Jethro Tull – Father of Tillage
Father of tillage – Jethro Tull, Agriculturist (British agronomist) wrote a book horse hoeing husbandry & coined the term zero tillage and weed.
Born – 1674, Basildon, Berkshire, England
Died – 21 February 1741, Shalbourne, Berkshire, England
Aged – 66
Known for –
- Father of tillage and Father of zero tillage.
- Agricultural reforms and inventions.
- Inventions: Invented machinery for the agricultural preparation of soil and seed drill and horse-drawn hoe.
- Author: Wrote a book – Horse Hoeing Husbandry and coined the term weed and zero tillage.
Father of Zero Tillage
Also called Father of zero tillage – Jethro Tull, an English agriculturist (British agronomist) from Berkshire, born on 30 March 1674, who helped the British Agricultural Revolution in 18th century. Tull’s method / technique for growing crops or pasture for agriculture was economically benifited many landowners who were adopted, and he perfected a horse-drawn seed drill in 1700 that economically sowed the seeds in neat rows, and later developed a horse-drawn hoe.
Tillage meaning
Tillage meaning – ”the preparation of land for growing crops” or ”land under cultivation”
Meaning in hindi- जुताई
Tillage?
Tillage is the agricultural preparation of soil to loosen it by mechanical agitation of various types, such as digging, stirring, and overturning and can be add plant material.
What is Zero Tillage ?
Zero tillage is also known as No-till farming or direct drilling. No-till farming an agricultural technique for growing crops or pasture without disturbing or mechanical agitation for agricultural preparation of soil.
Jethro Tull’s Agriculturist Work
Tull’s work on agriculture initiated a new movement in 18th-century agriculture called “horse-hoeing husbandry” or “new husbandry”.
Tull invented some machinery for the purpose of carrying out his system of drill husbandry, he made early advances in planting crops with his invention of the seed drill (1701) – a mechanical seeder that sowed efficiently at the correct depth and spacing and then covered the seed so that it could grow.
- Drill husbandry: His first invention was a drill-plough to sow wheat and turnip seed in drills, three rows at a time.
- Growing soil: Tull’s Book on Husbandry stated that, Soil- be the sole food of plants. “Too much nitre,” and “corrodes a plant, too much water drowns it, too much air dries the roots of it, too much heat burns it; but too much earth a plant can never have, unless it be therein wholly buried: too much earth or too fine can never possibly be given to their roots, for they never receive so much of it as to surfeit the plant.”
- Hoeing by hand: Tull was the first who inculcated the advantages of hoeing cultivated soils. Hoeing, therefore, not only protects the farmer’s crops from being weakened by weeds, but it renders the soil itself as more capable of supplying the plants with their food.
Read More: M. S. Swaminathan (1925) – Improved India’s Farming System
Read More about Tull’s Book: Horse-Hoeing Husbandry https://archive.org/details/horsehoeinghusba00tull/page/6/mode/2up
Frequently Asked Question about Tillage (FAQ)
Who is the father of tillage?
The father of tillage – Jethro Tull, wrote a book horse hoeing husbandry, invented machinery for the agricultural preparation of soil and coined the term weed and zero tillage.
What is tillage?
Tillage is the agricultural preparation of soil to loosen it by mechanical agitation of various types, such as digging, stirring, and overturning to add plant material.
What is Zero Tillage?
Zero tillage is also known as No-till farming or direct drilling.
Zero tillage an agricultural technique for growing crops or pasture without disturbing or mechanical agitation for agricultural preparation of soil.