During CTIC 2011 Conservation in Action Tour, USDA-NRCS Ohio state agronomist Mark Scarpitti demonstrates differences between tilled and no-till soils in ability to absorb fertilizer and avoid runoff.
We would usually pass on watching things like this, but this was actually interesting since he explained things in a detailed way and yet nearly everyone can still understand. He also demonstrated the subject matter in a real-life way versus just using those computer animated videos and drawings
Good day sir. I love the demonstration. I am a young African farmer aspiring to fight hunger, I am in need of coaching. This kind of drills aren't being taught in our schools here
I have been part of no till operations on a family farm for 40 years and have seen improvements on the land. No body farms the old school way of over tillage of land anymore. Our growing season in Canada is so short that we can't afford or have the time to not do anything but no till. Technology and new grains on the market have helped with greater returns from farming practices. Great video and appreciate you sharing.
@@raurkegoose5233 You are missing something in your calculations. Wood chips + Leaf Mold + 1000 acres = impractical. If you add a variable to your equation, it adds up to multiple beneficial factors, you see, you simply have to get out of the capitalist mindset where you have to make a profit over your neighbour. Read carefully. Wood chips + 1000 acres + 1000 workers = practical. Feeds more than 1000, and creates a massive surplus. HAven't thought of that, did you? At the moment, there is 37 billion acres that are land on Earth. That is about 4 acres per person. Way more than what we need to survive. Wake up!
@@jeil5676 Those are empty facts. Not interested, come at me with arguments. Why should capitalists the only one able to hobby farm? You are in a cage and you don't see that the door is open. Stay inside and continue to sleep JEIL. When you have factual information I will be interested in hearing you out. Until then, I'm not interested in undeveloped opinions.
I believe the most important aspect here is with regards to 'weathering'. Non tilled soil will prevent the washing away of vital nutrients and organic matter, so your field does not look like a deserted tundra after so many years
@@jomsies Yes but you're telling only part of the story the tree huggers have fed you. The fertilizer runoff causing this isn't coming from farm land it's coming from the cities and golf courses that over apply product for their vanity, in heavy rains it flows down the storm sewers and right into the rivers and streams that feed the Mississippi river then flows out into the gulf
@@RJ1999x of course taking any accountability for your own actions is physically impossible for boomers but they sure can pass the buck and blame everyone else
These techniques used in the video can be replicated in your Garden or Farm. I worry that the soils ability to hold moisture will become a must have in the future due to altered weather patterns.
@@agustasister5624 yes weather always changes, but living soil can survive freezing temps as well as it can survive roasting sun. As long as you use plenty of organic matter, I like to go off Charles Dowding and apply a layer of compost over the beds in winter
@@kuiperbeltdropout8791 did you miss the part where he said 50 years? How about seeing that application on 1000 acres and compare the yield for the first five years to a traditional farm. That would give you an idea how long it would take to convert and have reasonable yield. You have to plant a nitrogen yielding plant in order to plant a crop that needs it to produce our food. That's planting twice for one crop. That's the reality of this demonstration.
@@richardtrowell8812 all things worth doing take time, for now I'll keep using compost and grass clippings/straw to build organic matter. I'm lucky to have loamy sandy humus packed soil where I lived so it was pretty easy to get started! Also I'm not on a farm though so I could see the hassle of having to do that to a whole farm but it's still better for the earth anyway you slice it
Hmmm… outstanding explanation!!! I was a spray kill then till 1”-2” then roll and seed and roll again and pray for a sprinkle. I don’t have a no-till planter. So spray kill then seed and roll.? I’ll try?
Just to be clear on your definition; Do you differentiate between tilling with a mechanically rotating tiller and turning the fields top layer with a plow ? Or do you figure both as here demonstrated, equally destructive ?
Moldboard, ripper, chisel, rototiller, all the stuff that really mixes up the soil is tillage. Disc harrow and other cultivators are usually considered low-till.
can anyone tell me how you would start turning the tilled soil into the no till? Is it as simple as planting the next years annuals via no till or does the tilled soil need some treatment like sub soiling or slotting with gypsum? thanks
Cease tillage completely. You can either put your field into a pasture or alfalfa for a few years or try your luck and go right into it. Soil health doesn’t regenerate over night
Then the water/rain still would not infiltrate into the subsoil very well. I know you spent good money on that tiller and don't want to be made the fool because of it but you are best off just selling it cheaply to someone you dont like. Tilling destorys not only microorganisms but it destorys the incredibly useful networks/tunnels/binding agents they create.
Great job. Could you please educate on how could no till work when we grow vegetables (on ridges) on lands where maize or sunflower grew before. Also the ridges need to be remade every year as harvesting destroy these. Second we grow rice which includes encouraging a hard pan of soil beneath the surface and needs to be broken for the following wheat. How should we follow No Till under that situation?
wheat and rice aren't human food. they make us fat and sick. grow fruit. if you want to keep your rigdes cut down trees that are being outcompeted by other trees and use their trunks as you would swales. Lay them in a line 'on contour' or level with each other.
No, not if soils have low organic matter and are poorly aggregated with very low porosity and tendency to disintegrate and slake with finer soil particles blocking soil pores and channels. Then the only path for the water is accumulate on surface and you get ponding and runoff.
Is it okay if I till up my front yard? Or should I use a shovel? I need to plant grass but I do g know if tilling my yard will ruin the soil. Someone please help me.!
For a lawn replacement like you are undertaking just do it the old fashioned way. are u sure you must replace it? REALLY.CHANCES ARE U DONT...AND WITH WHAT TYPE OF GRASS...if your going to that.expense research it and DO NOT PUT IN A LAWN....OR VERY VERY LITTLE. If you have just say 5 percent good lawn you can easly turn it around in 5 years to a perfect lawn. I take by never allowing weeds to go to seed...keep it mowed...put a thin layer of compost on.GOO AREAS..spring summer.AT LEAST..once a month make a molasis mixture...spray..PUT ON ...oh now having a brain fart....thr glueten stuff...it.stops.seeds from germinating..a local owned nursery will know....NEVER USE A PETROLEUM BASED PRODUCT....EVER. WEEDS...I MADE IT A HABIT TO PULL 10 WEEDS EACH DAY ON MY WAY TO THE MAIL BOX... NO WEEDS....FABULOUS LAWN...JUST AT THREE YEARS....AND WELL NOT MANY WEEDS..LOL...OH AN ODD WEEKEND OF PULLING WEEDS FOR A LITTLE WHILE..HERE AND THERE... Most gardeners will tell you that u need about 20 percent good lawn to turn it around...think sbout it before u dig that yard up
Tilling will damage the soil. A wrecking ball will tear up your house...the object is to use damage sparingly, only when absolutely necessary, and use other options when possible. Not every fastener is a nail, and not every tool is a hammer.
@@agustasister5624 what's the point of having a weed free lawn? A green sea of stupid lifeless nothing... most weeks as you morons call them are just wild flowers, which feed the bees and birds.. why not just grow food there instead??
I’m just getting into farming so I’ve always thought that soil needs to be aerated. If the ground is too dense then the ground won’t allow root growth.
how do you no till and grow crops on a large scale? it seems impossible. i always rotate to new land and let the over farmed one go fallow and then come back to the fallowed land to work again
What are you growing and how big of an area? I live on the Palouse and there are hundreds of thousands of acres of no and low till here that do just fine, although the coming glyphosate ban is going to screw us really hard.
I dont know your area you are in,but here in Missouri(Northern)No Till works as long as you have plenty of moisture,but after 2 years of drought the only crops that yielded much were on land that could hold moisture.I build my soil through plowing under a green manure crop every 3 years.
I saw pics of an ancient apple grove in SIBERIA! Protected and nourished underneath and above. Nobody ever tampered with it. I'm trying to go no-till. It requires new thinking.
It's because tillage breaks down the organic matter faster in the soil. It's great for the plants in the short term but eventually you'll run out of that organic matter. It's often compared to withdrawaling from a savings account, take too much and eventually you'll run out.
Justin Germanovich assuming both holes are the same size the rate at which the water is dripping out of the cups will always be the same... basic physics... but having said that the demonstration still showed the difference
Let's cut the crap. Walk trough ANY heavily tilled soil, particularly after a rain event and notice the erosion, run off, etc.... Do the same exercise in a no till area. The obvious bite the eyes on the spot! ;-) On the path (driveway) along my tiny farm and the neighbors farms. The entrance of my farm has absolutely no signs of erosion. The soil is in my farm and stay there. On neighboring farms (all tilled), the piles of dirt left after any rain event is nothing short of ridiculous. The sheer amount should be a tell tale. But blindly they look but refuse too see the OBVIOUS. The dirt (by then is not soil anymore) should be on their land. Not in the middle of the driveway and going downstream!
I find it introspective at least, that the old farmers that used long rotations with crop diversity were building good soils, and perhaps were unaware?
Exactly. What he doesn't get to is info about keeping the soil covered with plants and organic matter to protect the soil from sun, wind, water and feed the soil life.
In this demonstration 2 soils that were horribly cared for if we packed our soils that hard here in the East they would not grow anyting. And unfortunately I think it is soil type dependent because I know after 10 years of no-till on our type of soil you can hardly grow a weed let alone a crop and there is no organic matter left so I really don't understand how they're getting a dark soil if they're claiming it is no till our non tilled soil turns from a rich dark-colored soil that will support earthworms to a light-colored soil that water stands on top of with nothing left but light colored silt and stones that doesn't have any earthworms or bugs left in it when we go back to plowing and after about three to four years of plowing the worms return and the soil starts to turn dark again. Here it seems like if we don't plow down our crop trash that trash simply evaporates into the air overtime and does nothing for our soil in fact on a sunny day over a no-till field you can literally see the haze from that material going into the air and you never see that on a tild field. So something doesn't add up here maybe on the soil condition are working with the soil is so poor to begin with that no-till is better I don't know but here where the soil is rich and a high-quality agricultural soil we see quite the opposite we see concrete soil structure everywhere you no till and the soil literally stripped of its nutrients. An easy test would be plant a grass hay crop five years plow it up I bet you the only thing left under that grass Sod is light soil and stones very little organic matter below the top plant mass. Now growth corn in the same soil for 5 years tilling every year you are going to have very soft very non compacted dark rich soil about 8 to 10 in deep. And you are never going to have any soil that you can make a clump out of like you're seeing in the video and when it rains on our soil at don't run off its soaks in the only place we see runoff being an issue is in no-till or disk ripper ground where the tillzone has been compacted so hard the no water can permeate.
No, no-till reduces run off. Keeping a living plant in the ground year round would be even better at reducing run off. E-coli is more about feeding corn and soy to cattle standing up to their knees in their own feces.
@@leelindsay5618 grains, vegetables etc. don't stay in the ground year round, they are seasonal, unlike grass, and impacted earth does not breath. A simple garden is a good example, no root growth for plants if you don't work the soil and fertilizer stays above ground and not composting like it should perhaps is the culprit for some E-coli caused by animal feces used as fertilizer not broken down. The E-coli breakouts come mainly from veggies like lettuce and melons- and dirty chickens. Isn't it odd how pigs are so dirty-but so few Ecoli breakouts in the pork industry and many now are in confinements? It' s nothing to do with soy or corn, it's not the type of feed that is culprit or people would be dropping like flies as most processed foods have both these ingredients.
Kane Bang - Why do you assume you can't grow crops?!!! It's precisely the opposite. Not only you can grow crops but also grow them in better conditions. Not killing the soil and in most cases with less "inputs" for better output! Something that surprise many people.
Leslie Mowers my guess is that this happens because in the first test the tilled soils was completely submerged in water, while in the second it was only wet on the surface allowing it to create the hydrophobic layer as was elaborated would happen.
A question to anyone with clay soil how is no till going to work no matter how much organic material you place on it will compact down and become concrete so it maybe dependent on the type of soil in question
No till means you let the soil organisms do the work for you. I top dress with animal straw and now my garden is replete with worms. The clay has become soft humus and even my paths have worm castings piling up. Worms come to the surface and eat the organic material, then bring it down into your clay. They perforate the soil with their tunnels, bringing oxygen down below. My "compost corner" that I use to colonize raw clay now fizzes when you water it, it's so aerated. No till takes time and mindful application of topdress, but wow, it really works!
@@lovecatspiracy you cant no till on a big scale farm. its impossible to acquire enough mulch and cover crop just makes a mess in northern climates due to the short growing season. If your farming large scale you need to let your overworked land go to pasture for 4 years and then come back to work it again for 4 years on and off
When looking at Great Plains Equipment studies. No till versus deep tillage fracturing found no till did not perform well. No till with cover crops, appears far better. Because one has cover crop agitating soil deep and no till keeps the first four to eight inches absorbing. Of course all depends on other factors and adaption to ones operation goals.
What do you call the guy who barely graduates med school? There are many levels of "better" that can be had. Look up Understanding Ag channel on youtube
Re: DePrepper Is the difference in soil moisture misleading? No-till generally retains more soil moisture than conventional. So a fair comparison would have the two plots the soil came from being sampled at the same time, and the no-till sample would naturally be higher moisture. If the no-till sample were dried to the same moisture content as the conventional, I think it would probably do better at absorbing water than this experiment demonstrated.
Climate Change renders continuous tilling operation in the farm obsolete. If you want to engage in scorched-earth farming, then continue tilling your soil. Climate Change is happy about that.
So organic farmers no till ??never seen it we till every year and are soil is black. When the is weeds in the spring you till them to kill them rather the spraying
do u no til soil & grow🌾 takes a few years but its worth it soil is better my x school mate from 70s he started it in australia & went world🌏 wide teaching about No Til crops 👍Horsham vic oz guy he be 60 now like me found 1 video if he dont convice you nothing will
means do less interference with nature age old practice is changing change is the truth nothing remain CONSTANT. so rules also change good video money time fuel lavour saving practice. I will pramote in India thanks for your efforts
Re: John Sluder You keep claiming your yields are better but if you've never used no-till because you're against GMO and related herbicides, where is your direct comparison for this claim? You don't know unless you've trialed it in a side-by-side field plot over a 5-7 year period. No-till has the same "organic" pesticides available that non-GMO conventional farmers do, and all conventional farms I know use at least as much herbicide and insecticide as no-till farms. There are also cover cropping systems available to no-till that organically suppress weed growth by acting as a mulch that completely covers the soil surface, with no pesticides required for kill.
I live in the Netherlands, clay soil, farmers can not change because they have not the time and money to change. Today we had 3 millimeter rain, it is the only rain for may. Wheat was already planted for the second time, the first did not come up. Farmers farm backward here. Farmers get money from the government to put humus on the land. They throw it on a pile in a corner of the land, so they get money but not the benefits of better soil. They have not the will to change, because the bank has to get paid every year. It is a dead end road.
Growing plants is the original sin of the mankind. Every human culture ended because they either destroyed their soil or they were taken over by some other culture which destroyed their soil and were unable to feed themselves. If you are growing plants you are in competition with the nature and try to kill every other plant that would take the place of the one plant you want to grow. Just compare it to animals like cows grazing on a pasture. There is a variety of plants growing there. No one does a damage by tilling the soil. No fertilizers (which actually destroy the soil). No pesticides, no herbicides, no insekticides. No irrigation which would again rather destroy the soil. Insects living in the cows' excrements, helping the soil further. More biodiversity. Many grass species growing together creating a robust ecosystem. Insects, birds, small animals actually living there not being in danger by big machines or by chemicals which would kill these. We must all stop eating plants and eat meat and animal fat instead!
AT FIRST AM Agricultural ENGINEER from Egypt , what i can say about all this demonstration the following points 1-the layer off soil which he have made all the demonstration and give information about its advantages . is the surface layer which is normally not important for plant growing while the crop roots is going much more deeper in the soil 2- this layer is important only during the germination and the first days of planting 3- this layer is mainly for weeds and what we don't need during our plantation 4- i recommend this method if we just want to play foot ball on this ground or just want green surface land
Mulched leaves, organic matter, compost, carbon- you do things right, right being a somewhat controversial term so I will define it for this comment as of the highest quality, then, your soil will be turned every inch of it by earthworms and develop vast colonies of mycorrhizal fungus. Method 2 for rebuilding soil, stop. turn around and walk away from it and leave it don't mow it don't put animals on it that don't get there on their own just walk away from it and let it sit. that's how it got built up fertile in the first place. meddling humans looking for quick results without proper input cause much damage. you see this sort of damage from large scale commercial operations seeking profit and believing their quote unquote scientists will solve their problems as they're created. small scale permaculture will provide you what you need, if you don't let greed and want for more out of less become your guidance.
Our society is fucked I remember growing up in farming community when round up first came out. Sales man came to out small community hall and drank a cup of round up he fucking died two years later any videos on that kind of story lol Monsanto and his bullshit
What is the point of this video?Im not a farmer and I dont understand what he is tryign to show here? everyone i know tills their garden before planting.... I thought to get good crops you have to till the land to get the nutrients/fertiliz in?? how do you get nutrients into the soil without tilling? i have a small garden and I always do this before planting.
Matt Igood points. Im not a farmer either but Im trhyign to learn I started doing some home gardening adn trying to learn.....I notice my vegs are not coming up big enough esp the toamtoes, so im trying fruits and berries now prob my soil is not fertile enough since I havent really tilled it much adn there is clay in it lots of it
Matt In Illinois One water hemp plant, which is a dangerous weed, produces over a million seeds. Leaving a field to go to weeds would be a terrible mistake. The weeds would deplete all nutrients, moisture and leave billions of seeds.
+Fryderyk Robert Chopin I have been growing vegetables for forty years and went over to no till four years ago . best choice I ever made, honestly! . you do not need to bury fertilizer or compost to make it available to the plants roots . Micro organisms in the soil will do it . If you genuinely want some answers to your questions look at the vids of Charles Dowding or better still buy one of his books