Making the transition to no-till was a big step for Lapp Brothers Farms in making their soils more productive. But to get even more yield and tonnage out of corn silage meant taking a narrower view.

Randy Rink used to have the typical Midwestern crop operation. He rotated corn and soybeans. With this 2-year rotation, Rink would disc corn stalks once in the fall, and plant soybeans in the spring. The next year, he would no-till corn into soybean residue.

Many producers may ask how continuous cropping can work in a semi-arid environment. For southeastern Montana farmer and rancher Ben Minow, the question isn’t if producers can make it work, it’s how anyone could economically raise a crop any other way.

We're no doubt biased, but my family and I think there are few more breathtaking views of production agriculture than seen from the highest point of our farm in the Palouse region of eastern Washington. In midsummer, flowing fields of crops — which may include wheat, canola, barley, sunflowers, mustard, alfalfa, peas and lentils — stretch across the hills to the horizon.

While corn and soybeans received the lion’s share of the press this year as prices moved sharply higher, wheat producers have also been enjoying healthy prices. It’s also spurring more interest in no-till winter wheat, which many soil experts say makes the ideal rotational crop with corn and soybeans.

While no-tillers in many area of the country didn’t avoid having to deal with early summer flooded fields, the results generally weren’t as bad as for neighbors using more extensive tillage. Even with sizeable crop losses, soil losses weren’t as significant for no-tillers.

Now's a great time to head out to your no-till fields and scout for weeds, insects and other pests. Many of you will be putting on your second pass of herbicides and/or applying a second pass where it turned out that the one-pass weed control system wasn’t adequate.