Tag: no-till
Hamstrung by Ideology
Last summer, I visited an organic farm in the area. The farmer showed me various parts of his operation, one of which was a field that he had planted to a species of perennial grass that produces an abundance of deep roots. We dug a hole and confirmed it; a dense fibrous root system had…
Does no-till really reverse soil degradation?
A recent paper (Olson, 2013) finds a number of long-term studies were wrong about no-till practices building soil organic matter and thus sequestering carbon. Kenneth Olson, soil scientist at the University of Illinois, says the problem is how the studies measured changes in soil organic carbon (SOC, which is about 50% of soil organic matter…
Brazilian Brachialactone
Muck and Mystery: Brachialactone About four years ago there was a flurry of commentary about Brazilian ag, noted here, when the World Food Prize was awarded to them. From only 200,000 hectares of arable land in 1955, the Cerrado had well over 40 million hectares in cultivation by the year 2005. The phenomenal achievement of…