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The invisible subsoil compaction risk under no-till farming

T. Keller,Samuel Bickel,Dani Or

Published 2025 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

ABSTRACT

Significance No-till (NT), a key component of conservation agriculture, is presently practiced over 15% of global arable land. NT offers economic and ecological advantages over conventional tillage; however, it may result in persistent yield losses for certain crops. Here, we highlight an invisible threat to sustainable soil management under NT due to subsoil compaction. We describe a subsoil compaction risk driven by compaction events due to heavy farm vehicles occurring at intervals shorter than soil structure recovery times. Our analyses show that nearly 40% of global NT lands face a high subsoil compaction risk. Mitigating this risk through scaling of farm machinery to soil mechanical limits is essential to sustaining and realizing the full ecological and agronomic benefits of conservation agriculture.

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