By Dan Wermager
Technician, Root River SWCD
No-till planting is a great tool for conventional farmers to use in order to help the environment. No-till planting can reduce erosion, improve infiltration, reduce runoff, and build organic matter. These are all very important things, because eroded soil is the #1 pollutant of surface water in the world.
Erosion is an especially big problem around here, with our steep slopes and highly erodible silt loam soils. If these soils are tilled and exposed to the sky, they are very vulnerable to erosion during large rain events. According to our models, no-till reduces this type of erosion by over 50%! This saves about 1-3 tons of soil per acre from being eroded away, each year. Then there is wind erosion. Usually we don’t see too much of that around here, due to the rolling topography and abundant forests, which help block the wind. However, if you remember this last spring (2025), we had hot and dry conditions, and weeks of high winds. There was dust flying around everywhere, and the wind erosion was quite apparent. This was right around planting time, when soils were the most bare and vulnerable. There were reports that people could not see across some of our valleys at one point, due to all of the soil particles in the air. No-till can stop this type of erosion as well.
No-till also improves water infiltration, thereby reducing runoff. This, in turn, reduces flooding further downstream. As you know, flooding is another huge problem that we have to deal with around here occasionally.
How does no-till do this? Well, when you till the soil, no matter how deep you till it, much of it becomes bare and exposed to the sky. When it rains, each rain drop that hits bare soil dislodges a bunch of tiny silt and clay particles. These particles splash up and away, and then settle back on the surface in tiny little layers. Once the sun comes out, these layers on the top of the soil rapidly dry and form a crust, sometimes greater than an inch thick. This hard crust stops water from the next rain event from infiltrating. In one local field test, we found that a crusted soil like this only infiltrated about ½’’ of standing water in four hours. This means less water for the crops, less groundwater recharge, more erosion when this water runs off and rips down the nearest gully, and more flooding downstream. No-till prevents this crust from ever forming. With no-till, all of the crop residues are left on the soil surface, shielding the soil from these rain drop impacts, and preventing crusting. When the sun beats down, the soil stays cool and moist. This is the perfect habitat for the microbes in the soil. If these microbes are left alone to do their work, they create soil structure. When we say soil structure, we are talking about the little clumps of soil that look like cottage cheese, or a crumbly chocolate cake, when you dig up a shovel full of healthy soil. These little clumps are important because they create small spaces between the clumps. These small spaces are where the rain water can easily infiltrate down into the soil. In that same field test, we found that soils that had been no-tilled for years would infiltrate one inch of standing water in sometimes as little as 30 seconds! If the soil is tilled-and-tilled, these clumps get destroyed, and it becomes a bunch of tiny sand, silt, and clay particles, all packed together in one mass, kind of like a bag of dry concrete mix. Or in some cases, like a block of modeling clay. This is not how we want our soils to be, and it is not how our soils are in their undisturbed natural settings.
If you would like to start no-till planting, but have questions or concerns, get advice from other farmers who are no-tillers, or contact the local SWCD office.
If the upfront cost of a no-till planter or drill is preventing you from starting, there are grants available from MN Dept. of Agriculture to help pay for this type of equipment.
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