Could no-till work in Alaska? When I asked researchers and other attendees at a no-till event in Spokane, Wash., nobody knew for sure. I hoped it would. I was short on labor and needed to significantly cut the number of tractor drivers required for planting season. Long story short, it does work! It wasn’t the first — or the last — farming challenge my family has faced since we started farming in Delta Junction, Alaska, in the early 1980s.  

Almost everything about farming in Alaska is a challenge. The growing season is short and cool. It can be difficult and expensive to get equipment, inputs and labor. Ag research and government programs boom and bust with other Alaskan industries, such as oil. 

Once you grow a crop, marketing isn’t straightforward either. It takes a problem-solving, trailblazer attitude to make it up here. You can’t farm like Grandpa did because Grandpa didn’t farm here. We are open to trying new things and flexing with changing conditions. That includes no-till, cover crops, opening our own flour milling facility and even building a bakery.

Of all the things I’ve done and tried, I can pinpoint no-till as a watershed moment for me. When I saw what it could do, I realized I would never go back to conventional practices…