Palmer Amaranth, the so-called “pigweed on steroids” that has plagued Southern cotton and soybean farmers for several years, is marching northward and could soon threaten yields and profitability for Corn Belt no-tillers.

Getting an extra bushel or two of yield is well worth the effort and investment these days — and a double-digit boost is like hitting the lottery.

When Henry Falk was growing up on his farm, if a piece of machinery — new or used — wasn’t doing the job, his father would haul it to his shop and rebuild it with a torch and welder to make it work better.

The two careers that formed my life for the last 23 years started on the same day. A loan to purchase 320 acres adjacent to my family’s home farm, and an offer for a job as a local extension agronomist for Manitoba Agriculture, were mere hours apart.

One way no-tillers can make their farms more profitable is to put their management decisions under a closer microscope and determine if they’re making the right choices about fertilizers, hybrids/varieties, row spacing or equipment

Most no-tillers will agree that no-till saved considerable moisture last summer when compared to their neighbors using more intensive tillage systems. For many, the extra moisture resulted in higher yields and income in a growing season that was far from ideal.

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.