OUR farm in southwestern Iowa has been a leader in soil conservation since the “dirty” 1930s. My father was one of the first individuals to install field terraces on our highly erodible land to slow water runoff and save the topsoil. We’ve kept a copy of the Des Moines Sunday Register from October 1968 that describes how Dad (Edgar Wahling) and I constructed the first push-up grassed-backslope terrace in the United States.

Once considered a radical cropping system, no-tilling continued its climb into the mainstream this year. News headlines noted the surging number of growers jumping into no-tilling to escape from skyrocketing fuel and fertilizer prices.

After more than a decade of testing and four full seasons of commercial sales, Intellicoat Early Plant hybrids show increasing acceptance among no-tillers coping with cold, wet spring soils, reports Landec Ag, developer of the polymer seed-coating product.

Moldboard plowing, lots of secondary tillage and costly, environmentally damaging soil erosion were natural partners on our land in the late 1970s. At that time, I was taking over the family farm located on the Canadian side of Lake Erie, about 60 miles east of Detroit.

Before Paul Jasa will even discuss no-till continuous corn, he issues a strong warning about monoculture farming. The highly respected University of Nebraska extension agricultural engineer has worked for more than 30 years “preaching” a systems approach to no-till, including crop rotation.

Bob Myers believes in twin-row corn. By no-tilling corn in twin rows, 6 inches apart on 30-inch centers, Myers has been able to push his corn yields to more than 200 bushels per acre.

When we wrote about Ellis McFadden’s no-till operation near Fort Wayne, Ind., in November 2003, he noted two important keys to success. First, keep only equipment that is absolutely necessary, but make sure it’s all new or nearly new. Second, don’t be shy about trying new methods that help you farm smarter.

We started no-tilling in the mid-1980s with the wrong attitude, the wrong tools and not enough knowledge to make it work. It fell flat on its face. Yet, here we are in 2006, confidently no-tilling 1,300 acres.