There are approximately 60 different soil types in Fulton County, and brothers Les and Jerry Seiler say they no-till crops in about 37 of them.

One of the best compliments Mike Werling ever received was a couple of springs ago, when a scientist for the federal government examined a soil pit on one of Werling’s fields.

When it comes to residue management in no-till, real-time kinematic (RTK) guidance probably isn't the first tool farmers would consider using.

My father and grandfather started experimenting with no-till in the late 1960s with the primary goal of stopping erosion. The steep hills we farm would simply wash away when you worked them up.

Returning to no-till after a 30-plus year hiatus was really a homecoming for my family. My father no-tilled in the 1960s, but moved away from the practice due to the lack of mechanical and herbicide options we needed to make no-till work.

The Hula family no-tills 5,000 acres of corn, soybeans, wheat, barley and oats in four counties surrounding Charles City, Va. The 100% no-till operation is located along the banks of the James River, which flows into Chesapeake Bay where nitrogen runoff is becoming a major concern.

Twenty-five years ago, my father, Loren Stokes, and I milked and fed a 100-cow dairy herd and were also tilling about 300 acres of farmland. Needless to say, we were busy daylight to dark. We both decided we were working too hard.

A growing number of farmers are switching to strip-till for a variety of reasons. Whether it’s to warm up soils that remain cold for too long in the spring, to trim input costs, to reduce compaction, improve drainage or other reasons, strip-till is getting a closer look these days.