• What is Tillage?
  • Tillage is like giving the soil a good massage before planting crops. This involves loosening the soil through plowing, harrowing, and other techniques.
• So What's the Problem?
  • The issue here is like giving too many massages—you wear the soil out! The structure of the soil can degrade. This makes it easy for wind and water to carry away the soil faster than new soil can form.
• Extra Sitch in the Tropics 🌴
  • If you clear a tropical forest to farm, the soil quality will degrade super fast, so you can't keep up high-yield farming for a long time.

Real-World Example

Think about soil as your phone battery. If you overuse it without giving it time to recharge, eventually it will degrade and not hold a charge for long.

• Nutrient Depletion
  • Every time you remove harvested crops, you're also taking away nutrients from the soil. Water can also drain out nutrients (a process called leaching).
• The Nasty Cycle 🔄
  • To keep up crop yields, you gotta keep adding chemical fertilizers, which require energy to produce and can cause pollution.

Real-World Example:

Imagine your body without vitamins. You'd have to take supplements to keep going. The same goes for soil; it needs its 'vitamin' supply to be sustainable!

• What's Monoculture?
  • Planting the same type of crop over and over again in a large area.
• Downside?
  • It's like inviting pests and weeds to a party and asking them to stay forever! To kick them out, we use pesticides and herbicides, which can be bad for the environment.

Real-World Example

Eating the same food every day can get boring and isn't nutritious. Similarly, growing the same crop every year is bad for soil health and invites pests.