Reply #7: No till was all the rage back before mechanized farming

[malakai2]

Now people have this tendency to think we've just discovered no till, and everyone uses it. Truth is, farmers gave it up when they discovered they could plow from fence to fence, and when drain tile was introduced, they used that too. Truth too...up here in the northern plains, a lot of farmers DON'T use no till because exposed topsoil absorbs more solar energy and warms up faster in the spring. It's also easier to dispose of liquid manure by discing it into the field...well, it's either that, or face fines and jail time for applying it on the surface or volatilizing it. They're still plowing up virgin prairie in the Dakotas, and I don't care what metric you are using, those patches of soil are worse off under wheat and the associated pesticides than they are under native grass and forbs-or CRP mixes. Conversion to cropland impacts lots of other things on a landscape scale, from loss of breeding habitat for grassland birds, to lowering of the water table and drying of nearby wetlands, to pesticide drift onto nearby wildlife habitat, all the way down to pesticide contamination of aquifers and waterways to which the contaminated aquifers discharge.

You can compare a host of conditions from 1804 to conditions in the 1930s, 1970s, 1980s, and today, and track a whole host of unfavorable changes over time. Increased CRP acreage was one of the few positive changes since the 30s. Was.