As part of the 40th anniversary of publishing No-Till Farmer, we’ve selected a group of 40 individuals who have made tremendous contributions to the growth and popularity of no-till.

Editor's Note: This article is from the November 2011 issue of No-Till Farmer Conservation Tillage Guide. Not all details are current of this electronic posting.

The potential for nitrogen loss in no-till presents you with both a problem and an opportunity, maintains Sam Ferguson, a customer agronomist with Dow AgroSciences in Omaha, Neb.

Since herbicide-tolerant transgenic cotton varieties became widely available in 1997, the no-till cotton acreage has nearly doubled in the United States. A recent survey by the National Cotton Council indicates that no-till made up 29 percent of total cotton acres while reduced tillage made up 30 percent of all cotton acres in 2002.

When it comes to cashing in on carbon sequestration, no-tillers are way ahead of the game. Even though there are many methods of reducing carbon dioxide emissions — such as increasing efficiency in automobiles and industry, or developing cleaner energy sources with solar and wind power — the possibilities of no-till are becoming more widely recognized.