No-till: Growing
Crops without Tilling the Soil
No-till or zero-tillage farming mimics the natural system by leaving soils mostly undisturbed. When soil is not tilled, changes include an increase in soil life, increases in soil carbon content and a change in the way nutrients cycle in the soil.
While no-till cropping is only a small step toward natural systems agriculture, is it an important one. The trend toward no-till cropping is sweeping the globe and is now practiced in most countries in the world.
There is also increasing interest in developing no-till organic cropping systems and we are currently exploring those possibilities.
Articles
- Organic No-till and Soil Conservation
- How to Make Organic No-till Work for Field Crops in Southern Manitoba?
- Decomposition of Mulches in No-till Organic Systems
- Energy Use and Carbon Release by Manufactured Inputs in Crop Production: A Comparison of Two Manitoba Farms with Contrasting Tillage Systems
Videos
- YouTube video: Organic zero-till flax seeding (into hairy vetch mulch)
- YouTube video: Reducing tillage in organic systems
- YouTube video: Green manures for organic low-till systems
Paper
Review: Redesigning Canadian prairie cropping systems for profitability, sustainability, and resilience. Thiessen Martens, J. R., Entz, M. H. and Wonneck, M. D. 2015.
This page created October 2005.
Last updated September 2016.