No-till Farming Is a Growing Practice

Book excerpt: Most U.S. farmers prepare their soil for seeding and weed and pest control through tillage -- plowing operations that disturb the soil. Tillage practices affect soil carbon, water pollution, and farmers' energy and pesticide use, and therefore data on tillage can be valuable for understanding the practice's role in reaching climate and other environmental goals. In order to help policymakers and other interested parties better understand U.S. tillage practices and, especially, those practices' potential contribution to climate-change efforts, this report showed that approximately 35.5% of U.S. cropland planted to eight major crops, or 88 million acres, had no tillage operations in 2009. Charts and graphs. This is a print on demand report.