Conservation tillage in organic farming Maike Krauss and Paul Mäder, Research Institute of Organic Agriculture Newcastle University, UK

Broadly, conservation tillage addresses the first two elements of the conservation agriculture approach promoted by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) to meet future demands in a sustainable way: ‘continuous minimum

mechanical soil disturbance’ and ‘permanent organic soil cover’ (FAO, 2017). The second and third objectives [‘diversification of crop species grown in sequences and/ or associations’ (FAO, 2017)] are met in organic farming systems. Thus, integration of conservation tillage into organic farming might be a promising direction to improve the sustainability of its farming approach.