USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service, Northeastern Regional Field Office, 2013 survey of tillage practices for major field crops found 62.3 percent Pennsylvania farmland used no-till practices, up from 59.8 percent last year..

The survey is funded by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture and conducted in conjunction with NASS’s annual June Agricultural Survey.

In 2013, conventional tillage was used on 16.1 percent of the major crop acreage in Pennsylvania, down from the 17.7 percent recorded in 2012.

No-till was practiced on 62.3 percent of the major crop acreage, and other conservation tillage practices were used on the remaining 21.6 percent. Corn and soybeans are the two crops with the highest acreages. Conventional till was used on 18.3 percent of the corn acreage, no-till was practiced on 60.0 percent of the acreage, and the remaining 21.7 percent of the corn acreage used other conservation tillage practices. For soybeans, conventional till was used on 7.1 percent of the acreage, no-till was practiced on 73.2 percent of the acreage, and the remaining 19.6 percent of the acreage was cultivated using other conservation tillage practices.

The Tillages Practices Survey is available online.

7/8/2013