Organic farming tends to involve lots of tillage, but tillage can reduce organic matter and soil tilth, making future tillage passes harder and hurting plant health. Fertility can also be limiting on larger scales if farmers don’t have access to enough manure.

A new covercrop/tillage technique from Germany is catching interest because it can build organic matter, improve tilth, and raise fertility. “Surface fermentation” (Flächenrotte in German) involves growing dense covercrops, then, in a single pass, lush covercrops are sprayed with a microbial inoculant, flail mowed, and incorporated with shallow tillage. The lush covercrops provide high-energy fuel for microbial fermentation, with nutrients fixed onto soil colloids. And the shallow tillage (2’’) preserves roots for future microbial inoculation into the surface layer.