Booming prices for corn and soybeans have no-tillers looking to add additional acreage, and one source that might become available is expiring Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) acreage. From Oct. 1, 2007, to Oct. 1, 2010, more than 13.4 million acres are scheduled to come out of the program.

Over the years, I have felt fortunate that I could promote no-tilling through educational work with conservation agencies and farmer organizations. I’ve been a member of my county Soil Conservation District for more than 16 years.

With the recent focus on the benefits of cover crops, it is ironic that research plots evaluating corn planted into hairy vetch sparked my initial interest in no-till. Those first impressions were made when I was a student at Western Kentucky University nearly 25 years ago.

California has long been one of the most productive agricultural areas of the world. Partly for that reason, growers there are often understandably reluctant to try new farming methods, especially when rising fuel and labor costs and market competition are shrinking profit margins.

When you think about being directly involved with saving a natural resource as significant as the Chesapeake Bay, it’s hard not to get excited. That noble thought might be enough reason all by itself to really hard sell continuous no-till systems, including cover crops and rotations. And when you can see clearly that no-till makes farming more profitable — in addition to the big-picture environmental equation — you can start to sense that we’re onto something, as they say, that’s really big.

If I had to pick out one consistent thing about no-tilling that I have observed over and over, it is that most no-till benefits come with continuous no-till — season to season and crop to crop. That’s the message I delivered last winter to attendees at the 2005 National No-Tillage Conference just a few days after I retired from the Natural Resources Conservation Service. And it’s the message I would like to expand upon as a private consultant: It’s time for the no-till community to aim higher.