Minimum Tillage Technology as an Alternative to Traditional Systems: Environmental Implications and Their Relevance to Poland and Other CEES

Abstract

In North-Western Europe, in the 1960’s and 1970’s cereal farming increased at the expense of livestock farming. The labour force decreased and, together with the costs of machinery operations, became more expensive. Thus simpler alternatives to conventional plough tillage, termed minimum or conservation tillage, became attractive as offering savings in the cost of establishing crops [1]. A further incentive was the availability of herbicides for weed control in non-ploughing systems. In the UK, the main motivation for the use of minimum tillage is to allow the maximum area of crop, particularly the high-yielding autumn varieties, to be sown in the limited period when the soil conditions are suitable [1]. However, actual use of minimum tillage in the UK, as in most of North-Western Europe is minor because of problems of reliability, straw disposal, weed control, soil drainage status and soil compaction [1]. In Scandinavia, minimum tillage is used mainly for reducing erosion risk by maintaining an undisturbed soil surface during winter and early spring [2]. In drier regions as in USA and the Canadian prairies, conservation tillage is widely used mainly to reverse or slow down soil degradation processes associated with traditional plough tillage and to conserve soil moisture and reduce input costs rather than to give any short-term gain in yields [3]. In Eastern Europe the approach to minimum tillage has differed from that in Western Europe because of the different socio-economic conditions [4]. Minimum tillage in Eastern Europe has still not reached its expected usage because of the perceived risk to crop productivity, lack of research and because suitable soils are confined to the more fertile and well-drained soils in favourable climatic conditions and those which have been agriculturally improved [4].