Is there organized 'opposition' to conservation tillage?

A student at UC Irvine, Saumya Bhardwaj, who is working on a research project on "how to prevent soil damage from monoculture," sent a query to the Conservation Tillage workgroup about policies or interest groups standing in the way of CT implementation.

"Upon doing my research, I couldn't find any group arguing against it so I just need advice on it," Bhardwaj wrote.

"Your question is actually a bit complicated," workgroup chair Jeff Mitchell responded.

"While there is certainly no organized opposition to the broader use or adoption of conservation tillage systems and practices, there are and have been many of what we might call 'barriers.' This is a very interesting area of inquiry and I can well understand your wondering about it.

"For a number of reasons -- tradition, unfamiliarity, fear of risks, uncertainty, lack of information, unwillingness or not seeing any need to change what has been done successfully in the past, lack of 'know how' about options, and many other things -- far wider adoption of these sorts of systems is only now beginning to be taken on.  Increasingly, however, more folks are becoming interested in the potential.  And, as evidenced by the responses we've received from our events last week, there WILL be more up take in the future."

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