TAKE CARE OF AGRICULTURAL SOIL. REASONS NOT TO TILL

Industrial and conventional agriculture is based on soil tillage and the application of huge amounts of inputs. Some 38% of the world’s cultivated area is degraded due to these practices. Practices that have led to an almost total loss of soil biodiversity. A fact that the European Union has echoed and is working to improve biodiversity.
When we take a sample of these soils there is hardly any visible life and the invisible life is only reduced to bacteria. The degradation of agricultural soils has a brutal impact on the agroecosystem. Their care is vital to recover the ecosystem services they provide, which are not limited to food production.
Tillage is one of the most aggressive practices in agricultural systems. Here are 10 reasons why agricultural soil should not be tilled:l labrado es una de las más agresivas que se realizan en los sistemas agrarios. A continuación, exponemos aquí 10 razones por las que no hay que labrar el suelo agrario:

1. Conventional tillage continuously exposes the deeper soil to wet and dry cycles of freezing and thawing at the surface.
2. Moving the soil increases macro-aggregate turnover, disrupting the existing pore network, promoting soil erosion.
3. It accelerates the decomposition of organic matter, reducing the carbon stored in the soil, methane and nitrous oxide, among others, which are emitted into the atmosphere.
4. It destroys the fungal hyphal network, affecting the microhabitats of microorganisms and destroying communications between them.
5. The increase in the availability of organic matter increases the abundance of copiotrophs, i.e., living beings that need large quantities of organic nutrients, thus rapidly reducing the plant’s availability of nutrients.
6. Mycorrhizal, nematophagous and mycoparasitic fungi are abundant in uncultivated soils. Saprophytic and pathogenic fungi dominate in tilled soils.
7. Tillage increases soil compaction; 25% of agricultural soil is compacted, with serious consequences at the root level.
8. It decreases water infiltration, nutrient flow and oxygen penetration. When tilling we do not oxygenate the soil.
9. Proliferation of anaerobic prokaryotes increasing methane and nitrogen dioxide (methan
10. ogenesis and denitrification). Decrease in aerobic bacteria, reducing methanotrophy and nitrification.
11. Increase of CO2 and decrease of sequestered carbon due to macroaggregate breakdown and heterotrophic respiration.

Based on the article by Javier Sáenz de Cabezón of Clean-Biotec.