“No-till” crop production proving a most promising conservation measure

Abstract

Traditional methods of soil cultivation in the Corn Belt of the United States leave the land vulnerable to erosion by wind and water. Studies at Dixon Springs have shown a very marked reduction in soil losses under the “no-till” system, both for continuous maize-growing and for double-cropped wheat and maize, a factor of considerable importance in soil conservation.

A punch planter for conservation farming

“…The performance of the drills was satisfactory as long as the seed was placed into adequate soil moisture. Gard and McKibben (1973) reported work on a planter con sisting of a ripple coulter, runner opener and an angled coulter to close the seed furrow.…”

The planter performance on no-tillage ridge farming

“…But some machines were given to various agricultural engineering departments and these were the starting point for development Fisher and Lane (1973) Besides the till-planter, several modifications have been made to conventional planter to operate in no-till condition. A common modification of conventional planters for planting in minimum tillage conditions is to mount a rolling coulter in front of the seed opener (Duley and Russel, 19^2;Triplett et al, 1963;Wittmuss et aj.., 1971b;Carreker ejt al., 1972;Gard and McKibben, 1973;Sanford et al, 1973;Allen et al, 1975;îownsend and Chinsuwan, 1976;Hyde et al, 1979;and Gallaher, 1980). Schaaf et al (198O) investigated the performance of numerous types of cutting coulters which could be used in no-till planting.…”