Where are you BIO NO-TILL Agriculture?

Organic no-till agriculture - a concept that is a rare guest in agriculture. While the regenerative trend is gaining popularity and no-till technology has proven its soil regeneration potential over decades, combining it with organic systems requires serious compromises.

Success of regenerative farming and no-till

Regenerative agriculture is fortunately on the rise and can provide solutions to restore degraded soils. No-till farms using cover crops and chemical weed control have been in operation for decades and have achieved results that were previously unknown/unaccepted. They have multiplied the organic matter content of their soil.

The significance of this is perhaps best illustrated by the soil degradation picture above. There were soils like this in Hungary. Does this mean that humus-rich soils could be restored in our country? The answer: YES!

However there are elements in production that cannot be bypassed, for which organic production cannot or does not want to find solutions at present.

These are the elements:

1. continuous mulching; (this obviously does not come from soil work)
2. minimum soil disturbance; (the minimum below the direct cast, or strip-till is still an acceptable minimum)
3. plant diversity; (this can be done with a monoculture cover crop mix, e.g. post-wheat)
4. live plants and roots for 365 days; (crop + cover crop for as long as possible)
5. integration of livestock. (grazing animals to the farmland!)

Regenerative agriculture solves weed control with chemicals, which is not an option in the organic system, so it uses tillage to weed the weeds. Therefore, the first two of the five elements are not met, but the fourth may be broken if soil disturbance is too aggressive, for example in the case of ploughing.

Production patterns and natural processes in conflict

In modern agriculture, we grow annual crops, in our country mainly cereals, maize and sunflowers. We do this in monoculture. So the presence of other crops in the crop cycle is not desirable because it reduces the yield of our main crop. These crops are at the beginning of the succession process, so the in arable farming we are constantly fighting against natural processes.

This can be done in several ways: tillage, chemical treatment, mowing, crushing, grazing. From left to right, these interventions are less and less aggressive in terms of soil life and succession. Soil-dwelling fungi cannot tolerate tillage, so the ploughing bacterium pushes the soil back in a dominant direction.

Chemicals and mowing/crushing do not interfere so much with the succession process, and to some extent allow it to move in a fungal direction.

Practical example: sowing maize and weed problems

Let's see what this looks like in practice. In the autumn, we direct sow the taller stalked kalas. For the sake of the example, let's assume that this is a favourable year and no weed control is needed in the stand. The sown wheat will suppress the emerging plants. The field will remain clear until harvest and then perennial and annual warm-season weeds will emerge.

That's when the trouble comes. In conventional farming, this is usually controlled with herbicides, and in organic farming with tillage. Shallow tillage breeds tarack weeds, so you can turn to ploughing, which has worked for decades.

Working the soil also causes erosion problems, as the video below shows:

The tragic accident on the M1 motorway was also caused by a dust storm due to intensive earthworks.

Accordingly no-till agriculture with weed control is much more sustainable than ploughed organic? Definitely yes and it uses much less fuel per hectare.

Why is organic no-till not spreading on a large scale?

For the reasons listed above, we do not see organic no-till initiatives on a large scale. We only see positive examples in small farms, using a lot of manpower, and they tend to focus on intensive vegetable and fruit production.

Is it not expected to spread on a larger scale? Given current production patterns, I personally don't think so. But nature has long since invented the organic no-till called pasture.

This is the quickest way to increase the organic carbon content of the soil if the grazing is properly staggered. This way, all the essential elements of soil health are met.

Hungary's natural conditions make it much more suitable for grazing livestock than the current forced exploitation of grain mining. It is worth accepting this and thinking in landscape terms.

Does not want / cannot

This was the part where organic farming does not want to adapt, and now it is the part where it simply cannot. At the current state of technological development. there is no effective solution for treating grassroots problems. In this area, the future could see a breakthrough with the spread of weeding robots.

Videos of robots like this have been circulating for several years, but the real breakthrough has not yet happened. But a lot of opportunities would open up if they became widespread. It would be easy to grow more crops (because the camera recognises the plants) and finally move away from monoculture.

Not in the pantry yet - but it could be

BIO NO-TILL and therefore REGENERATIVE BIO grain production is not yet in the pantry, I hope this will change in the near future.

But until then, if we insist on growing arable crops, a little herbicide is much better than tillage.