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On one hand we have physical evidence and scientists, on the other hand we have you saying "my family has been destroying the soil for a long time and learned n

On one hand we have physical evidence and scientists, on the other hand we have you saying "my family has been destroying the soil for a long time and learned nothing the whole time". While you may find the latter more compelling, I do not. Weeds are early colonizing species, frequently foreign invasives, not natives. They do not always outperform crop species, as demonstrated by the millions of acres where they are outcompeted by the crops. You create barren lifeless dirt, precisely the niche early colonizing species evolved to fill. Of course they fill it. Just because you create your own problem, doesn't mean the rest of us suffer from that problem too. You do not want to till for other reasons, literally the entire purpose of tilling is to hinder plant growth. The fact that it hinders crop growth as well as weed growth seems to be lost on many people. There's a reason the majority of farms in the US and Canada are already no-till. The people currently doing your job better than you are pretty compelling evidence. https://hooktube.com/watch?v=UEOVLpZrvvU https://hooktube.com/watch?v=UEOVLpZrvvU You do not need fertilizers because the dirt is made of those very minerals. You have literally tons of phosphorus sitting under your crop, but you have killed the microorganisms responsible for converting it to plant available forms. Monocultures do not create conditions for diseases and bugs. This has been researched to death. If alternating strips of corn and soybeans lowered disease and pest rates that's what everyone would do. It doesn't help at all. The problem is not the plants, it is the soil. I have no idea what your last point is even supposed to mean. Tilling is labor. "I don't have unlimited labor so I will use my limited labor on a process that increases my costs and lowers my yields" is pretty hard to make sense of.

hinkley 8y ago
> There's a reason the majority of farms in the US and Canada are already no-till. I have heard this several times lately. But I grew up around tilled (sometimes double tilled) farmland, and I still see a lot of tilled earth when I'm out of town and think to look. What do we mean by most and what definition of no-till are we using?
- agsdfgsd 8y ago
  We mean more than 50% of the farmed acres, and the definition is not tilling. Using a no-till planter to seed through the residue of the previous crop or cover crop. Most of the tilled acres are using some form of conservation tillage too, like strip till. Get out of Ontario and go look at a real farm.
  - Chyzwar 8y ago
    I do not know where you getting this data. I can tell you that in Europe there is very little land that is not tilled. Even on below if exclude grasslands you find that 70-90% of arable land is tilled. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=File:Arable_area_by_tillage_practice,_EU-27,_IS,_NO,_CH,_ME_and_HR,_2010.png https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
    - agsdfgsd 8y ago
      From the US and Canadian governments. That's why I said "in the US and Canada".
      - Chyzwar 8y ago
        Even US and Canada no-till farming is still around 20-30%. It higher than Europe because of more intense use of herbicides and different farming practices. https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2017/11/30/saving-money-time-and-soil-economics-no-till-farming https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2017/11/30/saving-money-time... Wider use of crop rotation, GMO, farming robots and micro-irrigation might reduce the need for tilling but it is still very far of. Farming is heavily subsidized but still not very profitable. Margins are small and no-till methods are not economically viable for most places.
        agsdfgsd 8y ago
        Just repeating nonsense isn't productive. If a single farm can do it, then it is possible. So stop saying it isn't possible. Welcome to 2011: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/95-640-x/2011001/p1/p1-05-eng.htm#XV https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/95-640-x/2011001/p1/p1-0...
Chyzwar 8y ago
> On one hand we have physical evidence and scientists, on the other hand we have you saying "my family has been destroying the soil for a long time and learned nothing the whole time". While you may find the latter more compelling, I do not. Do not underestimate farmers. They might not be smart individually but good ideas spread very quickly. If the above scientist shows me a farm that is a 100h size and makes a profit then we can talk. > Weeds are early colonizing species, frequently foreign invasives, not natives. They do not always outperform crop species, as demonstrated by the millions of acres where they are outcompeted by the crops. You create barren lifeless dirt, precisely the niche early colonizing species evolved to fill. Of course they fill it. Just because you create your own problem, doesn't mean the rest of us to suffer from that problem too. Cucumber/tomato/potato/radish and are not native to Europe. Not only that but most of the vegetables you eat is heavily modified by selective breeding to increase yield. Weeds, on the other hand, are aggressive plants that optimize for survival. You contradict yourself, how land be barren and lifeless when weeds grow perfectly. Weeds grow because you need have certain spacing between your crops. You either need to use chemicals or labour and tilling to ensure high yield. In some cases, you can reduce tilling when the plant is aggressive enough (corn) in others it is not possible. > You do not want to till for other reasons, literally the entire purpose of tilling is to hinder plant growth. The fact that it hinders crop growth, as well as weed growth, seems to be lost on many people. There's a reason the majority of farms in the US and Canada are already no-till. You will till to prepare for sowing. Even "no-till" farmers will till to some extent. There is more no-till because chemical solutions are better. My parents reduced tiling after using herbicide that can be used to target weeds in specific periods after crops are already growing. > I have no idea what your last point is even supposed to mean. Tilling is labor. "I don't have unlimited labor so I will use my limited labor on a process that increases my costs and lowers my yields" is pretty hard to make sense of. Because you are not a farmer. Tilling is a very quick procedure that is not labour intensive. By labour, I mean manually removing weeds before they spill seeds or outgrow crops. For many vegetable/fruits, manual weeding is still essential.
- agsdfgsd 8y ago
  >If the above scientist shows me a farm that is a 100h size and makes a profit then we can talk. The above farm is 20 times that size and switched over specifically because it is more profitable, that's the point. Maybe instead of insisting that reality isn't real you just watch the video? We're talking about real farms, not piddly hobbyist nonsense. If I were underestimating farmers, we wouldn't be having this discussion. But since most farmers are old, stuck in their ways and borderline illiterate, lots of them keep doing the same bad things that we've known are bad for over 70 years. >Cucumber/tomato/potato/radish and are not native to Europe. Not only that but most of the vegetables you eat is heavily modified by selective breeding to increase yield. None of those things are relevant at all. The genetic difference between crop species and their wild ancestors is tiny, and in fact most crop species out-compete their wild ancestors when sowed together. >Weeds, on the other hand, are aggressive plants that optimize for survival. All plants are optimized for survival. That's a meaningless statement. The question is survival WHERE? Wolves are optimized for survival, yet if you toss one in the middle of the ocean it doesn't actually survive. Corn is optimized for survival, but if you toss it in a barren dead patch of dirt, it struggles to grow. Corn evolved to form symbiotic relationships with fungi, which your tillage has exterminated. There are plants that evolved to grow in barren dead dirt. They do well there. You call them weeds, and pretend the ecosystem doesn't matter, weeds are just magically better no matter what. Yet if you have a healthy soil with plenty of undisturbed fungi, the corn out-competes the weeds. Take the wild ancestor of any crop you are pretending can't compete and do a test with it. They compete fine in a healthy soil with a balanced microbiology, just like their modern crop varieties do. But if the rhizosphere is gone, the only plants that can grow well are those adapted to dead barren dirt, whose entire ecological niche is to colonize such areas and gradually restore them to healthy ecosystems. So on tilled dirt, they get out-competed by weeds just like the modern crop varieties do. Again, if you simply watched the video I linked before which you said you watched, you would already have had a microbiologist explain this for you with nice diagrams and everything. Ecological succession is real. The species which thrive in barren dirt are not the same as the species that thrive in old growth forests. Are pine trees not optimized for survival? Then why do they get out-competed by weeds if I plant them in tilled dead dirt? Have we modified them by selective breeding to increase yield? This is trivially easy to test for yourself if you don't believe scientists and their silly evidence. >Weeds grow because you need have certain spacing between your crops. You either need to use chemicals or labour and tilling to ensure high yield. No, you leave the residue and it blocks 95% of weed seed germination. If you haven't heard of mulch, you're not even attempting to be a farmer. You are just blindly going through the motions of what your great grandparents did. >You will till to prepare for sowing. No I do not. >Even "no-till" farmers will till to some extent. No we do not. The coulters on the planter simply open the soil for the seed to be deposited. Seriously, go look at a no-till planter before pretending they don't exist. You are thinking of strip tilling, which is a form of conservation tillage. No-till is not conservation tillage, it is no tillage. >Because you are not a farmer Yes I am. For someone who seems to have obtained all his knowledge of farming from farm simulator 2015, it seems silly to call the person pointing to scientists, farmers and university agricultural departments "not a farmer". >Tilling is a very quick procedure that is not labour intensive How do you think that driving equipment, literally the only labor done on a farm, is not labor? This isn't the 1800s, all farming involves is driving slowly for hours at a time, unless you have a self-driving tractor in which case it involves playing games on your phone. Tillage is literally the slowest and most fuel burning procedure in many primitive farming operations. Only for some crops is harvesting worse. But hey what do I know, I am totally not a farmer right? I bet people who study this for a living in the biggest farming area on the planet will say something else right? Oops, they say I am right. I guess it because they are not a farmer too! https://store.extension.iastate.edu/product/4047 https://store.extension.iastate.edu/product/4047 >By labour, I mean manually removing weeds before they spill seeds or outgrow crops Are you high? How can you say I am not a farmer when you think people walk around 5000 acres of fields pulling weeds by hand? Driving a tractor is labor. Literally the only labor done on a farm in decades. >For many vegetable/fruits, manual weeding is still essential. Maybe somewhere in eastern Europe where they are still living in the 1820s, but in the 21st century literally no farms do any manual weeding. Vegetable "farms" are called market gardens, and they use mexicans to pick the vegetables, not to weed.

hinkley 8y ago

> There's a reason the majority of farms in the US and Canada are already no-till. I have heard this several times lately. But I grew up around tilled (sometimes double tilled) farmland, and I still see a lot of tilled earth when I'm out of town and think to look. What do we mean by most and what definition of no-till are we using?

agsdfgsd 8y ago
We mean more than 50% of the farmed acres, and the definition is not tilling. Using a no-till planter to seed through the residue of the previous crop or cover crop. Most of the tilled acres are using some form of conservation tillage too, like strip till. Get out of Ontario and go look at a real farm.
- Chyzwar 8y ago
  I do not know where you getting this data. I can tell you that in Europe there is very little land that is not tilled. Even on below if exclude grasslands you find that 70-90% of arable land is tilled. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=File:Arable_area_by_tillage_practice,_EU-27,_IS,_NO,_CH,_ME_and_HR,_2010.png https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
  - agsdfgsd 8y ago
    From the US and Canadian governments. That's why I said "in the US and Canada".
    - Chyzwar 8y ago
      Even US and Canada no-till farming is still around 20-30%. It higher than Europe because of more intense use of herbicides and different farming practices. https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2017/11/30/saving-money-time-and-soil-economics-no-till-farming https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2017/11/30/saving-money-time... Wider use of crop rotation, GMO, farming robots and micro-irrigation might reduce the need for tilling but it is still very far of. Farming is heavily subsidized but still not very profitable. Margins are small and no-till methods are not economically viable for most places.
      - agsdfgsd 8y ago
        Just repeating nonsense isn't productive. If a single farm can do it, then it is possible. So stop saying it isn't possible. Welcome to 2011: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/95-640-x/2011001/p1/p1-05-eng.htm#XV https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/95-640-x/2011001/p1/p1-0...

Chyzwar 8y ago

> On one hand we have physical evidence and scientists, on the other hand we have you saying "my family has been destroying the soil for a long time and learned nothing the whole time". While you may find the latter more compelling, I do not. Do not underestimate farmers. They might not be smart individually but good ideas spread very quickly. If the above scientist shows me a farm that is a 100h size and makes a profit then we can talk. > Weeds are early colonizing species, frequently foreign invasives, not natives. They do not always outperform crop species, as demonstrated by the millions of acres where they are outcompeted by the crops. You create barren lifeless dirt, precisely the niche early colonizing species evolved to fill. Of course they fill it. Just because you create your own problem, doesn't mean the rest of us to suffer from that problem too. Cucumber/tomato/potato/radish and are not native to Europe. Not only that but most of the vegetables you eat is heavily modified by selective breeding to increase yield. Weeds, on the other hand, are aggressive plants that optimize for survival. You contradict yourself, how land be barren and lifeless when weeds grow perfectly. Weeds grow because you need have certain spacing between your crops. You either need to use chemicals or labour and tilling to ensure high yield. In some cases, you can reduce tilling when the plant is aggressive enough (corn) in others it is not possible. > You do not want to till for other reasons, literally the entire purpose of tilling is to hinder plant growth. The fact that it hinders crop growth, as well as weed growth, seems to be lost on many people. There's a reason the majority of farms in the US and Canada are already no-till. You will till to prepare for sowing. Even "no-till" farmers will till to some extent. There is more no-till because chemical solutions are better. My parents reduced tiling after using herbicide that can be used to target weeds in specific periods after crops are already growing. > I have no idea what your last point is even supposed to mean. Tilling is labor. "I don't have unlimited labor so I will use my limited labor on a process that increases my costs and lowers my yields" is pretty hard to make sense of. Because you are not a farmer. Tilling is a very quick procedure that is not labour intensive. By labour, I mean manually removing weeds before they spill seeds or outgrow crops. For many vegetable/fruits, manual weeding is still essential.

agsdfgsd 8y ago
>If the above scientist shows me a farm that is a 100h size and makes a profit then we can talk. The above farm is 20 times that size and switched over specifically because it is more profitable, that's the point. Maybe instead of insisting that reality isn't real you just watch the video? We're talking about real farms, not piddly hobbyist nonsense. If I were underestimating farmers, we wouldn't be having this discussion. But since most farmers are old, stuck in their ways and borderline illiterate, lots of them keep doing the same bad things that we've known are bad for over 70 years. >Cucumber/tomato/potato/radish and are not native to Europe. Not only that but most of the vegetables you eat is heavily modified by selective breeding to increase yield. None of those things are relevant at all. The genetic difference between crop species and their wild ancestors is tiny, and in fact most crop species out-compete their wild ancestors when sowed together. >Weeds, on the other hand, are aggressive plants that optimize for survival. All plants are optimized for survival. That's a meaningless statement. The question is survival WHERE? Wolves are optimized for survival, yet if you toss one in the middle of the ocean it doesn't actually survive. Corn is optimized for survival, but if you toss it in a barren dead patch of dirt, it struggles to grow. Corn evolved to form symbiotic relationships with fungi, which your tillage has exterminated. There are plants that evolved to grow in barren dead dirt. They do well there. You call them weeds, and pretend the ecosystem doesn't matter, weeds are just magically better no matter what. Yet if you have a healthy soil with plenty of undisturbed fungi, the corn out-competes the weeds. Take the wild ancestor of any crop you are pretending can't compete and do a test with it. They compete fine in a healthy soil with a balanced microbiology, just like their modern crop varieties do. But if the rhizosphere is gone, the only plants that can grow well are those adapted to dead barren dirt, whose entire ecological niche is to colonize such areas and gradually restore them to healthy ecosystems. So on tilled dirt, they get out-competed by weeds just like the modern crop varieties do. Again, if you simply watched the video I linked before which you said you watched, you would already have had a microbiologist explain this for you with nice diagrams and everything. Ecological succession is real. The species which thrive in barren dirt are not the same as the species that thrive in old growth forests. Are pine trees not optimized for survival? Then why do they get out-competed by weeds if I plant them in tilled dead dirt? Have we modified them by selective breeding to increase yield? This is trivially easy to test for yourself if you don't believe scientists and their silly evidence. >Weeds grow because you need have certain spacing between your crops. You either need to use chemicals or labour and tilling to ensure high yield. No, you leave the residue and it blocks 95% of weed seed germination. If you haven't heard of mulch, you're not even attempting to be a farmer. You are just blindly going through the motions of what your great grandparents did. >You will till to prepare for sowing. No I do not. >Even "no-till" farmers will till to some extent. No we do not. The coulters on the planter simply open the soil for the seed to be deposited. Seriously, go look at a no-till planter before pretending they don't exist. You are thinking of strip tilling, which is a form of conservation tillage. No-till is not conservation tillage, it is no tillage. >Because you are not a farmer Yes I am. For someone who seems to have obtained all his knowledge of farming from farm simulator 2015, it seems silly to call the person pointing to scientists, farmers and university agricultural departments "not a farmer". >Tilling is a very quick procedure that is not labour intensive How do you think that driving equipment, literally the only labor done on a farm, is not labor? This isn't the 1800s, all farming involves is driving slowly for hours at a time, unless you have a self-driving tractor in which case it involves playing games on your phone. Tillage is literally the slowest and most fuel burning procedure in many primitive farming operations. Only for some crops is harvesting worse. But hey what do I know, I am totally not a farmer right? I bet people who study this for a living in the biggest farming area on the planet will say something else right? Oops, they say I am right. I guess it because they are not a farmer too! https://store.extension.iastate.edu/product/4047 https://store.extension.iastate.edu/product/4047 >By labour, I mean manually removing weeds before they spill seeds or outgrow crops Are you high? How can you say I am not a farmer when you think people walk around 5000 acres of fields pulling weeds by hand? Driving a tractor is labor. Literally the only labor done on a farm in decades. >For many vegetable/fruits, manual weeding is still essential. Maybe somewhere in eastern Europe where they are still living in the 1820s, but in the 21st century literally no farms do any manual weeding. Vegetable "farms" are called market gardens, and they use mexicans to pick the vegetables, not to weed.