The first time i heard about no-tilling was at Kansas State University in 1973. We talked about studies being done in Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Missouri and other places where no-till first took hold. I came home from those discussions and thought about putting no-till to work on our farm, but we faced a tough challenge. Based on KSU’s no-till handbook, our clay soils (shallow topsoil, super-tight subsoil) are classified as “needing special management” for no-till.

It's somewhat ironic that trying to farm right out of college during a period of bad flooding in northeastern Saskatchewan led me several years later to cropping systems research in a semi-arid area where I could really use some of that excess water! Along the way, I did graduate studies in forage genetics at the University of Guelph in Ontario and at the University of Minnesota.

Moldboard plowing, lots of secondary tillage and costly, environmentally damaging soil erosion were natural partners on our land in the late 1970s. At that time, I was taking over the family farm located on the Canadian side of Lake Erie, about 60 miles east of Detroit.

Sometimes editors come away from meetings with an assortment of what seem like odds and ends that can’t be turned into a major story. Yet many still seem like good ideas.

There's a buzz — some of it positive, some not — coming out of southeastern Minnesota about a new strip-tilling machine. The chatter focuses on Mark Bauer’s Soil Warrior, which he says provides an unprecedented balance between conventional tillage and no-till.

I grew up in a family of farmers who saw early on the advantages of reduced tillage to save soil and water.