I’m the third generation of the Hoff family to operate our farm near Boonville, Mo. Following an early example set by my dad, John Hoff, who first no-tilled in the early 1970s, I’ve spent the past several years fine-tuning our no-till program.

It's an understatement to say that we’ve had a lot of publicity since harvest of 2006, when the word got out that my farm had placed first or second in three categories of the National Corn Growers Association yield contest (including a first-place 347.26 bushels per acre in a no-till irrigated class) and also weighed out a world-record soybean yield of 139 bushels per acre with conventional tillage.

They say necessity is the mother of invention. For Paul Lanpher, a persistent desire for equipment that simply worked better on his farm led him to develop equipment designed for his no-till operation. It’s a desire that he dreamed up about 7 years ago. And after several modifications and updates, Lanpher is excited about his strip-till Dream Machine.

Anyone who heard me talk about my operation at the 2006 National No-Tillage Conference in St. Louis knows that I'm as close to paranoid about soil loss as a person can get.

Whether it’s flooding, drought, wind or bugs, there are always plenty of obstacles standing between no-till corn producers and that elusive bumper crop. Recently, western bean cutworm has emerged as one of those obstacles for some Corn Belt producers.

We have a lot going on at one time on our sixth generation southwestern Missouri crop and livestock farm. We milk 100 Holsteins, manage 200 Red and Black Angus crossbred beef cows, background the yearlings and grow all the feed we need on 1,200 acres of ground.