NISKU, Alta. – Carlos Crovetto says the soil was already worn out in 1953 when he took over the Chequen Farm in the mountains 400 kilometres south of Santiago, Chile.
“This is why agriculture was hardly a profitable activity,” the successful Chilean farmer said during the Direct Seeding Advantage workshop held in Nisku, Alta., on Nov. 22-23.
“It was barely worthwhile to put seeds into that ground.”
Crovetto said the 1,000 acre parcel of land had been under cultivation for 250 years. With slopes up to 35 percent and high annual rainfall, all A horizon soils had long ago eroded to the Pacific Ocean, along with most of the B horizon.
Read Also
VIDEO: Green Lightning and Nytro Ag win sustainability innovation award
Nytro Ag Corp and Green Lightning recieved an innovation award at Ag in Motion 2025 for the Green Lightning Nitrogen Machine, which converts atmospheric nitrogen into a plant-usable form.
Nearly every field was down to the C horizon, a hard packed clay that turned solid as concrete under the hot summer Chilean sun.
“Our land had lost three feet or about one metre of soil depth,” he said.
“The parent material that was left was a white colored clay. It was not true soil.”
For five frustrating years, he tried to grow crops on clay. He finally decided he had to either give up on the farm or make significant changes to the way he was doing things. In 1959, he stopped all plowing on the farm, replacing it with lighter cultivation passes.
After 19 years of running the farm with his own, self-styled minimum tillage system, he concluded that he was making progress, but he had to take his approach one step further.
In 1978 Crovetto abandoned all tillage. Although the practice of zero-till farming was in its infancy in various parts of the world at that time, including the Canadian Prairies, there was no formalized practice or method for seeding directly into uncultivated soil. Nor was there a universal word to describe it.
Crovetto said that in 1978, he wrote the words “no-tillage” on a piece of paper. His self-directed memo told him that he must stop digging into the clay and instead begin building a new soil horizon.
“It took time for me to realize that you cannot work with the clay to turn it into productive soil,” Crovetto said.
“The properties of clay are locked in by nature. But you don’t need to be sad about that because you can build a new layer of humus over the top of the clay. Then you can profitably farm those fields.”
In the 27 years since Crovetto scribbled “no-tillage” on that piece of paper, organic matter on his farm has gone from an average of below three percent to above six percent.
He has watched the depth of his new A horizon top soil layer grow by an average of one millimetre per year. And as the rate of growth for his new top soil gains momentum, the C horizon clay is gradually softening to allow penetration of water, nutrients and roots.
“Today I feel happy to work this bad land because we have built a new soil with humus. This soil was not here in 1953. Today it grows good crops of wheat, corn, lupines, peas and fababeans.”
Fields that once produced little or no crop now produce 335 bushels of corn per acre and 152 bu. of wheat per acre.
“So, I can brag about this, but really, it happened because I did nothing. I quit doing our traditional farming practices and left the soil alone, and that is why it has become profitable. I quit plowing and burning and cultivating and I quit taking the straw away. The less work I did on the land, the more productive it became.”
Crovetto said there was no sign of earthworm activity in the fields when he began farming.
“But today, the earthworms on my farm are my best friends, my best helpers. They work in the soil for me. And each year they work deeper into the clay. Farming in this no-till manner is not possible without earthworms. These animals are the best plows for the soil.”
Crovetto didn’t develop this experimental no-till farming method solely by the seat of his pants. On three different occasions, he took time off from managing his farm so he could attend university agriculture courses in Kentucky and California, where he concentrated on soil science.
He said his studies showed him that managing crop residue on the soil surface fosters heterotrophs, which are microorganisms responsible for digesting and transforming organic carbon into the humic material that improves the soil. This further re-enforced his resolve to encourage other Chilean farmers to stop burying, burning and baling their crop residue.
Crovetto said his new farming method took another giant step forward when his other main ally joined the battle in 1979. He drew chuckles of approval from the workshop audience when he said, “God bless Roundup. Without Roundup, we could not perform no-till farming. I had stopped plowing in 1959, but it wasn’t until I bought my first litre of Roundup in 1979 that I could truly perform no-till farming. In those 20 years between 1959 and 1979, weed control was very difficult. We really had no good chemicals until 1979. The progress in herbicides since 1979 has been fantastic.
“When Roundup first arrived in Chile, each litre cost more than a litre of Chivas Regal, but it was worth it. It was $45 per litre for many years, but it has made it profitable for me to perform no-till farming.”
