WE’VE GOT TWO different soils on our farm in Springerton, Ill.: What we call hill ground, and then bottom ground. The hill ground has got plenty of problems, and the bottom ground — if you don’t have too many water problems — will do a real good job of growing crops.

When I started farming I was plowing every year, and then, I got out one year. It was February and I was done plowing. The first rain I got was 5 inches and you could see the erosion. I made a commitment that I would never plow that field I was looking at again. 

In the 1980s I was no-tilling a rotation with wheat and then we grew buckwheat and sold it to the Japanese. If we planted it in June, we could harvest it in August and still have plenty of time to plant hairy vetch. At that time, I was planting hairy vetch and oats. Then we would plant cereal rye behind the soybean.

In 1983, we had a big drought. It would compare to the drought of 2012. We had a guy doing some work cleaning out a fence row and he was burying brush piles. He would shove the dirt…