Parking the plow helped John Macauley cut five passes across the field, save on fuel and labor and maintain yields as he builds a more sustainable operation.
Some farmers dive headlong into changing their tillage practices. John Macauley, who farms 1,200 acres with his father, Jim, in Groveland, N.Y., is proof that transitioning to no-till can be done in steps.
Missouri farmer Jerry Morris says no-till and cover-crop mixes helped him put CRP acres back into crop production and keep his sloping fields from suffering erosion.
Conventional wisdom says no-till won’t work in northern Iowa, an area infamous for cold, wet soils. But Thornton, Iowa, farmer Doug Caffrey, who grows corn and soybeans and raises grow-to-finish hogs, has no-tilled successfully for almost 25 years.
When Cameron Mills jumped into farming full time in 1998, he went into it full bore. His father had just retired from farming and had turned over the operation to his 21-year-old son.
More than 20 years learning, adapting equipment and expanding crop rotations to include small grains and cover crops are a winning formula for Wisconsin no-tiller
With the dire economics agriculture faced in the early 1980s, there was no opportunity for me to join our Wisconsin family farm operation. But farming was my first love and you might say, I was blessed.
I was pleased when the Illinois Department of Agriculture reported in late 2006 that no-till acres in the state had, for the first time, exceeded the number of conventionally tilled acres.
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