Exploring the Economic and Environmental Sustainability of No-Till Organic Sweet Potato Production

View the project final report

• 2016 annual report

Commodities

• Vegetables: sweet potatoes

Practices

• Crop Production: conservation tillage
• Soil Management: general soil management

 This project was conceived as a way to explore ideas that are commonly called no-till organic production and attempt to test how well those ideas would integrate into sweet potato production.  In order to trial minimal tillage on my farm, I decided to compare 2 different systems of “no-till” organic agriculture with my standard tillage based production system.  One of these systems consists of a deep straw bed that is planted into, and the deep mulch provides ample cover to smother any weeds that could germinate.  The second system is often referred to under the moniker no-till but is really more intermittent tillage, in that the field is tilled in the preceding season to plant a cover crop, which is then rolled prior to planting and ideally that residue will prevent weed competition for the crops. This project tested these ideas in trial plots in 2016 and 2017 and presented the information to other farmers in a field day, as well as numerous workshop and conference presentations to share what was learned. The basic conclusion from our trials is that neither of these two no-till options are feasible for our farm to use to produce sweet potatoes.  Much can be learned in failure and the research report highlights several challenges that could be helpful for anyone considering working with either of these two systems. These include mulch sourcing, cover crop termination, weed control and wildlife management.