No-till Agriculture a Win-Win Solution to Climate Change

A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) confirms that traditional plow-based agricultural methods are depleting the Earth's soil supply. No-till agriculture, in which crop stubble is mixed with the top layer of soil using a method called disking, is far more sustainable, said David Montgomery,  author of the study and professor of earth and space sciences at the University of Washington.

Montgomery compares the agricultural practices of the present generation with those of history's major civilizations and notes that there are few places left where the soil can feed a large population for very long. "We are skinning our agricultural fields," Montgomery said. And soil erosion is making matters worse.

No-till agriculture does away with plowing, which often involves stripping crop stubble from fields before deeply turning the soil. Instead, it uses disking to turn only the top layer of soil.  By stirring crop residue into the soil surface, no-till farming can gradually increase organic matter in soil. "Returning the organic matter to the soil stores carbon," Montgomery said. It also reduces the total carbon emissions. "It's one of the few win-win options in trying to forestall the effects of climate change."

Read the news article at http://uwnews.washington.edu/ni/article.asp?articleID=35903.