Back in 1973, I never thought I would be a lifetime farmer. But when Dad decided to retire, corn was $4 a bushel and nitrogen was just 3 cents per pound. The future looked bright for agriculture. Most times, it still does.

This past spring, I took a big step and invested a significant amount of money in some new precision farming equipment. For years, we have been using a yield monitor to record our yields and evaluate corn hybrids and soybean varieties in our on-farm replicated plots.

Highly erodible soils shaped into gently rolling hills seemed to Nate Ronsiek like the perfect place to implement the no-till farming practices he learned as a student at Kansas State University. Ronsiek started developing his no-till plan in 2005 when he began taking over the family farm outside Hawarden in northwest Iowa.

During my 13 years in the Air Force after graduating from Iowa State University in 1956, a lot of things changed. In the military, I was part of a two-man team that flew the experimental SR-71, which became the world’s fastest airplane. It still holds speed records of more than 2,000 miles per hour.