These days, Melvin Steck doesn’t go to many farm shows, field days or plot tours and isn’t the type to sell his program or philosophies to others. But this 97-year-old no-tiller will talk plenty about how the soil works.

Steck’s farm is successful due to mellow, healthy soils that helped him raise 70-bushel soybeans and 280-bushel corn in recent years, which observers say is almost unheard of in his area of central Ohio. 

Melvin and his son, Doug, no-till 285 acres of corn and soybeans near Williamsport, with Doug holding down a job in the trucking industry as well. Melvin’s family has been on the current farm since 1961, but Melvin started farming with his father when he was 8.

It’s a Start

When he was 19, Melvin was planting corn with a two-row horse-drawn International planter, which he used from 1936 to 1943. After World War II the family could buy a four-row planter, but they didn’t have the option of spraying until the 1940s when 2,4-D became available. Steck tried reducing tillage with corn around 1950 but he didn’t have a way to control weeds.

The Stecks had livestock, sheep and hogs until as recently as 20 years ago. The family lost a large part of their operation during the 1980s as well due a major hailstorm that shredded their corn and soybeans, in addition to low crop prices and high interest rates they were already facing.

GETS IT DONE. Melvin Steck used a cultivator, Martin row cleaners…