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Originally Posted by screener
cricket tragic, try reading it one word at a time. there are times when our languages are quite similar.
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Screener, I tried that and am still none the wiser as to what you specifically meant. Your previous explanation was not much help either. All I can think of is that you have run two unconnected thoughts together and that I have unwittingly connected them.
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Originally Posted by screener
Getting back to organic/sustainable style food production appears to be something that isn't just chic, but may be necessary for humans to get beyond peaking oil, climate change, and tough economic times.
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The problem with saying we need to go back to an older style of food production is that we now have nearly 7 billion people in the world. In 1900 when manures were the only nitrogen source we had 1.6 billion people. I am quite willing to believe that organic agriculture has come some way since 1900, but as grain production is essentially nitrogen limited, we need to find a way to solve that or lose 3 billion people. I am not quite willing to be one of the latter, so I am going to opt for the former. You need to remember that fossil fuels are just an energy source. If push comes to shove, ingenious people will come up with new energy sources. Going forward we are going to need tools from all sorts of systems. For me that includes ideas from organic agriculture as well as GM technologies.
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Originally Posted by screener
re tillage operations, there may be farmers that are still following the practise of up to 7 tills of their fields, I don't expect that would be each year, as rotations of green manure play a big part of organic production and in cases like that you can go three or four years without tillage. You suggest that zero and minimum till operations are "ideal" . What does that mean in the context of different soil structures, different crops, and different farming methods?
In the event that farmers striving for sustainability are tilling their land four or more times in any given year I expect that at each of those tills is working fibre of one sort or another into the soil. This worked in material helps to improve the quality of the soil. excessive tillage would by my definition be tillage that is degrading the soil, ie not sustainable, it would appear by it's nature to be counter-productive to the effort.
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If you read the descriptions you will note these are for a single harvested crop. The tillage operations typically occur over a period of 1 or 2 years depending on whether nitrogen came from a green manure or spread manure. Only one tillage operation worked in fibre of any sort. The rest were for weed control and to create a fine seedbed for sowing. No till is simply that. No tillage operations and as little disturbance as possible with the planting operation. Minimum tillage is a single tillage operation per crop either before or with planting. You can do them in any soil type you like and they help. You see faster improvement in soil quality with lighter soils.