TAKEAWAYS
- Having good data is important to understanding the impact and effectiveness of conservation programs.
- Using farmer surveys to gauge tillage information has limitations due to a lack of timeliness, and both limited time and human resources.
- A combination of technologies provides the best chance for researchers to show patterns in land management from space.
Technology continues to blaze an amazing path in agriculture, and it’s not only from the ground, but in space as well.
Figuring out how many acres of no-till, reduced tillage and conventional tillage were in force across the U.S. has always depended on sending out surveys, crunching the numbers and trotting them out.
New technology has given researchers ways to do much of the analysis from the sky using available technology such as remote sensing with hyperspectral or multispectral imagery, which have benefits but also limitations due to satellite signals affected by soil type, moisture levels and weather variables.
But a research team from the University of Illinois has developed a dynamic framework that combines satellite imagery and machine learning — including residue indices from remote sensing data and environmental factors — to detect tillage practices over large areas and long time periods.
They used the approach to estimate tillage percentage across the Midwestern U.S. 2000 to 2022. This approach not only documents conservation efforts but also quantify soil carbon change, researchers said.
Here’s what they’ve found so far:
- Conservation tillage increased gradually across the Midwest for both corn and soybean from 2000 to 2022.
- Northern counties in the Dakotas, southern Minnesota, eastern Nebraska and Iowa showed an increasing no-till percentage, largely converted from reduced-tillage.
- Some counties in Indiana and Ohio showed an increase in the percentage of reduced-tillage percentage, mainly converted from conventional- and no-till practices.
- Soybean fields generally showed higher no-till adoption, while corn fields relied more on reduced-till practices, and adoption trends varied substantially across the northern and eastern Midwest.
- No-till adoption is more common in drier regions such as the Great Plains, where leaving crop residue on the soil surface helps conserve soil moisture. They also noted more no-till in the South as soil underneath residue doesn’t take as long to warm up in spring ahead of planting.
Most of this information is not totally surprising to us at No-Till Farmer, as the study confirms what we’ve seen on the ground through our own benchmark surveys of our readers who use no-till and strip-till practices. But there’s a bigger picture.
In a story carried by ScienceDirect, Kaiyu Guan, the principal investigator of the study, noted that understanding how farmers manage soil is essential for evaluating agriculture’s impacts on soil health, water quality and long-term resilience. “These insights from our study can help agencies and policy makers refine programs and policies for greater effectiveness in the future,” he said.
The findings are also important for researchers, who implement tillage practice effects in their modeling of soil, water, nutrients, and environmental impacts.
For our agricultural programs and practices to be more successful in the long run, having quality data is essential so we can evaluate what does or doesn't work. And this looks like a promising step toward that end.
