Tillage Extesion #3
Description
I was looking over the tillage properties in the extension and I think this might not capture the wide variety of tillage practices. Below TL DR unless you are really curious about the different (non-exhaustive) broad types of tillage tool used in agriculture. My recommendation would be to not capture much information specific to the tillage tool used since there is just to much variation. I would propose using something like USDA-NRCS STIR value (calculated from speed, machine type, average depth, and surface disturbance percentage): https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/sites/default/files/2023-01/Soil-Tillage-Intensity-Rating-Fact-Sheet3-27-2020.pdf
Short description of the configurations and functions of different tillage implements:
Disc's (or sometimes called disc harrow) have disc blades that are mounted on an angle which is covered, however it would likely be good to include the disc concavity. Some have straight disc blades for vertical tillage, but more aggressive types have more concavity. Also for the disc angle, there can be compound angles, many tools have multiple discs mounted on a shaft that is generally referred to as a disc gang. There is a gang angle that I think is what is currently meant by the angle, and many modern tools can change that angle during the operation. Discs can also be individually mounted with a compound angle, so not sure if it would be important to capture the angle on more than one axis?
That being said there are other types of tillage tool that do not have discs, but have a shank, generally with a point on it. There are rippers that have deep shanks that do not disturb the soil surface very much. Then there are things like cultivators that operate at a shallower depth and do disturb the surface more. They would still have spacing like a disc though, and the points might be good to know if they are a broad sweep or a more narrow point, but there is no standardization and likely thousands of different points.
Additionally there are moldboard plows that completely invert the soil. The individual elements are called bottoms, can be of different sizes and the angle of the overall machine can be adjusted among other tweaks. There are whole competitions about who can better adjust and operate a plow :)
There are also power tillers and power harrows. A power tiller is basically a really big root-tiller like you may use in a garden. A bunch of fixed blades on a horizontal shaft that rotates and tills the soil. A power harrow is more like a bunch of egg-beaters that stir the soil. There are generally two blades on a series of hubs that rotate on a vertical axis across the width of the machine.
There are other tools like rollers or drags, that can be pulled across the field separately or attached behind some of the tools above that might also be relevant. There are things like strip-till where only narrow strips are tilled to prepare a seed bed that have either a shank or a disc that would be relevant.
To further complicate things there are a wide variety of no-till or direct-seeding planters that do some amount of tillage as part of the seeding operation that would likely also need to be captured.