'Tis the Season to Talk About Tillage

In the spring and in the fall, there is excessive tillage of cropland across North American grain farms. Dust storms are a sign of environmental destruction.

Thankfully, cover cropping interest and awareness continues to grow. Unfortunately, excessive tillage is still a big problem that creates even bigger air and water pollution in increasingly extreme weather conditions.

This video does an excellent job of outlining the way that cover crops can be substituted for spring and fall tillage, and how to do it to succeed in achieving a preset goal for the field. It’s complicated, and fascinating.

Like everything in agriculture and nature, neither ‘tillage’… nor ‘cover cropping’… nor any other activity that farmers do on their land can be judged in isolation. Everything in nature interacts, impacting the efficacy of each field management practice in a range of beneficial and harmful ways.