Vesco Agricultural Technologies is a wholly owned subsidiary of Clean Seed Capital Group, a Company that is at the forefront of an ecological movement that strives to balance productivity with sustainability.

 

Clean Seed is uniquely positioned to contribute to and benefit from a rapidly emerging market opportunity in the sustainable agricultural sector.

 

Conventional tillage practices result in the displacement of protective surface plant residues and eventually lead to the depletion of organic matter in the soil. Exposure of the fragile, nutrient rich topsoils to the elements make them susceptible to drying out, allowing the soil to be either being blown away by wind or washed away by rains or irrigation systems. The long-term effect of conventional tillage practices has been demonstrated to result in soil erosion, water and air pollution, sedimentation of water systems, severe desertification and more recently, global warming.

 

The crop residues from No-Till farming help to preserve natural soil structures, retain moisture and sequester greenhouse gasses.Continuous conservation tillage, including reduced till and no-till practices, moves carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to the soil. Plants take in carbon dioxide and use it to build roots, stalks, grain and other parts.

 

Conservation tillage practices store carbon by preventing the disruption of organic matter in the soil, allowing the organic matter to accumulate in the ground rather than be released as carbon dioxide, as occurs through traditional tilling practices that are still widely used today. Additionally, conservation tillage helps improve soil and water quality, reduces on-farm fuel burn and emissions, and also enhances the ability of food producers to withstand climate extremes.

 

Management practices that allow soils to move carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to agricultural soils are explicitly cited as an important greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation option in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in the Kyoto Protocol to the UNFCCC, and in the most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Activities that increase on-farm soil carbon are explicitly included as credited activities in U.S. proposals to legislate a GHG cap-and-trade program, for both early action and inclusion going forward. In Canada, agricultural soil carbon crediting is also included in existing GHG reduction initiatives.

 

Conventional tillage practices deplete soil carbon, which degrades soil quality, reduces productivity, and results in the need for more fertilization, irrigation, and pesticides. No-till farming reverses these effects by slowing soil erosion and pollution runoff, benefiting aquatic ecosystems, improving agronomic productivity, and achieving food security. Extensive research confirms that in addition to increasing storage of carbon in the soil, no-till agriculture produces crop yields similar to or better than those obtained with conventional tillage practices.

 

Conventional farming techniques, which include tilling and ploughing land before planting, break up the natural soil structure, which provides a stronger anchor for row crop root systems. Destroying the soil structure also eliminates farmland habitat of farm-friendly earthworms, as an article published in the September 2004 issue of No-Till Farmer magazine reported.

 

Tunnels left by earthworms help keep water runoff to a minimum, which helps preserve farmland top soil, the article stated. The tunnels also help keep the ground from becoming too compact, especially with the use of heavy farming equipment.