No-till is notoriously difficult in the tropics, specifically because there is no winter to kill off the bugs and no-till systems give them plenty of places to hide. It's not impossible, but this definitely ain't the mainland. With red soil you're going to have to incorporate organic matter at a rate of 10-20 tons per acre (about 1/4 inch layer of finished compost on the surface), and using a no-till system that would take forever. Better to give it a boost by adding your amendments and tilling it in, then put in a cover crop and see what happens before committing to an expensive mistake. Your cover will tell you if there's something wrong.
Regardless everyone should have a backyard compost pile or a worm bin for kitchen scraps, and know how to use them. If you commit to no-till you can use the compost for seedling starters. Making the black stuff is super fun and rewarding.
Incorrect.
Because we do not have the same seasonal effects of temperate climates, biodegradation does not stop in tropical climates. Therefore, stuff is always 'composting'. Also, because things do not cool down, bugs are always present in a tropical climate, so it doesn't matter what you do unless you implement controls like insecticides, fungicides, etc.
The no-till presented in the videos are not the only form of no-till.
Forests dropping litter are no till,
Grass plains burning and regrowing are no till,
chopping and dropping and/or chop-and-char is also no till.
Tilling is specifically turning the soil to 'put oxygen into it', but all it does is destroy the microbial web that was formed by microorganisms and allow the next generation of microorganisms to feed of the previous generation. Repeated till eventually destroys all the nutrients and microbial life, at which point your land becomes marginal and unable to sustain life without nutrient inputs.
You can easily implement no-till gardening with rotational cover crops by simply planting cover crops before and after a main crop is planted and harvested, then pulling them up and dropping them and/or chopping and dropping them prior to the next planting. This does not disturb the microbial web and keeps the soil 'healthy'.
'Organic material' is a general term that is not general understood.
Compost is organic material,
leaf litter is organic material,
rocks are organic material,
shit is organic material.
All but one of these breaks down into methane and carbon dioxide extremely quickly in tropical climates, so 'adding organic material' really doesn't do anything but add nutrients to the soil for short periods of time, typically 2-5 years before it completely decomposes.
What needs to happen is the reestablishment of CARBON in the soil. This can be done by inputting multiple thick layers of wood chips. The top layer of wood chips insulates the layers of wood chips from oxygen and biodegredation, thus slowing the biodegradation of the material and keeping it out of the methane and carbon cycle for a longer period of time. However, it will eventually re-enter the carbon cycle if it is utilized by other organisms that use it to create a carbon structure, i.e. trees.
The best form of carbon to reintroduce into the soil is natural charcoal, also known as biochar. Biochar is a fixed form of carbon with an estimated half-life of 1,000-10,000 years, so it completely removes carbon from the carbon cycle and fixes it to the soil for many generations. Biochar is also extremely absorbent, and thus absorbs and stores nutrients and minerals for extended periods of time for organisms that may utilize them. The structural profile of biochar also allows the colonization of various microbes that make up the soil web, as there is enough surface area in one handful of biochar to cover an entire football field. The final and most important aspect of biochar is it's ability to combine with dirt (clay, silt and sand) and organic matter, which in turn creates water soluble aggregates and forms the foundational basis of soil.
Another note on organic material: most of the nutrients for plant based microorganisms in the are not found in the growing media / soil, but in the trees and plants themselves. This is because of the rapid decomposition rate that takes place in the tropics due to the climate, which does not allow sufficient layers of organic material to build up over long periods of time. (remember: in temperate climates with a winter, it takes approximately 100 years to build just 1 inch of top soil naturally in the wild). Many people will claim that they live in very fertile areas, but this is because the soil they may grow in was untouched and allowed to build for hundreds of thousands of years, and cannot be replaced once exhausted
Because of this, tropical growing experts recommend that we focus on food trees rather than vegetable crops, as trees primarily mine their own nutrients in the soil via their root structure, then build the top soil by dropping their leaves (which contain all the minerals mined from the roots) in fall.
This is why I focus on pioneer trees and bamboo as a source for creating carbon in the soil, and resilient food trees like breadfruit and maya nut for food crops as they essentially take care of themselves.
As far as worm farms, I think they are a complete waste of time unless you have a fine tuned system that will not fail whatsoever, which is never the case. It is far more effective and efficient to utilize a microbial based composting system like bokashi, a better biological composting organism like black soldier flies or simply using foods craps and manure to make bio-fertilizers. The only worms I care about these days are the ones that are already present in the soil.