Average Tillage Intensity has decreased, part 1.

When we examine just the 51 sites for which we have 5 years of data, we see that our growers have decreased their Tillage Intensity by 17 points over the last 5 years. This is very good news since lower tillage intensity is correlated with better soil health.  We use a Natural Resources Conservation Service soil erosion model to assign a soil disturbance score to all farm operations that compact or disturb soil.  For example, NRCS assigns a single pass with a subsoiler-chisel plow a score of 52.6, a disc harrow gets a score of 11.67, and hay cutting equipment gets a score of 0.15. We total all the scores from each implement used in a field in a calendar year to compute the tillage intensity score for each site.