Despite reports suggesting many farmers may switch more acres from corn to soybeans due to lower production costs, the USDA dismissed expectations for increased soybean plantings.

If you use cover crops and allow waterfowl hunters onto your property in the fall, you should pay close attention here.

If you had any reason to doubt that agriculture will be fingered for the environmental problems affecting major U.S. waterways, those doubts should have been removed last month.

While traveling to the Iowa OnFarm Network Conference last month I found two more testimonials to the benefits of conservation tillage, and the need to show some patience in the transition period.

A no-tiller from Iowa once told me his biggest frustration wasn’t necessarily dealing with residue, controlling weeds or getting a good stand. It was the fact that he couldn’t convert his neighboring farmer to no-till.

With a historic drought pounding the U.S. this year, an important question is being raised once again: Could we see another Dust Bowl era in the U.S.?

Theodore Roosevelt once said, “The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.”

Apparently, the switch to cool, rainy weather in some states this spring after a balmy March didn’t do no-tillers a favor.

Managing editor John Dobberstein and I are visiting two western Iowa no-tillers today on the final day of a 3-day farm tour around Omaha, Neb. We started with two visits near Lincoln, Neb., on Monday; then visited no-tillers in southeast Nebraska, northwest Missouri and southwest Iowa on Tuesday.

The trend in fertilizer application today is to go larger to cover more acreage, provide more flexibility of applications and be more precise, according to manufacturers interviewed at the 2010 Farm Progress Show.