Whether it's irrigation or dryland acreage, Tyler Franklin doesn’t believe high corn yields and no-till are mutually exclusive.

TO SAY SOILS on John Hundley’s farm are difficult might be somewhat of an understatement, and paired with Mother Nature’s fickleness that makes his management decisions even tougher.

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.

As an NRCS District Conservationist for Ottawa and Lucas counties right on Lake Erie in Ohio, it just makes good sense that my brothers, Justin and Jeremy, and I would use no-till farming and other conservation practices.

Rolling terrain, variable soil types and all-or-nothing precipitation events can bring a challenge for even the most seasoned no-tillers.

Rob Stout’s philosophy to farming is, “If you’re not trying to learn or do better, you’re falling behind in this day and age.”

When planting season arrives, time is money — and it’s clearer than ever that no-tillers and strip-tillers are facing a tightening window to get their crops in before yield potential is lost.

I wish I could rewind and start over no-tilling with what I know now. The longer we no-till, the more we learn about what was really happening in our fields as we made the transition, and what we could have done then to take our soils farther, faster.