Southwest Oklahoma is considered wheat country, but one no-tiller is working to change that perception.

As a hog producer, Jeff Frey has a valuable asset with fertilizer prices rising rapidly. Yet, the Willow Street, Pa., no-tiller knows applying and managing hog manure in a no-till system has its challenges.

Many producers may ask how continuous cropping can work in a semi-arid environment. For southeastern Montana farmer and rancher Ben Minow, the question isn’t if producers can make it work, it’s how anyone could economically raise a crop any other way.

We're no doubt biased, but my family and I think there are few more breathtaking views of production agriculture than seen from the highest point of our farm in the Palouse region of eastern Washington. In midsummer, flowing fields of crops — which may include wheat, canola, barley, sunflowers, mustard, alfalfa, peas and lentils — stretch across the hills to the horizon.

While corn and soybeans received the lion’s share of the press this year as prices moved sharply higher, wheat producers have also been enjoying healthy prices. It’s also spurring more interest in no-till winter wheat, which many soil experts say makes the ideal rotational crop with corn and soybeans.

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

The shift to continuous no-tilling on our farm has more or less followed the development of planting equipment suited to this method of farming. Rock County, Wis., which borders northern Illinois, is the top soybean producing county in the state.