No-Till Farming on the Rise with Better Profits and less Fertilizer Run-off

[pnwmom]

3. This appears to be a promotional piece for GMO's and Roundup.

From the article:

No-till farming uses a mix of plants to create a thick mat of bio-mass which holds more water and crowds and shades out weeds. After a harvest, a cover crop is planted -- so called because it covers the soil with nutrient dense vegetation such as vetches and legumes which hold nitrogen. Then when the next cash crop is to be planted, rather than plowing the soil and opening it up to erosion, the cover crop is killed and rolled down flat. The new crop is planted through this mat of dead plant matter. The dead cover crop fertilizes the new crop, keeps out weeds and hold water and soil in place much longer than plowed soil.

How is the "cover crop" killed exactly?

The only information I could find was here:

Mr. McAlister, for example, still uses nitrogen fertilizer. He plants seeds that are genetically modified for drought or herbicide resistance. And he depends on herbicides like Roundup to kill off his cover crops before sowing the crops he grows for cash.

Another point of view:

http://earthopensource.org/gmomythsandtruths/sample-page/5-gm-crops-impacts-farm-environment/5-5-myth-gm-enabled-adoption-environmentally-friendly-till-farming/

GMO proponents claim that GM herbicide-tolerant crops, notably GM Roundup Ready (RR) crops, are environmentally friendly because they allow farmers to adopt the no-till system of cultivation. No-till farming avoids ploughing in order to conserve soil and water. It is claimed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by sequestering more carbon in the soil.

In no-till cultivation of GM herbicide-tolerant crops, farmers try to control weeds through herbicide applications rather than mechanically, by ploughing.

However, USDA data show that the introduction of GM crops did not significantly increase no-till adoption.

A study comparing the environmental impact of GM RR and non-GM soy found that once the ecological damage caused by herbicides is taken into account, the negative environmental impact of GM soy is greater than that of non-GM soy in both no-till and tillage systems. Also, the adoption of no-till raised the negative environmental impact level, whether the soy was GM RR or non-GM.

No-till fields do not sequester more carbon than ploughed fields when carbon sequestration at soil depths greater than 30 cm is taken into account.

Claims of environmental benefits from no-till herbicide-tolerant farming systems are unjustified.