Since tillage is one of the more threatening agricultural practices to sustainability, it is a puzzle to me how production systems that include tillage can also claim to be sustainable. Its practice goes back more than 6000 years to the very dawn of agriculture. An historical review of civilizations that have flourished and crashed over this time will reveal that virtually all of them either depleted their own soil or were defeated in resource wars focusing on food; which is to say, soil. In 200 years of European style agriculture, the United States has lost a third of its topsoil to erosion by wind and water--a direct consequence of tillage and a fact known by just about every student who has taken an agriculture course.

Less known is the depleting effect tillage has on soil organic matter because of oxidation resulting from the admission of air by tillage. This oxidation, that is the burning up of organic matter, releases lots of soluble nutrients so farmers get good immediate results at the expense of the soil’s long-term, stored-up fertility. This is just like withdrawing money from a savings account and never replacing it. This might not be so bad if all the released fertility was utilized by the crop, but unfortunately that is not the case; often more of these nutrients are lost to leaching than are actually used by the crop. Many people believe that all we need to do to be sustainable is return the nutrients lost by cropping, but this cannot be the case. All of the putting back in the world, say in the form of human manure, will never, in itself, lead to sustainability because so much more is lost than just what is being removed by cropping. It’s doubtful that even the best no-tillage soil management practice can prevent all these losses, but no-tillage can go a long way toward closing this gap.

We also need to note that the carbon lost from the soil after plowing, in the form of carbon dioxide, is lost to the atmosphere. There it contributes to the rise of CO2 levels and consequential global warming. The amount of CO2 added to the atmosphere is comparable, I have heard, with the amount added by the burning of fossil fuels. One of the ways proposed for reducing it is to sequester it back into the soil’s organic matter--presumably, in part, by no-tillage practices. Here is a good opportunity for a whole systems farmer to do her part to combat global warming.

Dr, Logan Carter founded the Soil Science Department at the California Polytechnic College at San Luis Obispo. One of my memorable experiences there was the shock I experienced when he announced to the class that “tillage destroys soil structure”. He went on to explain some of the other problems associated with tillage, after which I could hardly believe that so much time, money and effort was put into tillage. Dr. Carter was a man ahead of his time because this was still three or four years before the first no-tillage plantings started going in; the early 1960s. To this day, in the San Joaquin Valley of California, there still may not be a single large scale, no-tillage planting. Old paradigms die slowly. It took me a long time to “get it” myself.

“Structure” refers to the pore space and openness of soil to penetration by air, water and roots. Indeed, tillage opens soil initially, but more particularly, if tilth is fine that openness is lost at the first good downpour or irrigation. It then closes much tighter than soil that has been left undisturbed and makes a much less favorable environment for soil organisms and roots.

Before we leave the subject of tillage I want to consider again the relationship between the whole systems gardener to her garden and hence to the world. One needs no Ph.D in literary symbolism to pick up on the phallic association that plowshares have with the great mother of us all, that is,the Earth. Tillage is very much associated with the patriarchal impulse to dominate and control. Thoughtful people have suggested a matriarchal way of relating to the world as not only desireable, but essential for our survival. Alas, it looks as if we are headed the opposite direction. Our symbols now go far beyond swords and plowshares to include penetrating projectiles made of depleted uranium and rock-burrowing nuclear warheads. No-tillage is an important way this move towards matriarchy can come about. The whole systems gardener relates to her garden as a mother relates to her family. She embodies the qualities Carl Jung spoke of in describing the Mother Archetype. Worth noting is that one’s actual gender may have little to do with one’s personal style of relating to the world.