If you ask Robb Hinton about what he’s doing on his farm, his answer is he’ll try just about anything.

No-till, to one degree or another, is the standard practice in our area. It’s really all I’ve ever known. That’s how my grandpa farmed, and how my father farmed. It’s also one of the reasons I’ve been able to move back to the farm with my wife and children and work the land full time.

Having no-tilled soybeans for many years, Gordon and Jeff Smiley faced a more difficult task 4 years ago, switching to no-tilled corn instead of holding on to their conventional system.

A chance meeting with South African farmers during a trade show inspired Jeff Littrell and his company’s partners to design a planting system that simultaneously applies one dry and two liquid fertilizer products.

There may be nothing worse for no-tillers than heading to the fields in the spring and being sidelined by a maintenance issue with their planter — especially if the window of opportunity to plant is tight and the breakdown could have been avoided.