Table 2.

A comparison of tillage, conservation tillage (CT) and conservation agriculture (CA) for various issues.

issues	traditional tillage (TT)	conservation tillage (CT)	conservation agriculture (CA)
practice	disturbs the soil and leaves a bare surface	reduces the soil disturbance in TT and keeps the soil covered	minimal soil disturbance and soil surface permanently covered
erosion	wind and soil erosion: maximum	wind and soil erosion: reduced significantly	wind and soil erosion: the least of the three
soil physical health	the lowest of the three	significantly improved	the best practice of the three
compaction	used to reduce compaction and can also induce it by destroying biological pores	reduced tillage is used to reduce compaction	compaction can be a problem but use of mulch and promotion of biological tillage helps reduce this problem
soil biological health	the lowest of the three owing to frequent disturbance	moderately better soil biological health	more diverse and healthy biological properties and populations
water infiltration	lowest after soil pores clogged	good water infiltration	best water infiltration
soil organic matter	oxidizes soil organic matter and causes its loss	soil organic build-up possible in the surface layers	soil organic build-up in the surface layers even better than CT
weeds	controls weeds and also causes more weed seeds to germinate	reduced tillage controls weeds and also exposes other weed seeds for germination	weeds are a problem especially in the early stages of adoption, but problems are reduced with time and residues can help suppress weed growth
soil temperature	surface soil temperature: more variable	surface soil temperature: intermediate in variability	surface soil temperature: moderated the most
diesel use and costs	diesel use: high	diesel use: intermediate	diesel use: much reduced
production costs	highest costs	intermediate costs	lowest costs
timeliness	operations can be delayed	intermediate timeliness of operations	timeliness of operations more optimal
yield	can be lower where planting delayed	yields same as TT	yields same as TT but can be higher if planting done more timely