Is it time to ditch the plough?

Cities, money, roads, beef burgers and telephones, in fact pretty
much all of human civilisation as we know it, would probably not
exist were it not for one simple invention. The plough. This
humble yet revolutionary tool enabled us to cultivate vastly
greater amounts of food than our hunter gatherer forefathers
giving rise to villages, cities and empires. But it has come at a
cost. Nearly 10,000 years of cultivated agriculture have released
billions of tonnes of carbon from the soil into the atmosphere.
Just within the EU, it’s estimated 5% of current greenhouse gas
emissions come from agricultural soils. That’s more than aviation
and shipping combined. Around the world an increasing number of
farmers are adopting new methods without the plough to restore
soil health and lock more carbon into the ground. But some
scientists are questioning whether the potential for carbon
sequestration into the soil is being over hyped. What’s more, for
millennia the plough has been a crucial ally in boosting yields
and in the coming decades we are going have to produce lots more
food to feed the growing global population So the Climate
Question is; Is it time for us to ditch the plough?