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Comment by hinkley | Hacker News Reader

> There's a reason the majority of farms in the US and Canada are already no-till.

I have heard this several times lately. But I grew up around tilled (sometimes double tilled) farmland, and I still see a lot of tilled earth when I'm out of town and think to look.

What do we mean by most and what definition of no-till are we using?

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We mean more than 50% of the farmed acres, and the definition is not tilling. Using a no-till planter to seed through the residue of the previous crop or cover crop. Most of the tilled acres are using some form of conservation tillage too, like strip till. Get out of Ontario and go look at a real farm.

I do not know where you getting this data. I can tell you that in Europe there is very little land that is not tilled. Even on below if exclude grasslands you find that 70-90% of arable land is tilled.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

From the US and Canadian governments. That's why I said "in the US and Canada".

Even US and Canada no-till farming is still around 20-30%. It higher than Europe because of more intense use of herbicides and different farming practices.

https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2017/11/30/saving-money-time...

Wider use of crop rotation, GMO, farming robots and micro-irrigation might reduce the need for tilling but it is still very far of. Farming is heavily subsidized but still not very profitable. Margins are small and no-till methods are not economically viable for most places.

Just repeating nonsense isn't productive. If a single farm can do it, then it is possible. So stop saying it isn't possible. Welcome to 2011: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/95-640-x/2011001/p1/p1-0...

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