Talk:No-till farming

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is part of WikiProject Soil, a project to improve Wikipedia's articles related to Soil. For guidelines see the project page and Wikipedia:Contributing FAQ.

Contents

[edit] Picture

Perhaps a picture would help, spuch as that at: http://whyfiles.org/241GM_2/images/corn_no_till.jpg
I'd be nice if someone more familiar with image use could find something. That one comes from the USDA. Sabar 05:58, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Reader alert: content needs corrections, edits

Readers unfamiliar with no-till farming should be cautioned that there are errors in this article, starting with the first line: "No-till farming, also known as conservation tillage..." No-till farming is one of many types under the broad heading of conservation tillage. For a good introduction to these definitions see: http://www.nal.usda.gov/afsic/AFSIC_pubs/srb9902.htm .
In my own experience in the Midwest U.S., dating back to the 1970s with the advent of reduced and no-tillage systems, I never once heard no-till called "chemical farming." That may have been a parochialism. I assume so. There deserves to be a reference to where the "chemical farming" story comes from. It should identify who exactly wanted to "promote the idea of no-till being more natural." I had never heard of such a thing. I doubt it deserves mention in the introduction to the article.
The section "Pros and Cons" sets the stage for contributor bias. I would recommend dropping that section altogether and limit contributions to things readily citable and verifiable. That "Erosion" would be listed as a "Con" for no-till mystifies me, and I think would mislead anyone seeking to learn more about no-tillage systems. Decisiondoctor 18:27, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] why do people use no-till farming

Think about making several passes over a field with a different piece of equipment each time simply to prepare the field for planting. The cost of fuel and time consumed are decreased dramatically by reducing the number of "passes" over the field. This is only one benefit though. Meng.benjamin 13:10, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] no-till farming'

This doesn't seem to be a very balanced article. Perhaps more CONS could be listed? I'm noticing that in the CONS area it lists what appears to be a minor con that it then brushs aside.

  • Spruced it up with some more downsides found from a googling, and seperated them out into subsections.

[edit] " never compromised."

"With precision fertilizer and seed placement yields are never compromised." What does this mean? --Gbleem 16:19, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] No merging

I would like to suggest that this article is not merged with "no-dig gardening" because they are completelly different uses. --201.6.65.26 20:29, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

No-dig gardening is a method of preparing a garden bed via the layering of hay, manure, soil and soil amendments. It is intensive and usually restricted to home or community garden applications. No-till is associated with broad-acre cropping and is related to minimizing soil disturbance rather than building layers.

  • I agree. No merging. Farming is different from gardening in both purpose and method. Gbuffett 22:53, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
  • no merger no-till farming is a term for environmental science as a method to prevent soil erosion. No-dig gardening is a term coined by organic farmers. Skeletonman36 23:08, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
  • no merger Makes no sense SoilMan2007 (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 18:29, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
Don't redirect Conservation tillage to no till. There are multiple kinds of conservation tillage systems and no-till is just one of them. I made up a new conservation tillage systems page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_tillage_Systems). The problem is that people who want to post information about topics like strip tillage (one kind of conservation tillage system) can't put it under no till or link to it from a conservation tillage system page. Case in point, we just added an entry for stip-tillage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strip-Till). I'm sorry if I'm posting this in the wrong spot. By the way, strip tillage searches should go to the new strip-till page system. How do you change that. Thanks, Regards,SoilMan2007 (talk) December 5, 2007. —Preceding comment was added at 18:46, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
No merger. An article covering both would be unworkable. -- Paleorthid (talk) 05:49, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] POV

I have tagged this page as being potentially POV, as it does not seem to me to give a balanced view of no-till agriculture. It strikes me that it has been written largely by advocates of no-till agriculture, that citations are lacking for a lot of big claims, and that all discussion of the disadvantages is largely to dismiss them (again without citations). I know little about the subject, but I appeal for anyone who does to have a go at improving the article. Thomas K (talk) 15:23, 4 May 2008 (UTC)