Tools and Equipment to Produce Drought Resistant Soils - Trends, concepts and challenges in a global perspective -

Conservation tillage and even no tillage as a practice is not new. However, there appears to exist evidence that in some cases no-tillage is successfully incorporated into a new concept of truly sustainable agriculture, gaining popularity as “conservation agriculture” all over the world. Conservation Agriculture is, besides no-tillage and direct planting, based on very old concepts such as green manures and crop rotations, but combining these principles in a new way. Green manure is used as cover crop to provide permanent soil cover even between crops. Conservation Agriculture tries to “least interfere” with natural processes. It is as such a practical solution to produce drought resistant soils. This naturally has implications on the required engineering contributions. The paper shows how these differences become visible also in the engineering approaches towards no-tillage technologies and how they contribute to exponential adoption rates in some parts of the world, versus relatively low acceptance in other parts. Examples of different farming operations within Conservation Agriculture are shown and the implications for equipment design and mechanization needs are discussed. Those operations include the land preparation, planting, crop husbandry, residue management and harvest. Special consideration is given to machine traffic and compaction.