WHILE NO-TILLING for more than two decades, Mike Wolpert has pulled together a number of basic success strategies.

The Hurricane, W. Va., grower started farming with conventional tillage in a partnership arrangement in 1974. The operation took a major financial hit during the 1980s’ “Farm Crisis” due to poor cash flow, expansion at the wrong time, 3 years of low yields due to the weather and low commodity prices.

A RECENT No-Till Farmer poll shows 19% of respondents growing cover crops are grazing livestock on at least a portion of their acres. While there are many benefits for utilizing cover crops in a no-till rotation, these farmers are turning these forages into added profits.

A few months ago, USDA published a report that offered an in-depth look at a number of practices of special interest to no-tillers. Unfortunately, this Economic Research Service (ERS) data was based on information gathered from corn growers back in 2010.

A proposed sale to Bayer, antitrust concerns, stockholder value, worries over future use of Roundup in Europe and a failure to be paid for GMO traits by farmers in India and Argentina are major concerns facing executives these days at Monsanto’s headquarters in St. Louis. Unfortunately, few of these situations appear favorable to American farmers who are concerned that the proposed ag chemical company mergers will lead to even higher crop input prices.

Leaving Residue on the surface to keep the soil from getting so hot that it seriously impacts plant growth is among the benefits of no-tilling. Along these lines, there’s some interesting research being done at Montana State University that demonstrates how cooler soils not only lead to higher yields, but also reduce the need for fallowing fields to conserve moisture and favorably impact climate change.

Over the last half dozen years, the No-Till Farmer editors have written extensively about cover crop concerns leading to disastrous results with crop insurance rules. With the many benefits of no-till and cover crops, we certainly don’t want to see growers losing crop insurance coverage because of significant differences in rule interpretation among government and crop insurance staffers.

RESULTS OF A recently conducted No-Till Farmer survey indicate growers are not happy with the sale of Syngenta to a state-owned Chinese company. While most growers didn’t favor a Monsanto buyout of Syngenta last summer, they’d have preferred that deal.

A FEW MONTHS ago, Gary Schnitkey urged growers to find ways to trim $100 per acre from the costs of growing corn in 2016. The University of Illinois ag economist’s reasoning is that Midwestern growers need to reduce cropping costs to offset lower corn prices this year.

When Monsanto purchased the Precision Planting operation from central Illinois farmer Gregg Sauder in 2012, No-Till Farmer editors asked readers about their concerns with sharing electronically generated on-farm crop data. While six out of every 10 growers surveyed at that time were concerned about sharing their cropping data with suppliers, these worries have become worse with Deere’s recent purchase of Precision Planting’s hardware and technology from Monsanto.