Climate resilience from long-term low till adoption in US farms

Yuchi Ma, David Lobell

Low-intensity tillage (low till) has expanded rapidly in the United States since 2000. Evidence on its yield impacts has come mainly from field experiments and has been limited to short time horizons. Using satellite-based observations from more than 40 million field-year pairs across the U.S. Corn Belt from 1999-2023, we demonstrate that yield gains continue to accrue with longer duration of low-till adoption, by 0.20% yr-1 for corn and 0.16% yr-1 for soybean, and that yield benefits are greater in hot and dry growing-season conditions. A re-occurrence of the 2012 drought would have significantly smaller impacts if it occurred today, when more than 40% of fields have 10+ years of low-till, and sustained low-till management to 2035 could offset one-third to one-half of projected yield losses from climate change.