No-tillage seeding in conservation agriculture: Second edition

Abstract

This book is a much-expanded and updated edition of a previous volume, published in 1996 as "No-tillage Seeding: Science and Practice". The base objective remains to describe, in lay terms, a range of international experiments designed to examine the causes of successes and failures in no-tillage. The book summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of no tillage. It highlights the pros and cons of a range of features and options, without promoting any particular product.Topics added or covered in more detail in the second edition include: • soil carbon and how its retention or sequestration interacts with tillage and no-tillage • controlled traffic farming as an adjunct to no-tillage • comparison of the performance of generic no-tillage opener designs • the role of banding fertilizer in no-tillage • the economics of no-tillage • small-scale equipment used by poorer farmers • forage cropping by no-tillage • a method for risk assessment of different levels of machine sophistication. © FAO and CAB International 2007. All rights reserved.