Erosion TTool/Reduce soil tillage / no-till
Reduced tillage consists in limiting the negative consequences of ploughing by adopting alternative practices whose common point is the absence of overturning the surface horizon. It can involve deep work without ploughing or surface work. Many techniques exist and are more or less adapted depending on the pedoclimatic context.
Description
Principle
Ploughing is a deep work that overturns soil horizons and loosens the earth by creating significant macroporosity. Most often this porosity is unstable and soil re-compaction occurs quickly, resulting in a form of compaction. This structural instability is accentuated by the progressive decrease in organic matter content, which can also generate negative effects on biodiversity.
Reduced tillage consists in limiting these negative consequences by adopting alternative practices to ploughing whose common point is the absence of overturning the surface horizon. It can involve deep work without ploughing or surface work. Many techniques exist and are more or less adapted depending on the pedoclimatic context.
Benefits
- Increases water infiltration capacity, through surface decompaction.
- Reduces soil compaction.
- Reduces working time.
- Saves fossil energy.
- Maintains carbon at the soil surface if biomass is returned (cover crops, crop residues, etc.).
Drawbacks
- Difficulty in controlling weeds and certain pathogens.
- Delay for soil macrofauna activity (notably earthworms) to compensate for the absence of macroporosity created by tillage.
- Adaptation of equipment and timing of interventions (working under drier conditions compared to using the plough).
Adaptation advice
- It is necessary to adapt the entire production system by paying attention to the choice of equipment, the nature of crop rotation, and the conditions for sowing and harvesting.
- It is recommended to use cover crops as intermediates in addition to reducing or stopping tillage.
- No-till alone is not suitable in areas located on the watershed (plateau) because it promotes runoff due to low infiltration capacity[1].
To improve its effectiveness, it must be combined with the use of cover crops.
