Puddling (agriculture)

Historically, this has been accomplished by dragging a weighted harrow across a flooded paddy field behind a buffalo or ox, and is now accomplished using mechanized approaches, often using a two-wheel tractor.

[1] Puddling reduces the percolation rates of water by churning the clay particles and making them close many of the soil pores.

[2] Puddling also has the consequences of converting soils into "...a structurally more or less homogeneous mass of ultimate particles.” [3] Combined with good agricultural practices puddling has proven to be sustainable for many rice-rice systems.

Yet the loss of aggregates in systems other than rice-rice (rice-maize, rice-wheat, etc.)

proves to be much less sustainable resulting in loss of soil health and degradation.