Research conducted on your own farm can unlock more secrets that can lead to increased no-till profitability. But taking on such a project this spring will require some last-minute planning and commitment.

With the world expected to need twice as much food to keep 10 billion people from going hungry by 2050, we’re going to have to dramatically increase our yields.

Part of the opportunity for me to recently present the “S.H. Phillips Distinguished Lecture In No-Till Agriculture” at the University of Kentucky was the chance to spend the day talking with faculty members and graduate students from around the world. Phillips was a pioneer in the early 1960s in getting no-till started on a commercial scale. And he would certainly be proud to know no-till has grown to an astounding 288 million acres today around the world.

One of the comments No-Till Farmer editors heard while pulling together material for last month’s 40th-anniversary issue was that some educators aren’t on board in promoting no-till. Such appears to be the case with Emerson Nafziger, who continues to devote considerable effort to the need for tillage

Some 35 years ago, U.S. Department of Agriculture staffers predicted we’d see more than half of all U.S. cropland being no-tilled by now. The 1975 report also indicated that by 2010, 41% of the ground would be minimum tilled and only 5% conventionally tilled.

Recent research from Illinois indicates there are ways of improving fungicide efficiency, due to plant-disease concerns, without losing yield. The key appears to be making sure an adequate amount of nitrogen is applied to the corn crop.

Saving time and saving dollars are the major reasons cover crops have worked so well in no-till rotations for many Virginia growers.

While leafing through a Plow & Hearth catalog a few days ago, I spotted a unique product that made me think of the many benefits of no-tilling.

As increased levels of dissolved phosphorus are identified as a major concern dealing with the increased algal blooms found in Lake Erie, some folks have been pointing a finger at no-till as the cause. Yet the facts regarding phosphorus runoff in the Western Lake Erie Basin watershed near Toledo, Ohio, don't back up that argument.

Winter wheat is the main crop in the Pacific Northwest and growers normally seed around 2.2 million acres every fall. Yet year after year, an average of anywhere from 1.3 to 22.3 tons of silt loam soil erodes from every acre that is in wheat production.