FarmStart

The New Farm's crop roller in action.

A NoTill Crop Roller allows the farmer to create a mulch layer that crops such as corn or horticultural crops can then be planted into. This mulch layer helps to reduce weed pressure and increase soil moisture. The NoTill Crop Roller flattens, crimps and kills cover crops such as rye to create this layer of mulch. Maintaining a mulch covering on cropped soils provides numerous benefits:

• –> The soil retains moisture, plant roots are kept cool and moist, and wind erosion is greatly reduced.

• –> Weed suppression: the mulch means less manual and machine weeding and no need for herbicides The difference between using the crop roller and conventional no–till methods, is that this design allows for a 95% kill rate of the cover crop. Conventional no-till methods often use herbicides to kill the cover crop.

• –> Saves fuel: Mulching saves regular weeding passes, and the crop roller is front mounted so farmers can flatten the mulch and plant their seeds or seedlings at the same time.

• –> Undisturbed soils have been shown to have the highest level of living organisms (earthworms, beneficial fungi and bacteria and other elements of living soil). In ecological agriculture, these living soil organisms break down and convert organic matter efficiently to provide nutrients to crops.

FarmStart will be building the NoTill Crop Roller that was developed by The Rodale Institute. The crop roller will be available for use during the 2008 season.

Resources:

NoTill+: The New Farm

Sustainable Soil Management: ATTRA – National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service.