Long‐term research avoids spurious and misleading trends in sustainability attributes of no‐till
Citations Over TimeTop 10% of 2020 papers
Abstract
Agricultural management recommendations based on short-term studies can produce findings inconsistent with long-term reality. Here, we test the long-term environmental sustainability and profitability of continuous no-till agriculture on yield, soil water availability, and N2 O fluxes. Using a moving window approach, we investigate the development and stability of several attributes of continuous no-till as compared to conventional till agriculture over a 29-year period at a site in the upper Midwest, US. Over a decade is needed to detect the consistent effects of no-till. Both crop yield and soil water availability required 15 years or longer to generate patterns consistent with 29-year trends. Only marginal trends for N2 O fluxes appeared in this period. Relative profitability analysis suggests that after initial implementation, 86% of periods between 10 and 29 years recuperated the initial expense of no-till implementation, with the probability of higher relative profit increasing with longevity. Importantly, statistically significant but misleading short-term trends appeared in more than 20% of the periods examined. Results underscore the importance of decadal and longer studies for revealing consistent dynamics and emergent outcomes of no-till agriculture, shown to be beneficial in the long term.
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