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by spurgu 1912 days ago
Ahmm, you might mean the one before that:

> The solution? Many ecologists agree the answer is small-scale, organic, bio-dynamic farming that includes methods that regenerate the soil instead of destroying it, such as composting, not tilling the soil, using cover crops, planting and diversity of crops and rotating them.

Not tilling the soil? What does that even mean?

Using cover crops? As a layman using cover crops seems like a good idea.

3 comments

No Till agriculture is exactly what it sounds like - not ploughing it up at the end of a growing season. This has a number of benefits including retaining soil structure and root structure, enhancing and retaining moisture profiles (since adopting this in the mid 90s on my parents farm in Australia we’ve been able to grow crops in drought years that would have otherwise been unviable) however it also comes with other requirements - for example prior to no-till ploughing was important to remove weeds and other unwanted field growth, this is usually accomplished by spraying including long term residual sprays which have lots of potentially dubious effects on the environment
> Not tilling the soil? What does that even mean?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-till_farming

Read a book. It’s called Kiss The Ground. Educate yourself, the knowledge is right there for you.