Role of Tilling in Agriculture

Why are we doing so before then? The way we do agriculture today symbolizes tilling for many people. If we ask you to represent a farming scene, you probably have pictures of a large tractor that is carrying a field heavy and metal.

There are countless things we do every day by rotation, without even worrying about why or how we are, simply because everyone else is and seems to be doing the finished thing. The question is: could one of these things be tilling? Might not anything so emblematic of agriculture really be the best way or – worst – could it be even harmful?

What are the reasons for this?

For thousands of years tilling has taken on some form, even since ancient Egyptian times. Tilling forms have been recorded. As with all farmers, tilling has experienced hundreds of technical advances and moved from the use of easy handheld tools and animals drawn to the heavy high-tech tractors we see today. Those inventions made it harder, longer, deeper and much more effective to work the soil.

There are many good reasons why tilling seems to be a brilliant idea first of all, which is why agriculture first of all gained such momentum. At first, the idea was to make nutrients more readily available to the plant by grinding the soil into smaller particles. And all seems fine at first glance. Soil is fluffy and tidy after tilling, and plants are quickly planted and tend to flourish in their new houses. But occasionally things aren't rosy in the gardens after you, and on closer inspection. Therefore, no-till planters have come into being.

The belief that the soil is essentially a physical and chemicals substrate is based on Tilling. However, the biology underlining the working of the good soil is not taken into consideration. And the no-till planter concept is primarily because of this biology, namely an unseen ally known as 'fungal mycelium' whose only spoonful of good land is literally thousands and miles away.

The mycelium supports plants and therefore farmers in a number of ways. It helps dismantle natural nutrients, reconstructs the structure of the soil, aerates the soil and improves the water retention of the soil exponentially. Essentially, certain forms of good fungi allow the so-called 'symbiotic relationships' to plant roots. These connections are exchange fungi for simple plant-produced sugars and for their root systems for carbohydrates and minerals. This helps to nourish plants with fungal mycelium. Mycelium also has shown to play a critical role in water transport to plants and in reacting to problems with other molecules, such as enzymes.

Practices of carving often destroy other essential types of soil microbiology. Tilling, for example, kills earthworms which play a key role in the health of the soil by aerating their burrows and digesting soil, creating nutritious humus.

Furthermore, tilling, by transforming and mixing the soil, brings down all the existing soil layers pulling finer soils onto the surface of the soil and is thus vulnerable to erosion. This also compacts the soil, producing the anaerobic conditions in which plant pathogens grow.

Reach us at 4ag Manufacturers in OKC if you need a no-till planter for farming.