Earthquake scientists reveal how overplowing weakens soil at experimental farm

https://www.washington.edu/news/2026/03/19/earthquake-scientists-reveal-how-overplowing-weakens-soil-at-experimental-farm/

by Brajeshwar • 4 months ago

212 116 4 months ago

washington.edu

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aec0970

monkaiju• 4 months ago

I realize this exact data might be novel, but haven't we know that till-reliant farming was detrimental to soil for a long time? The no-till people are a huge part of the permaculture movement, also theres always folks talking about how important fungal networks are and how they're largely destroyed by tilling.

I mean even Karl Marx talked a ton about soil health and while he mostly talked about "metabolic rift" not tilling (that I know about) specifically it seems like a similar focus on short term output vs long term soil health.

I guess I'm just not clear on if there is actually a new serious problem being "revealed" as the title says or just being substantiated further.

R_D_Olivaw• 4 months ago

Agreed. This hardly seems like novel information. The method at which he arrived at it is neat though, fwiw.

At the very least it adds a new vector to the position. I was also unaware of how receptive to disruption fiber optic cables were. So, at least I learned that.

idontwantthis• 4 months ago

If no till is better and tilling is work, why do farmers till? Why not do less work and have a better result?

Zanfa• 4 months ago

In short term profits vs long term benefits, we all know who wins.

altairprime6• 4 months ago

Tilling requires less cognitive and logistical effort: you just apply calories to drag a blade through the soil and then dump seed in it. No-till requires things like “tracking the soil’s water retention levels”, “planting cover crops or even giving a field a year off”, and other such steps that in general can be summarized as “cost centers”.

Given the economic climate, few non-corporate farmers can afford that investment without the collapse of their farm, and few corporate farmers (none at nationwide scale, afaik) are willing to invest in cost centers that threaten to decrease, rather than increase, their rate of profit growth year-over-year. One could absolutely make a case that regulatory investment in such things be imposed upon megacorp farms first, with their processes and technology made available by subsidy to smaller farms; it would be enough to structure the subsidy as inversely proportional to the acreage reaped for value, with some language ensuring that the cost of investment into land farmed by contract to a megacorp is paid to the land operator. To prevent certain abuses, they’d also have to modify farming contract law to make maintaining long-term use of the land an inalienable right, so that unsustainable output-quota farming contracts are unenforceable.

This is an unlikely outcome in the U.S., but I still appreciate the researches providing more evidence in support of it.

Loughla• 4 months ago

No till requires access to first world country technology to make work. No till in the United States and similar countries is very very very established practice. It's not less work by any means, it's just a different kind of work with different machinery.

Source: was full time farmer until Grandpa died.

I'm guessing less developed countries still till the soil? I have no idea.

__bb• 4 months ago

The other replies make fair points, but tillage does still have it's uses.

Quick examples:

  - Inversion tillage (ploughing) to bury green manure crops or bulky organic manure
  - Subsoiling (deep tillage) can help break underground compaction, to allow better root penetration
  - Working with soils prone to surface capping

There's also a spectrum:

  - Full inversion tillage
  - Low/min-till
  - No-till

With a wide range of operations you can perform from one end to the other. You might end up taking a mix-and-match approach as years/fields demand it.

EDIT: This is a response to the question "why do it?" rather than anything in the context of the article itself.

markdown2• 4 months ago

Because no-till doesn't scale. It's incredible for market gardening to feed the rich who can pay a premium at a farmers market, but it's not going to feed the world.

ErroneousBosh5• 4 months ago

If you want to till, you need quite a big tractor that burns quite a lot of diesel to drag a cultivator through the soil. This is not the same as a plough, but at some point you'll end up ploughing.

Go and stick a spade in your garden and then try and drag it sideways. Yeah, not easy, eh? Bit too much to do by hand.

If you want to do "no till", you can get away with a less powerful tractor because you don't need to drag a cultivator through the soil, you just need one that can carry a 400 litre sprayer that blasts glyphosate all over everything every couple of weeks.

Eventually all that's left are the glyphosate-resistant plants that are choking out your crops.

And that's if your soil conditions are actually in any way suitable for no-till, which they often aren't.

altairprime6• 4 months ago

The original article is markedly better at explaining that this is substantiation through direct evidence of soil structure in live fields, as opposed to e.g. core samples or whatever.

https://www.washington.edu/news/2026/03/19/earthquake-scient...

huijzer• 4 months ago

After Marx’s philosophy caused a famine that led millions to die, you think he has useful agriculture knowledge to teach us?

AngryData• 4 months ago

You should maybe do a bit more reading on what Marx actually said and promoted versus what the USSR actually did in practice. Farming co-ops have been growing consistently since from before you were born, and is the most direct example of Marx's economic ideals in practice.

The USSR and Maoist China did nothing to follow Marxist principles, that was just their leadership's political scape goat to do whatever they wanted because they knew people weren't going to actually read Marx's works. The actual communists that followed Marxist principles are the ones that coined the term "tankies" to call out their leaders and their supporters for abandoning Marxist philosophy. You might as well talk shit about democracy and point at North Korea because they obviously must represent democracy, its in the name of their country and they talk about how awesome their elections are every year.

Also, what someone's overall economic ideals and philosophy amount to has fuck all to do with what are the best farming practices.

altairprime6• 4 months ago

Given the discovered ability of fiberoptics to sense water content, a kind of fiber fabric could be deployed to sense water levels across an entire field at the cubic yard level. The sensing controller would end up resembling an LCD addressing controller in reverse, with row/column/subpixel (sub-terranean-pixels!) breakout. Not that pixel-addressed farm fields are going to be efficient to work yet, lacking both processes and tooling for soil, seed, and harvest — but with sensing- and tool-assisted farming, we ought to be more able to harness the soul that we have without destroying it with the sledgehammer-nail “till the whole field” approach.

contingencies2• 4 months ago

Precision weeding is a thing. Some do it with poison, some do it with picking, some do it spraying hot oil, others do it spraying hot water. Any way you do it, it basically removes the weeding argument for tilling soil... but only if the weeds are small. If the weeds are large (think aggressive rhizomes or grasses) it wont be effective.

Other arguments for tilling exist: aeration, mixing-in of new organic content/fertilizer (not really necessary: green waste can just be dumped at surface level in many cases, and this is already becoming more common in mass-agriculture with 'cover crops'), furrow-creation for seed planting, etc.

Fundamentally, leaving a field uncovered for any length of time is bad and destroys the soil more than if you'd just let it grow weeds or a temporary crop for awhile then culled that as in-place fertilizer for a next crop.

A few months ago some friends of mine visited Australia from overseas and I took them to one of the older wineries in the area. The winery manages something like 10-20 major fields. They brought in a new viticulturalist to manage the fields and the first thing he did was introduce cover crops. In the tasting, they brought out soil cores from before and after the changes, which had only been in place for two years. The difference was tremendous. The old methods, unquestioned for decades, left the soil dry, poor, and largely infertile. The new methods restored organic matter, moisture retention, and a significant sub-surface biome.

altairprime6• 4 months ago

Noted(?). Um: did you mean to comment on the main post instead of my comment? I'm only talking about futuristic pixel-grid stuff related to the fiberoptics advancement, so I'm not quite sure what questions to ask here about the bulk of your response re: soil biome management; is there some connection I’m missing? Perhaps: Are there already tilling solutions that can do one square yard only, to whatever specified depth, in use at this winery?

datadrivenangel• 4 months ago

multispectral remote sensing is getting to the point where you can estimate water content of plants at the ~meter level almost from space! Drones can do higher resolution if you put sensors on them.

CrzyLngPwd• 4 months ago

That heavy clay soil in the main photo looks awful.

I have around 45 acres of heavy clay, poor agricultural land, which would look very similar to that if we allowed heavy machinery, or even an ATV, on it when it is sodden.

trusted_brother• 4 months ago

Yes this is entirely true and we must ban farming immediately.

steve_adams_86• 4 months ago

Yeah, why don't people just go to the grocery store for food instead of making a mess with farming?

regus• 4 months ago

Overplowing is what created the dust storms of the Great Depression Dust Bowl era.

youknownothing• 4 months ago

that and the removal of the native grass, which largely kept the soil in place.

ErroneousBosh5• 4 months ago

That and only raising arable crops without turning fields over to pasture and allowing cattle and sheep to graze them.

You have to do that, so the grasses and clovers can replenish the soil.

We eat because there's six inches of earth, it rains, and cows shit solid gold.

heathrow83829• 4 months ago

to till or not to till, that's the question. one way to look at is check the yields that result from dig vs no dig. Charles dowding did exactly that. for seven years he had two plots, one where he dug and one where he didn't. in each one he added the same amount of compost and grew teh same crops on both sides.

Overall, the nodig plot harvest 10% more. but here's where it gets interesting. those yields were not uniformly spread across the vegetable types. if you dig into the data, you'll see, some did quite worse with dig and some did quite better. guess which ones did better on dig? Potatoes, Rutabagas, carrots and parsnips and cabbage all did better in Dig! roughly to the tune of about Potatoes 21%, carrots 21%, Rutabaga 14%, Cabbage, 11%, broad beans 10% better. it's all published in his books. Everything else did better with no dig. Shallots especially did 33% better with no-dig, ales 21% better, onions 22% better with no dig.

chongli2• 4 months ago

The no dig method has taken on a life of its own, almost a religion. It's probably a mistake for most people though. "One dig" is almost always going to be superior, given soil that has never been used for gardening before. Trying to start a no dig garden in some heavily compacted, organic-poor, heavy clay soil is going to lead to extreme disappointment.

fuzzy_biscuit• 4 months ago

We call that New Jersey here!

hansvm2• 4 months ago

Man, I wish I had access to heavily compacted, organic-poor, heavy-clay soil. It's the 80% rock that makes even basic tasks a day-long chore.

chairmansteve2• 4 months ago

"Trying to start a no dig garden in some heavily compacted, organic-poor, heavy clay soil is going to lead to extreme disappointment".

For sure. In Dowdings method you put a quite thick layer of compost on top of the existing soil. You then top up the compost every year.

cyberjar• 4 months ago

I thought that was always the case. Dig as required to get your soil to the correct type for what you want to grow, then let it be and don't dig.

Digging to turn the soil seems like an old adage that has been passed down through generations, but modern scientific studies are now showing it provides very little to no benefit for yields.

jimnotgym2• 4 months ago

Trying to start a no dig garden in some heavily compacted, organic-poor, heavy clay soil is going to lead to extreme disappointment.

If you start with Charles Dowdings 6 inches of compost on top, that is not necessarily true. The soil comes to life as worms go mad pulling that compost down into the soil.

It actually works rather well. Year 1 can be very good. Year 2 even better.

The real disappointment in Year 1 is the amount of weeds that find 6 inches of compost no barrier at all! With digging you can get a lot of perennial weed roots out, and hoe off the annuals. With no dig you have to pull them.

I'm not a idealogue, so actually suggest glyphosate before compost...but people don't normally like that suggestion.

samirillian• 4 months ago

The one straw revolution guy planted root vegetables among fruit trees in orchards I wonder if that would make a difference

dimitri-vs• 4 months ago

Considering the amount of fungicide/pesticide needed even (especially?) for organic fruit, it would be suboptimal.

obfuscator• 4 months ago

For context: The guy is called Fukuoka and it is the best book I read last year: https://library.uniteddiversity.coop/Permaculture/The_One_St...

ikidd5• 4 months ago

The biggest difference in no-till is water infiltration and retention. The next is ability to work land earlier with equipment that would sink in tilled soil when wet. Another is less equipment passes, for fuel use as well as owning the equipment needed to do those passes.

On the con side, no-till trades diesel for spray costs.

ErroneousBosh5• 4 months ago

It's almost like all arable land and all arable crops aren't identical and trivially interchangeable, eh?

bluGill5• 4 months ago

A general rule of thumb is when you switch corn from to to notill for the first seven years yields will be worse, but in the eighth year and after they are better.

antisthenes• 4 months ago

I have a really hard time believing someone can keep all other variables constant for 8 years to definitively say that yields will be better because of switching to no-till, rather than any other multitude of factors.

ggm• 4 months ago

Angus Calder "the people's war" about the british home front in WW2 notes older farmworkers in the south downs virtually crying as land which had been unploughed since the norman conquest was put to the plough because of grain shortages from the U boat war.

Maybe they knew a thing or two (low earthquake zone, it has to be said)

nodesocket• 4 months ago

I admit farming knowledge is not my strong suit, but I thoroughly enjoyed the Amazon series Clarkson’s Farm. If you want to see a country destroy its agriculture industry, look no further than the UK. Their shortsightedness, bureaucracy, and blind acceptance of doomer environmentalists essentially bankrupted farmers in the country side.

tonyedgecombe• 4 months ago

I wouldn’t watch Clarkson’s Farm for its educational value. It’s pure entertainment.

Harry’s Farm on YouTube is much better.

ErroneousBosh5• 4 months ago

Both are good. Clarkson's Farm is surprisingly accurate.

worthless-trash2• 4 months ago

Zero / minimal tillage has been a thing for decades, im surprised this is news.

torlok• 4 months ago

It's not. The news is the usage of fiberoptics to do the measurement, and prove the effects of tillage scientifically. The title manages to both confuse tillage with plowing, and bury the lede.

worthless-trash2• 4 months ago

Thank you for the explanation, now the article is available to read, it has stopped being HN hugged to death.

prewett• 4 months ago

I think the article's theory on why people plow is wrong: it is not to let the soil hold more water, but to get rid of weeds. I know someone who did no-till for a while, and he found that you have to spray with glyphosate to keep the weeds down. Eventually the weeds that had evolved to be glyphosate-resistent spread to his area, and he had to go back to regular plowing. He said that the no-till really improved the soil, though.

Saline95154• 4 months ago

No-till requires to have different crop patterns, where you plant again right after harvesting to avoid weeds overgrowth.

erikerikson• 4 months ago

And/or tarp to occultate the weeds and dormant seedstock

modo_mario2• 4 months ago

I think no till makes most/only sense for intensive market gardening. Where you're weeding by hand or in greenhouses and maybe applying a recurring layer of compost and maybe cover crops to prevent the soil from being bare.

tbossanova2• 4 months ago

Sounds great, let’s have more of that!

bluGill5• 4 months ago

Spraying a little glyphosate emits a lot less CO2 than plowing.

dyauspitr2• 4 months ago

Weeding actually seems like a fantastic usecase for those humanoid robots like figure, unitree, atlas etc. it’s easy and accurate plant recognition is mostly a solved problem.

qup• 4 months ago

They've got some robots that do it already, targeting weeds with lasers.

WaitWaitWha• 4 months ago

Just to be clear, plowing and tilling are not the same thing, and this article implies the researchers might be using it interchangeably. They bundle different soil-disturbance practices together, irrelevant of their uses, and potential compaction impact. Of course, tilling can also just be used as a generic term for all of the soil management in farms, but this is never explained.

It is also unclear if the paper is removing traffic compaction or it is part of their results. when an MF 8700 with 23,800 pounds rolls around it will compact things. A lot. I have a lunch box to prove it.

Would love to see no-till vs shallow till vs deep plowing. For this paper, they should have introduce and have primary conclusion around the technical data gathering as a novel idea, not draw conclusion from the collected data.

The physics and sensing seems rigorous. Understanding of agricultural taxonomy, farming, is coarse at best. 40 hours of total data during rain is a wee bit short. 2cm depth for the fiber is only going to sense near- or surface. Most crops go deeper than that. Single-site experiment on a single type of soil is very narrow.

To me, plowing (like a chisel plow or moldboard) is to break up soil, and 'folds' old crop like corn stalks back in. It is also the first step for never-used land prep for growing stuff. Usually, beginning of season, compacting, or new site. 8 to 20 inches deep. can flip the soil upside down.

Tilling gets the soil ready for seed, aeration, crumble large lumps and fill larger gaps on the surface, or mix fertilizer/compost into soil. 4 to 12 inches deep.

Discing aka harrowing (disc harrow) usually will cut the remaining roots a few inches deep, often done post plowing. good for putting last years leftovers just a few inches under. 4 to 6 inches.

Note that it seems that as the field size gets smaller, the tilling vs harrowing seems to flip? At least how people consider using them.

(edit: I am all over with this one, but I think the gist comes through.)

universa1• 4 months ago

What one has to keep in mind as well, that even though tractors are really heavy they spread that weight across a large area (using low tire pressures and having massive tires to begin with). So, iirc, the per area impact is even lower then a human. It impacts a lot larger area, though!

Plowing vs tilling is also very much about soil erosion and depends very much of the location you are in.

bluGill5• 4 months ago

Compaction is sublinear with weight, make the tractor heavier so it combacts more makes a small difference where the tires are - but you can now pull something bigger (assuming horsepower) and that means less of the field is touched by tires and in turn less compaction. compaction is worse where the tires touch but they touch less.

the above is also why tires are better than tracks in many cases. The tire has more compaction, but when you turn it touches less land and so overall is better than a track.

of course every soil is different. For details of you particular land you need an expert who knows your soil.

bell-cot2• 4 months ago

This is why I try to look at the HN comments first. Then, maybe look at the article.

swores• 4 months ago

I often do to, so this reply is not a criticism of your general point, however in this case your would have been better informed to read the actual thing and not the comment you replied to!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47529291

tecleandor• 4 months ago

If you check the paper, it doesn't say "plowing" anywhere. Just tilling. And these are the parameters:

Tillage had been applied at three depths commonly used in farming—no tillage, 10 cm, and 25 cm—while compaction had been imposed using two tire pressure levels—70 kPa for both front and rear tires, and 120 kPa for front and 150 kPa for rear tires.

PunchyHamster• 4 months ago

...isn't loosening the soil the entire point of plowing ? Like, congratulations, you have discovered what farmers already knew.

Also, just plowing is pointless, the point is to grew plants better, ignoring that and just looking at moisure at some level is pointless

destitude• 4 months ago

Let alone the wind erosion from having exposed soil over winter.

Earthquake scientists reveal how overplowing weakens soil at experimental farm

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