Food-and-agriculture news outlet kicks off year-long series on rural America with story about no-till farming

Soybeans sprout in a cover crop of rye. (USDA photo)

Civil Eats is kicking off a year-long series, the Rural Environment and Agriculture Project, about how our nation's food is raised and the rural Americans who do it.

Rural America, Civil Eats says, is undergoing big changes; small farmers are struggling to stay on their land, more people are moving to the city, jobs are hard to come by, and businesses and hospitals are closing: And the cultural divide is growing too. "Our hope is that by reporting on these tensions in modern rural America and showcasing solutions where agriculture can help to revitalize communities, we will expand our readers’ awareness of the interdependence of American agriculture and food systems. Of course, we realize that many of these stories will raise challenges that don’t have immediate solutions. And we welcome you to join us on this journey and share your thoughts and ideas along the way."

The first story in the series is about the longstanding move toward no-till farming, in which farmers plant seeds without breaking up the soil first. "According to the USDA’s latest data, by 2010-11, no-till farming had grown to the point where roughly 40 percent of the corn, soybean, wheat, and cotton grown per year in the U.S. used either no-till or a half-step technique called strip-tilling. That works out to around 89 million acres per year," Twilight Greenaway reports. The technique has been around for more than 50 years, since herbicides and precision planting tools made it feasible. Farmers traditionally embraced it as a way of improving yields or cutting costs, but now some are touting it as a way to improve the soil, retain water and organic matter, and sequester carbon. Some see it as a way to cut down on synthetic herbicides and fertilizers.

At the recent No Till On the Plains conference, a fourth-generation farmer from Arkansas who has been using the no-till method for several years said, "I don’t need seed treatments for my cotton anymore. I’ve taken the insecticide off my soybeans. I’m working toward getting rid of fungicide … I’m hoping that eventually my soil will be healthy enough that I can get rid of all of it all together."