Dwayne Beck has seen his fair share of struggling no-till operations. From poor emergence to poor yield, no-tillers ask him how they can improve their no-till systems. And he maintains much of this could be solved if no-tillers would only have a bigger picture of a crop production system.

For 14 years, Allen Franks has been no-tilling. And for 14 years, this no-tiller from Guthrie, Ky., has been working out the bugs to make no-tilling wheat a smoother and more successful operation.

"If I can convince you to slow down your no-till planting speed, I can make you some easy money" maintains Greg Sauder of Precision Planting in Tremont, Ill., and a veteran no-tiller.

Stan Rampton once thought his Simmental cows were just a way of squeezing some productivity out of the marginal, uncroppable land that makes up about one-third of his western Manitoba land base.

There's no doubt about it: emotions run high at the annual National No-Tillage Conference. Why? Because no-tillers are passionate about what they do and how they do it. Taking home a wrong idea and implementing it could cost thousands of dollars, or worse, could cause the farm to fold.