As Ron Kile began to study how no-till would fit into his farming operation, he had one lingering concern: residue management.

Aaron Hager of the University of Illinois Extension Service cautions that wheat stubble fields in which no second crop is planted often become populated with summer annual (and sometimes perennial) weed species. No-tillers should not allow these plants to reach maturity and produce seed, he says.

As I sit here at my desk, I find myself not in the countryside of eastern Oregon where my family raises dryland wheat and barley, but rather in the vast city of Quito, Ecuador.