).  Without these symbionts, plants can no longer access micronutrients that are essential for expressing their immune system. Plants can also no longer coordinate their response to pests. Without healthy soil, plants remain highly susceptible to pests, disease, and weather irregularities; plants are then totally dependent on fine-tuned chemical inputs (Blog link to how healthy soil nurtures plants?).

It is most concerning if soil degrades on large stretches of land – a process called desertification.  Soils are no longer resilient to strong weather, leading to erosion, nutrient leakage into waterways, flash flooding, a disruption of the small water cycle (e.g. Water Stories), and other landscape-scale problems that can cost societies dearly.  Across the World’s grasslands, the negative long-term effects of tillage have led to massive desertification: soil degradation has devastated the agricultural production in the ancient Fertile Crescent civilizations of Mesopotamia, the modern Middle East and Northern Africa, large stretches in China and India, throughout Mediterranean Europe, the US Prairies, and South America.  Australia may be the most fragile continent that quickly became infertile from using colonial farming methods, it desertified.  It led to the collapse of many civilizations before us – the Sumerians and ancient Syriens, the Greek and Romans, the Carthaginians, the medieval Arab empires, the Mayans, and the Middle East. Today, most of the World’s formerly productive grasslands have turned into eroded dryland or desert.

History of No-Till Farming

In order to restore our soil and sustain food production, we need to change our farming approach. Several traditional farming approaches already address the long-term damages from tillage. For example, slash-and-burn systems offer long recovery periods during which soils recover, at the expense of taking land out of production. No-till farming uses a different philosophy: it avoids the damaging impacts of tillage altogether.

 Early roots

Across the globe, many indigenous cultures designed no-till systems with perennial food plants (e.g. ^[4]). In the modern West, awareness around land damage re-emerged on the East coast of the U.S. in the early 1900s, but tillage was most heavily questioned within Western cultures in the 1930s after the dust bowls devastated wide areas of the United States and Southern Canada, Pioneers like Eduard H. Faulkner in the US (Plowman’s Folly, 1940), and Masanobu Fukuoka in Japan (One Straw Revolution), investigated farming methods that avoid disturbing the soil ecosystem.  They observed how intact soil life will incorporate surface residues with its nutrients and will pull these down into the soil. By recognizing ecosystems as living entities, and adapting planting and seeding methods accordingly, repeated tillage could become unnecessary. Such methods became popular with small producers and homesteaders as “no-dig gardens,” but could not yet be applied at the field scale.

Conservation Agriculture

Early seed drills for field crops were developed in the 1960s in the UK but still relied on pre-plant burning combined with herbicides. To control erosion, “direct planting” efforts with “no-till” corn planting in Kentucky date back to the early 60s and in Brazil to 1972.  Without the availability of herbicide-tolerant GMO crops, these early efforts heavily relied on complex weed and fertility management with chemicals, soil cover with straw, cover crops, and crop rotation.

Conservation Agriculture emerged as a new integrated farming approach around three principles: minimal mechanical soil disturbance, permanent soil cover, and diversification of crops. Adoption was slow until, during the early 90s, it became profitable and increased exponentially, revolutionizing cropping in southern Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay. The international popularity of Conservation Agriculture skyrocketed with recognition by international organizations (e.g. FAO, World Bank, the CGIAR system) that disseminated no-till farming approaches in the Global South. Only with the advent of herbicide-tolerant GMO crops in the first decade of the 21^st century did no-till methods become prominent in the US and Canada. These new crops allowed for simplified management without the need for crop diversification and longer crop rotations. Today,  the global adoption of no-till is estimated at over 200 Million hectares [490 Million acres]^[5].

No-till methods and the principles of Conservation Agriculture are useful on all types of soil and in all climates and elevations. Because the goal is always to improve soil health and increase soil organic matter and water cycling, non-biotic aspects (soil type, precipitation) become less important over time as soil health returns. Innovation was continuing and shared broadly by FAO^[6].

Organic no-till farming

Chemical herbicides were believed to be a key tool for no-till farming. Even those farmers who generally adopted a whole-farm management approach relied on the occasional use of herbicides. Organic farmers are continuing to put significant research into adapting no-till methods without herbicides, using smother crops, knife rollers, crimpers, self-cleansing inter-row weeders, laser treatments, or harnessing natural allelopathy in crop rotations. Finding location-adapted strategies to combine these tools requires even more management skills. Today, most  organic farmers who use no-till seeding rely on occasional tillage (often referred to as “minimum tillage”) within their crop rotation – for example, after pasture. At market garden scale, no-till organic farming has seen larger adoption, following the pioneering work of Singing Frog Farm that the author’s Persephone Market Garden also utilizes.

Livestock integration

Integrated crop-livestock systems offer another dimension to no-till farming: The rumen’s microbial composition is very similar to soil microbiomes, such that grazing of crop residues and cover crops helps revitalize soil microbes. Livestock grazing also cycles nutrients, converts crop residues into plant-available nutrients, and tramples the rest – the ecological process of building thick and rich grassland soils.

By grazing animals temporarily on cropland, farmers increase feed quantity and nutritional diversity, while allowing their pastures to recover. But, increasingly large cash crop operations no longer own livestock. Even though livestock integration has impressive benefits, the need to form partnerships with cattle farmers, and coordinate grazing according to weather patterns, adds to the management challenge.

Benefits and Challenges of No-Till Farming

 Benefits of No-till farming

Holistic no-till farming approaches improve soil health and soil organic matter, which has multiple benefits:

• Reduced degradation, or regeneration, of soil organic matter and soil health.
• Enhanced water infiltration and storage, reduced flood risk, and more planting time.
  • Healthier and covered soil can absorb and hold rainfall like a sponge, and plants can draw from this water over long periods. Because water is kept on the field and not lost to surface runoff into nearby ditches, better infiltration, and water storage increase aquifer recharge and reduce downstream flooding and the demand for irrigation water.
• Reduced runoff, erosion, and nutrient loss. No-till farming maintains crop residues on the soil and minimizes bare soil with surface residues or cover crops. Furthermore, a vibrant soil microbiology assures highly structured soils. This way, the soil remains protected from wind and water erosion and can hold and distribute nutrients within its biological matrix. Downstream waterways and groundwater are protected from sediment and nutrient loads, with reduced water contamination, reduced municipal costs for drinking water treatment, dredging of waterways, and flood damage repair.
• Healthy soil biology is pest prevention. Vibrant soil biology protects plants against pests and diseases. On one hand, microbially active soils can better furnish macro- and micronutrients to plants and improve information exchange between plants. This improves plant health, plant immune systems, coordinated and early plant response to pests, and ultimately, yields. Furthermore, healthy soils harbor beneficial predators that reduce pest pressure. Together, the vulnerability of crops to pests and diseases is reduced.
• Operational benefits and profits. After initial erosion control, no-till farmers report less overall labor demand that is better leveled out throughout the seasons, earlier sowing dates due to elimination of soil preparation, and reduced input costs due to reduced reliance on petroleum, chemical fertilizer, and other agrochemicals.
• A mindset change for Whenever soil health is accepted as a core management goal, farmers experience how regenerating biodiversity leads to higher profitability. In this process, farmers heighten their sensitivity to environmental issues, sharpen their observational ability, and shift their paradigm from controlling nature toward harnessing nature.
• Revitalized rural knowledge networks. As a knowledge-based and holistic farm management system, farmers rely on and build new knowledge-sharing networks that generally improve learning and the diffusion of innovation.

Challenges in No-Till Farming

Yet, a transition to no-till farming is complex, with challenges.

• No-tillage requires a mindset shift. First and foremost, whole-farm no-till approaches require that farmers are open to learning about soil health. Whereas soil tests and most formal analyses focus on the physical and chemical properties of soil, soil health requires an understanding of soil biology – the interplay of microbes, fungi, plants, higher organisms, water, nutrients, and carbon. It requires a deep shift in farmers’ mindsets, moving from a mechanistic, physical perspective on our surroundings toward the complexity of nurturing living systems – and further putting this new knowledge into practice. Not all farmers are open and able to absorb this shift; it requires considerable dedication, humility, and time. To ease the learning curve, organizations across the globe have established farmer-to-farmer learning networks that facilitate knowledge dissemination.
• From tidy to healthy. No-till will always have more crop residues and some weeds. Farmers have to learn to shift their visual expectations away from tidiness and toward indicators of soil health (i.e. soil color, soil structure, and plant vigor). In a sense, they have to learn how to think like a root that is embedded in a thriving soil ecosystem.
• Success measurement. Farmers have to shift measuring their farming success away from the simple measure of yields/acre, and instead evaluate soil health and profitability.
• Expensive initial investment. Modern no-till drills can cost between $50,000 and $100,000, making it an investment that is most viable for larger farms. While smaller and older models are available at much lower costs, the initial need for knowledge and equipment is an adoption barrier. Many existing drills and planters can be readily adapted to no-till, postponing the acquisition of a new one to when cash flow permits or a grant is available.
• Without the tools of tillage, farmers have to find new approaches to problem-solving. They can no longer control weed pressure mechanically while reducing their use of herbicides. No-till farming approaches thus require farmers to monitor crops more regularly, adopting longer-term crop plans and rotations. In short-term land rental situations, secure land access over more extended periods may also become a barrier. Soil health and other improvements are not often part of land rental agreements!
• New crop residues. Crop residues on the surface may act as a reservoir for crop diseases, and require longer crop rotations with an increased variety of crops. New crops may require new equipment, knowledge, and especially new markets. Initially, soil also takes longer to warm up in spring until old root holes and crumb structure improve drainage, reducing time to warm up. Row cleaners on drills/planters can allow more heat absorption.
• Soil health regenerates slowly. It typically takes 3-5 years until no-till farming systems stabilize. Farmers must develop strategies for this transition, and accept an additional workload during the first years. Farmers who are close to retirement may no longer have incentives for such a sacrifice, and those working with rented land may not see benefits from improving other people’s land. However, eliminating soil preparation costs allows a margin to accept these initial yield drops.
• Weeds resistant to herbicides. Weed resistance against nonselective herbicides is increasingly problematic (e.g. Roundup-resistant weeds in the US.) No-till farming that relies dominantly on herbicide use, with little emphasis on crop rotation, crop diversification, and cover crops, is driving the evolution of these super-resistant weeds. Since 2008, herbicide-resistant weeds have spread widely in the US, Australia, the Southern Cone of South America and elsewhere. This has been exacerbated by the use of Roundup for desiccation where Gramoxonne is banned.  Across the US, farmers who primarily rely on herbicides for weed control believe that they must increase herbicide use and/or return to more frequent tillage (^[7]).

Reducing or eliminating herbicide use with no-till

At the beginning of their no-till journey, most farmers control weeds with nonselective herbicides and herbicide-tolerant GMO row crops. Over time, many transitions to a more complex management strategy for weed control and fertility, they plant cover crops, diversify their crops, improve crop rotations, and even integrate grazing animals. Using these management options, no-till farmers report a greatly reduced need for weed management and rarely rely on tillage.

A relatively recent tool for terminating cover crops and creating ground cover is the roller/crimper. The classical design uses a water-filled drum with patterned blades across the surface. When rolling it over a mature cover crop before it goes to seed, the blades crimp the stems which prevent regrowth. Plant material then creates a heavy organic mulch that protects the soil and slowly releases its nutrients into the ground. Farmers can directly plant into this crimped mulch with no-till seeders or planters (^[8], ^[9]).

With this new option, organic farmers are embracing no-till approaches, even if occasional tillage remains common (^[10]). At smaller scale, organic market gardens also use landscape fabric, tarps, and organic mulches (straw, cardboard, wood chips) for weed control in no-till systems. This approach is gaining popularity because additional labour requirements are more than compensated by less weeding and watering needs, improved plant health, higher yields, and better flavour (^[11]).

Conclusion

The first stanza of John Lander’s poem, “Farewell to the Plough” says it all:

Throw your plough through the window
And revel in the crash
Of broken glass and paradigms
And non-organic trash.

 Soils regenerate if the negative impacts of farming are outweighed by regenerative forces. Mechanical tillage is among the practices that are most devastating for soil biology. Transitioning away from tillage certainly plays a central role in regenerating healthy soil biology and in reversing erosion and desertification. However, no-till methods are most powerful if combined with other compatible practices and embedded in a whole-farm approach to soil management. Different tool boxes are now available for all farming systems and production scales, for all ecoregions. Still, farmers struggle with adopting a new farming paradigm that breaks with millennia of farming traditions. Farmers need support to access knowledge, machinery, monitoring, and financial analysis for a transition to the new whole-farm management approach of no-till farming.

References

[1] Declaration of Madrid, 2001, retrieved from https://www.betuco.be/CA/Conservation%20Agriculture%20-%20%20madrid_report.pdf on June 27, 2022

[2] Landers, J.N.; de Freitas, P.L.; de Oliveira, M.C.; da Silva Neto, S.P.; Ralisch, R.; Kueneman, E.A. Next Steps for Conservation Agriculture. Agronomy 2021, 11, 2496. https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy11122496

[3] Phillips, Michael. Mycorrhizal planet: how symbiotic fungi work with roots to support plant health and build soil fertility. Chelsea Green Publishing, 2017.

[4] Gammage, Bill. “The biggest estate on earth.”, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, October 2011. ISBN 9781 74237 7483.

[5] Kassam, A., T. Friedrich and R. Derpsch, 2018. Global spread of Conservation Agriculture. International Journal Of Environmental Studies, https://doi.org/10.1080/00207233.2018.1494927

[6] www.fao.org/ag/ca

[7] https://.    www.news.iastate.edu/news/2022/04/28/tillageintensity

[8] https://www.ecofarmingdaily.com/build-soil/tillage/book-week-organic-no-till-farming/

[9] Jeffrey Moyer. Organic No-Till Farming: Advancing No-Till Agriculture Crops, Soil, Equipment.  15 Mar 2011, Acres U.S.A.

[10] Mirsky SB, Ryan MR, Curran WS, Teasdale JR, Maul J, Spargo JT, Moyer J, Grantham AM, Weber D, Way TR, Camargo GG. Conservation tillage issues: Cover crop-based organic rotational no-till grain production in the mid-Atlantic region, USA. Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems. 2012 Mar;27(1):31-40.

[11] Daniel Mays. The No-Till Organic Vegetable Farm: How to Start and Run a Profitable Market Garden That Builds Health in Soil, Crops, and Communities Storey Publishing, LLC.Nov. 2020