Though he is  a no-tiller now, third-generation producer Ron Bolender grew up using conventional practices on the family farm, where they raised 30-50 acres of labor-intensive burley tobacco each year. “We did it all — we used to moldboard plow, disc and work the ground,” he says.

In the last 10 years I’ve seen no-till declining in my area. I simply don’t understand it, maybe it’s the draw of recreational tillage as we like to call it, but to me it’s just not sustainable in the long run.

GROWING UP on the family farm in Louisville, Ill., Randy Bailey thought the way to farm was to hire labor, have a lot of tractors, discs and rollers and work the land.

But in the 1980s, just after he graduated high school and took over the farm, the Farm Crisis hit and the equity on his land flipped upside down. After hearing retired University of Illinois agronomist Mike Plumer speak at a Farm Bureau meeting about no-till, he decided to give it a try.

Cows and cover crops are a winning combination for Kansas no-tillers Chad and Danny Simmelink.

The way our land erodes, there’s no way we’d be in business today if we were still farming the way we did 50 years ago.