Alan Ballensky rolls his 4730 John Deere self-propelled sprayer to a stop in a cloud of dust at a field edge on his southeastern Montana small grains no-till operation.

“Not only is each individual element necessary, but a balance of all soil elements is necessary...”— Neal Kinsey. Fertility expert Neal Kinsey covers all the basics necessary for nurturing soils so they become a thriving, productive living system.

When people ask why I was the first farmer in our area of southeastern Iowa to start no-tilling 28 years ago, I answer that it was bred into me to control soil erosion any way I can — including extensive use of terraces and grass waterways. I couldn’t bear to see all that soil running into streams and rivers. I knew I had to do something to keep that from happening.

Vertical tillage is described as a system of soil management that promotes root development. It's also sometimes called "soiling" or zone tillage because it's used to fracture the entire soil profile from the bottom up using specially designed vertical tillage tools. According to the Precision Planting Co., each tillage pass is designed to increase the vertical flow of nutrients, water and developing roots. Tillage points of the tools work to “heave” the entire section of earth from just below the line that separates topsoil from subsoil.