| Organic farming has relied heavily on tillage for weed control while conventional no-till techniques depend entirely on herbicides for weed control and effective cover crop kill. The challenges have been how to make the benefits of no-till accessible to organic farmers. Jeff Moyer, Rodale Institute, explains how organic no-till works, using sound biological principles and mechanical cover-crop termination, to reduce and even eliminate tillage. The system works well for soybean and requires further investigation for other crops. This is an advanced technique and requires some skills to be successfully applied, but it will probably be the way to grow many field crops. |
