Ray McCormick earns a living through good land stewardship. He operates a peach orchard, maintains about 1,000 acres of woods on his property and builds wetlands and mitigation sites for other landowners.

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.

Tim Manchester was nonchalantly looking over yield maps when the clusters of dots representing yields glowed as brightly as a K-Mart blue light special.

I grew up in a family of farmers who saw early on the advantages of reduced tillage to save soil and water.

When we wrote about Ellis McFadden’s no-till operation near Fort Wayne, Ind., in November 2003, he noted two important keys to success. First, keep only equipment that is absolutely necessary, but make sure it’s all new or nearly new. Second, don’t be shy about trying new methods that help you farm smarter.

Does precision farming, with page after page of information generated by automated devices, really make your no-till fields more productive? Or are you about ready to unplug it all in frustration?