No-till farming came into practice following World War II and involves planting crops without tilling the soil, according to the PA No-Till Alliance, which sponsored the annual Summer Soil Health Field Day. Rather than tilling the land, seeds are planted through the remains of old crops by planters that cut seed furrows, place seeds and close the furrows.

The day’s educational demonstrations, presentations and panel discussions were kicked off by keynote speaker Monte Bottens, a fifth-generation farmer whose family farm in Illinois has utilized no-till farming since the 1990s.

Bottens said that at least 6 to 7 feet of his family farm’s topsoil had eroded away due to tilling. By tilling and not planting cover crops, he said that farmers are “not impacting $2 an acre this year in your checkbook, you’re impacting five, 10, 15, 30, 100 years from now.”

“You’re impacting the descendants of yourself or of other families,” Bottens said. “You’ll never know. Everything you do, every decision you make has a long-lasting impact on the future.”

Pennsylvania No-Till Alliance volunteer Bill Chain adjusts a bucket of sediment runoff during a rain simulation on Thursday at Penn England Farm. That bucket hangs under the lone patch of soil that does not have a history of no-till farming. Mirror photo by Rachel Foor

However, Bottens said that no-tilling by itself is not enough, and that farmers need to also pay attention to soil health. Everything that happens on the Bottens Family Farm revolves around his five soil health principles: minimizing soil disturbance, keeping the soil covered, keeping something growing all the time, maximizing crop diversity and integrating livestock.

“When we get livestock out of barns and back on the land grazing, it has twice the impact of no-till, of cover crops, of diversity, all of those things we do,” Bottens said. “I have found that when we graze livestock, that’s twice as good.”

Bottens has herds of cows graze the cover crops before planting regular crops. By doing this, the cover crop is killed off without using herbicides while the field is fertilized by the cows.

“We’ve seen amazing things where areas that wouldn’t grow anything yielded 180 bushel of corn,” Bottens said. “We’ve seen just tremendous increases in yield just as a result of this.”

Bottens also described how practicing no-till farming provides farmers an opportunity to fix the water cycle, which he said was “broken.”

To create topsoil, farmers often need to spread nitrogen, Bottens said. Excess nitrogen leaks into the air, becoming nitrous oxide; runs off into waterways that lead to the Chesapeake Bay, causing algae blooms; and seeps into the groundwater, which can lead to blue baby syndrome.

“There’s no such thing as loss,” Bottens said. “It’s all pollution. To the degree your crop has not utilized what you applied, you have polluted.”

This sentiment was exemplified during a rain simulation performed by alliance volunteers Dave McLaughlin and Bill Chain. Using a sprinkler system, a half-inch of water was sprayed upon five pieces of topsoil taken from Penn England Farm. Four of the five had a history of not being tilled and had varying amounts and states of vegetation, while one had a history of being tilled.

“What we do out here in standard practice affects the water quality,” McLaughlin said. “It’s sort of focused toward water quality because we don’t want anything running off our fields.”

The buckets hanging in the back of the exhibit caught any water filtration while those in the front caught runoff, Chain said.

While the four runoff buckets beneath the soil with a history of no-till farming remained almost empty following the rain simulation, the bucket beneath the soil that had been tilled was about a third full.

“So, this bucket is disastrous for the local stream,” Chain said. “If you’re thinking about bodies of water further away and that sediment being carried to those bodies of water, it carries with it phosphorus, which is bonded to those soil particles and nitrogen, which is water soluble. Both of those things increase algae growth.”

The runoff eventually affects the Chesapeake Bay, as the sediment settles upon vegetation growing on the bay floor, preventing photosynthesis and destroying the habitat for microorganisms “that feed everything else,” Chain said.

“That’s also money,” Chain said. “That’s the other side of it. I don’t know how long it takes to make top soil, but I know nitrogen and phosphorus are expensive.”

Pennsylvania Secretary of Agriculture Russell Redding also spoke during the Field Day, detailing the way the State Conservation Commission and Resource Enhancement and Protection Program helped keep farms in the state.

The REAP Program, which enables farmers, businesses and landowners to earn state income tax credits to offset the cost of implementing conservation practices, has invested a total of $400 million into farms throughout the state, Redding said.

“The single largest investor in conservation in Pennsylvania is the landowner,” Redding said. “It’s not the government. We facilitate and encourage it, but I’m always mindful that the person who owns the land is the largest investor.”

Through REAP, the State Conservation Commission has helped about 3,500 farms with about 9,500 projects, with about half of the investments going toward no-till equipment, Redding said.

He added that the commission and REAP has helped about 300 farm transitions and that every day, they hope farms and businesses stay in the state and remain viable.

“Hope is not a plan,” Redding said. “Hope is good, but it’s not a plan. So we need to be very intentional about making sure that we invest in these farms.”

Mirror Staff Writer Rachel Foor is at 814-946-7458.