When we started no-tilling 25 years ago, we really weren’t trying to solve a soil erosion problem. We hadn’t thought it through that far and we just wanted to stay competitive by reducing costs. And it took several years and dramatic changes in our cropping systems before we started to see the real long-term benefits of no-till (which we call direct seeding).

History tell us why no-till works. Many of us in agriculture tend to look back only 5 or 10 years, but we really need to look back a century or two.

A major advantage of no-till, direct seeding and similar systems is that you don’t have to break the bank to get started.