One of the best pieces of advice we got before shifting to continuous no-till is to get your fields in the best shape possible when making any major changes in your farming methods.

Karl Kupers ticks off the three ingredients he says are musts to make a Pacific Northwest farm sustainable: continual learning, discovery and persistence. They've been his rules to live by for the past dozen years.

When several University of Kentucky agronomists and others headed to South America 35 years ago to show farmers there how to no-till, little did they realize that demonstrating this new technology would eventually turn Brazil into a major player in the world food market and a serious competitor for our grain exports. It’s not likely that they foresaw the eventual impact this would have on prices being paid to American farmers today.

One of the first things I like to do when I talk to no-till farmers is to explain why my long title – rhizosphere ecologist – fits right in with what they’re trying to achieve with direct seeding or no-tilling. (The terms are generally interchangeable).

The whole world changed for me 18 years ago. Thanks — or no thanks — to big farming and a bad economy, I lost nearly everything I owned — a 4,000-acre operation including land, equipment, 500 beef cows, trucks, cars, personal tools and anything else that the bankers could find in the sheds to auction off.

No matter what time of year it is, your chances of tracking down no-tillers Ron Metzler and Randy Wissler, owners of Metzler & Wissler Farms, are probably about as good as winning the lottery.

Some farming innovators maintain harvest is the key to making any no-till program work. You’ve got to spread straw, chaff and stalks evenly across your fields if you want the best no-tilling conditions at seeding time.