Agronomy Library > Application/Timing

Long Term Rotations
Author: Guy Lafond, AAFC
Date Created: January 11, 2007
Last Reviewed: January 26, 2009
Long-Term Implications of No-Till Production Systems: What are the implications?  Introduction In the discussion on agricultural sustainability, no one will dispute that the first step is to protect our soil resource from degradation. It is also very well documented that the major cause of soil degradation is wind and water erosion (den Biggelaar et al., 2004). Over the last 10 years, there has been a significant shift in production practices towards conservation tillage, and more specifically the adoption of no-till. The end result is that with no-till, soil degradation has been almost completely arrested and reversed in certain situations. In fact, recent work has shown that soil organic carbon can actively be sequestered with no-till (McConkey et al., 2003). Given the potential of no-till to increase soil organic carbon, it could be argued that other benefits could be realized in terms of overall crop productivity.  Open the PDF file for the complete paper