For over thirty years I managed farms in northwest and northcentral Iowa for absentee farm owners whom I worked closely with to make soil and water conservation an important part of our farm plans. I convinced my farm operators to stop moldboard plowing, move to chisel plows and eventually leave soybean stubble untilled in the fall.

U.S. prices for fertilizer stabilized in June and then declined in July and August, but Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute research associate Ben Brown says it is unlikely they will remain low.

The practice of using a dragline on emerging corn began in 2019, due to the extremely wet weather rearranging the Ayers’ cover crop termination schedule. The termination date varies each year, thanks to several factors, including the custom spraying schedule, the weather and what herbicide program the Ayers are using. They typically use glyphosate and 2,4-D to terminate the cereal rye.

No-Till Farmer editors encounter a variety of articles, social media posts, podcasts and videos that offer a unique look at no-tilling across North America and the world. Here is our favorite content from the past week from across the web. “No-Till Farmer's Best of the Web" is brought to you by Sound Agriculture. 

In a comment posted Oct. 14, the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture expressed concern that the atrazine restrictions would significantly increase weed pressure and risk forcing farmers to abandon no-till in exchange for deep tillage to control weeds.

Growing — even in climates with a cold winter — is less about seasons and more about keeping the water, nutrient and carbon cycles turning to your advantage.

I wonder is there a time where we will pass the point of no return because of some people’s greed, lack of knowledge or resistance to change. Will there be the resources to provide for the generations to come?

We organic farmers do a bit of cultivation to mineralize some of the goodness we have built up in our leys and to deal with some weeds. This year all of my spring sown crops were established after a green manure, grazed by sheep over the winter and then with three light and shallow passes with a cultivator we managed to get our crops in with much less soil disturbance than usual. You’d be proud of me. The No-Till Passport series is brought to you by Martin Industries.