Let’s wrap things up with our Video of the Week. This one comes to us form South Carolina, where No-Till Innovator Ray Archuleta shares a tale of two fields. 

“Here are two soils — no-till with covers, look how dark it is. And I want to show you heavy, conventional tillage with high inputs. What are the three things that make this soil distinct? This farmer has a different mindset; he knows the soil is alive. This farmer treats the soil as a growing medium. The soil diversity is very diverse here. I think we forget that the plant is the mouth of the soil. These soils are continually fed liquid sun, taking light energy and converting it into liquid sun. Way diverse. This one has no diversity, and this soil is starving. It only has corn and soybean, and it has no cover crops at the end of the year. So, what’s the answer about compaction? Let’s be very clear. What fixes compaction is living plants and living roots leaking all these acids and creating these aggregates. You see these little bee bees? Those are called aggregates. I want that.”

Watch the full Video of this episode of Conservation Ag Update.