Economics and energy use efficiency of tillage and rotation diversity from an 18-yr cropping system study in semi-arid Canadian Prairies

Cropping systems in the Canadian Prairies are changing in response to building a sustainable production system. An 18-yr (1996–2013) cropping system experiment was conducted in Orthic Dark-Brown Chernozemic soils at Scott, SK, Canada, to assess economic returns and energy use efficiency (EUE) of tillage systems (CT, conventional tillage; NT, no-till), rotation diversities (LOW, low diversity rotation with cereal, oilseed and fallow/green manure; DAG, diversified rotation with annual grains; DAP, diversified rotation with annual grains and perennial forages) and individual crops at different rotation cycles. Marginal return (MR = gross revenue-total variable cost) was determined based on 2024, 12-yr average, and an increased relative grain price scenarios and EUE was determined as the ratio of total energy in harvested crop product to total input energy. Both CT and NT showed statistically similar MRs among rotation diversities; however, NT had 1.2 times higher EUE than CT. Moreover, across cycles and based on 2024 prices, NT resulted in higher MRs than CT for wheat and barley at $114 ha −1 and $257 ha −1 , respectively, compared to CT’s average MR of $45 ha −1 and $205 ha −1 . DAP showed 1.6 and 1.9 times higher EUE than DAG and LOW, respectively. A significant ‘tillage × rotation diversity’ for MRs indicated that DAP with NT and LOW with CT had the highest MRs across rotation cycles at $113 ha −1 and $78 ha −1 , respectively. We concluded that DAP with NT can be both profitable and environmentally sustainable alternative to LOW with CT in Dark-Brown soils in semi-arid Canadian prairies.