Editor’s Note: Jay Fuhrer, retired NRCS soil health specialist and conservationist at the Menoken Farm demonstration farm in Menoken, N.D., wrote the 5 principles of soil health. In this series, Fuhrer explains each principle and provides an on-farm example of the theory in practice. In the second installment of this series, Fuhrer examines soil health principle 2: minimizing soil disturbance.

Driving through a landscape allows you to observe fields with and without soil disturbance. Physical disturbance or tillage is the easiest to see. Biological soil disturbance or limited photosynthetic time and limited plant diversity, along with chemical soil disturbance or pesticide use, are more difficult to see. Let’s look at a few terms listed below in a rough chronological order to better understand U.S. agriculture, and yes, they do overlap. These last 80 years will vary from region to region and even from farm to farm within the U.S.

1. Tillage

Tillage is as old as crop production and is well recorded in historical documents. Now we fast forward to the present and ask ourselves a simple question. How much soil loss can we tolerate per acre or per bushel? For myself, as a long-time conservationist, the answer is zero. The reasons listed for tillage are lengthy, but they usually have little to do with managing wind and water erosion, water quality and quantity, building soil aggregates, or carbon. Early best management practices for erosion control consisted of strip cropping, contour cropping, windbreaks, terraces, diversions, and waterways to name a…