While some farmers are driven purely to make a buck, you might say that David Uchtmann is driven to get a buck.

Continuous corn acres rose sharply this year as many growers tried to capitalize on increasing corn prices.

Strolling through his dealer’s lot, Paul Butler had his eye on a new no-till planter. But, no matter how hard he pushed the pencil, he couldn’t justify the purchase. “A new model with the features I wanted was going to cost $28,000 to $32,000,” Butler says. “I couldn’t afford that expense.”

It’s hard to remember when we didn’t do some type of no-tilling or reduced-tillage on our southeastern Illinois farm. We really got into high gear around the mid-1980s. Some of our first results were with corn planted into wheat stubble or a red clover cover crop. We took advantage of the PIK (Payment in Kind) federal farm program during those years to make a serious commitment to long-term no-tilling.

Sometimes editors come away from meetings with an assortment of what seem like odds and ends that can’t be turned into a major story. Yet many still seem like good ideas.