The Farming Systems Trial is located on 12 acres at our main campus in Kutztown, Pennsylvania. It is divided into 3 overarching systems: organic manure, organic legume, and conventional.

Each system is further divided into two: tillage and no-till, for a total of 6 systems. There are a total of 72 experimental plots.

A note on tillage: No-till and organic no-till are not created equal. Conventional no-till utilizes herbicides to terminate a cover crop, whereas organic systems use tools like the roller crimper. We have found that organic no-till practices year after year do not yield optimal results, so our organic systems utilize reduced tillage and the ground is plowed only in alternating years.