7. Cropping system, Tillage and crop establishment

7. Cropping systems, Tillage and crop establishment

In the tropics of Brazil is Zero tillage or No-till farming very popular. Zero tillage means that you grow year after year without disturbing the soil through tillage. This zero tillage is very good for the soil. It increases the amount of water that infiltrates in the soil, it increases organic matter retention and cycling of nutrients and it increases the bio-diversity of the soil. And maybe the most important reason for the Brazilian farmers to do this is that it reduces soil erosion. The zero tillage works very well for the banana farms because they don’t use crop rotation. Crop rotation means that you switch your crop from one field to another to make sure you extract the maximum amount of nutrients out of the soil. Disadvantages are that the soil erosion is quite high because the soil gets not enough time to recover.

In the banana industry in Brazil is everything done manually. From planting and harvesting to spraying pests. This makes it an very labour intensive business. But it is not shocking that so much is done by hand because it is very hard to use big equipment on an banana farm. Because of the density is I not possible to use big machinery without damaging the crop.