No-Tillage System: A genuine Brazilian technology that meets current global demands
Bartz, M.L.C., Telles, T.S., Junior, R.C., Fuentes-Llanillo, R. & Ralisch, R. A. 2025. Advances in Agronomy. 191. 115-146. https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.agron.2025.02.001
This is an interesting review of how Brazilian farmers moved from a tillage intensive farming system to one that used no-till, permanent soil cover, and rotations or conservation agriculture. In Brazil over 52 years, no-tillage systems (NTS) evolved allowing Brazil to move from a major importer of agricultural products to one of the largest producers and exporters globally. This paper reviews how this came about. It was spontaneous without any specific incentive program or policy. It was also because of the farming sector in Brazil who was responsible for this mobilization and sought alternatives that led to less impacting soil management allowing a more sustainable intensification of agriculture. The farmer sector included farmer organizations and companies responsible for supply of inputs and equipment suitable for seeding in no-till soil with permanent residue soil cover. Academia and research acted in the background at the time, but have now become more active.
Nature’s laws of declining soil productivity and Conservation Agriculture.
Derpsch, R., Kassam, A., Reicosky, D., Friedrich, T., Calegari, A., Gonzalez-Sanchez, E. & Rheinheimer dos Santos, D. 2024. Soil Security. 14. Article 100127. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soisec.2024.100127
This paper looks at how nature manages resources and describe living soil and its productivity using nature's laws to improve soil management. They promote the three principles of CA to achieve improved living soils since conventional soil tillage and poor crop diversity are resulting in soil degradation and loss of productivity. Mechanical tillage is not found in natural ecosystems whereas CA emulates natural systems leading to reversal of soil degradation, improved soil health that leads to improved yields and economic and environmental benefits to all farmer land sizes. The CA nature-based systems are recommended to offset the issues of climate change and tillage induced soil degradation to help with future food security.
Soil carbon storage or sustainable conservation agriculture practices—Which should be our goal?
Rakkar, M., Deiss, L. & Dick, W.A. 2025. Journal of Environmental Quality. 55. 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1002/jeq2.70073
This paper evaluates the role of increasing soil C levels with an expectation of mitigating and adapting to climate change needs. They contend that reduced soil disturbance, retention of crop residues, planting cover crops, or diversification of crop rotations with perennials are indeed effective, especially in the long term (>10 years), in improving soil properties that enhance climate change adaptation, but not so much climate change mitigation. They question whether current programs that pay for C stored in soil are sufficient to incentivize farmers to change their operations due to the high cost to test soil C to validate their efforts. Instead they propose that to promote wider adoption of sustainable conservation agricultural practices, and to make large-scale positive impacts through their use, farmers should be paid to “do the right thing”. The right thing is using the three principles of CA!
