No-Till vs. Tillage: Which Really Lets the Water In?

mtsausen
Aug 11
4 min read

Updated: Aug 20

Jeff Hemenway, former Soil Health Conservationist, pointing out Roots in the Subsoil at 80” in a No-till, Cover-Cropped Field in Brookings, SD

When a commenter wrote on one of our recent videos Dwayne Beck, no-till , he put it bluntly:

“Without tillage water won’t penetrate. I rented 400 acres that was zero till for decades and it was like a concrete block.”

That comment — echoed by others in our threads — hits at one of the most common criticisms of no-till. If the soil is hard, if water isn’t soaking in, surely tillage is the fix? It’s a reasonable assumption. But is it backed by the evidence?

To answer that, I want to take you back to a visit I made with Dr. Tom Schumacher, retired soil scientist from South Dakota State University. Tom was one of the first people I met in South Dakota after starting my work on soil health, and I still remember standing beside his large rainfall simulators — the kind used for the Universal Soil Loss Equation — as he explained how he tested infiltration after different tillage treatments.

Four Years After CRP — Three Systems, Big Differences

Schumacher’s experiments compared land that had been in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), then managed for four years under three systems:

Moldboard plow
Chisel plow
No-till

Using time-domain reflectometry (TDR) probes, he tracked soil moisture at 10 cm (4 in) and 40 cm (16 in) during simulated rain events. The results were striking:

The moldboard plow plots saw rapid runoff, with little moisture reaching 40 cm.
Chisel plow plots performed better, but still lagged.
No-till plots allowed deeper moisture movement, retained structure, and reduced runoff losses .

Those findings were consistent with a body of work Schumacher and colleagues published through the 1990s on post-CRP management and tillage impacts on infiltration and erosion (Lindstrom et al., 1994; Lindstrom et al., 1998; Schumacher et al., 1995).

Why No-Till Sometimes Fails at Infiltration

If that’s the case, why do some producers — like the commenter — find that water won’t penetrate after years of no-till? Research suggests several reasons:

Legacy compaction — Historic tillage pans or livestock traffic can persist for decades if not addressed with rotation, rooting depth, and biological activity (Kladivko, 2001).
Low residue or cover crop use — Without a protective cover, raindrops can seal the surface even in no-till fields.
Soil type and rainfall patterns — Fine-textured soils in arid or sub-humid regions may form crusts under certain conditions.
Management plateau — No-till alone is not a silver bullet; gains accelerate when combined with diversity, living roots, and minimal disturbance (Basche & DeLonge, 2019).

Peer-Reviewed Evidence: The Midwest Picture

Multiple Midwestern and Plains studies reinforce Schumacher’s findings when no-till is part of a broader system:

Kladivko (2001) found that continuous no-till in Indiana improved macroporosity and infiltration rates compared to conventional tillage, particularly when rotations and cover crops were used.
Huang et al. (2012) reported higher steady-state infiltration rates in long-term no-till than tilled systems across multiple sites in the U.S.
Basche & DeLonge (2019) synthesized data from 89 studies, concluding that cover crops (often paired with no-till) increased infiltration by a median of 35%.
Pittelkow et al. (2015) cautioned that short-term no-till transitions may show neutral or negative infiltration benefits, underscoring the need for multi-year commitment.

When Tillage “Helps” — and at What Cost

There’s no denying that tillage can temporarily improve infiltration by breaking surface crusts and loosening compacted layers. But the effect is short-lived. Without protective cover, the newly disturbed surface can seal again after a few heavy rains — often within the same season (Lindstrom et al., 1994).

Worse, repeated tillage accelerates organic matter loss, reduces aggregate stability, and increases erosion risk. In South Dakota’s climate, that soil is unlikely to come back in a farmer’s lifetime.

Matching Management to the Ecosystem

Back in 2013, I interviewed Dr. Dwayne Beck at Dakota Lakes Research Farm as the Atlas storm rolled in. His view still resonates:

“No-till is just a tool to match the ecosystem. As soon as you do tillage, you can’t do that anymore. Cover crops and rotations are what you can do to build on that.”

That’s the point Schumacher’s infiltration work makes so clearly — no-till works best when paired with diversity, residue cover, and living roots. Without them, it’s just one wrench in the toolbox.

Bottom Line

So, does no-till seal the soil? In poorly managed systems, yes — but that’s a management problem, not an inevitable outcome. The weight of the evidence from South Dakota and beyond shows that when integrated into a diverse, soil-covering, disturbance-minimizing system, no-till improves infiltration and helps keep both water and soil where they belong.

We’ll dig deeper into the literature on soil-water dynamics in our next post. In the meantime, you can watch Dr. Schumacher explain his rainfall simulator work here (start at 0:37).

References

Lindstrom, M. J., Schumacher, T. E., & Blecha, M. L. (1994). Management considerations for returning CRP lands to crop production. J. Soil Water Conserv., 49(5), 420–425.
Lindstrom, M. J., Schumacher, T. E., Cogo, N. P., & Blecha, M. L. (1998). Tillage effects on water runoff and soil erosion after sod. J. Soil Water Conserv., 53(1), 59–63.
Schumacher, T. E., Lindstrom, M. J., Blecha, M. L., Cogo, N. P., Clay, D. E., & Bleakley, B. (1995). Soil management after CRP contracts expire. In Clean Water Clean Environment 21st Century Conference Proceedings.
Kladivko, E. J. (2001). Tillage systems and soil ecology. Soil Tillage Res., 61(1–2), 61–76.
Huang, M., et al. (2012). Infiltration and runoff under different tillage systems. Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J., 76(6), 2094–2104.
Basche, A. D., & DeLonge, M. S. (2019). Comparing infiltration rates in soils managed with cover crops: A meta-analysis. J. Soil Water Conserv., 74(6), 653–664.
Pittelkow, C. M., et al. (2015). Productivity limits and potentials of the principles of conservation agriculture. Nature, 517, 365–368.

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