“No-Till is not a machine, not a crop and not residue. Instead, no-till is a combination of all the critical things you need to produce the best crop with the least cost and the most sustainability. That’s been our farm goal for the past quarter century.”

If we’re talking cover crops, I could keep a person up all night. Cover crops are truly amazing in what they can accomplish, and the number of different hats they can wear on the farm.

I've spent a good portion of my career helping producers adopt no-till practices through extension, as a Monsanto no-till specialist and, most recently, as a crop consultant.

Shifting from conventional tillage to no-till often requires a lot of physical change in your operation. Just as importantly, adopting this new way of farming demands a strong dose of faith during a transition period that might take several years. I like to joke it’s the same kind of devotion it takes to make a good marriage work.

While many farmers desire to move toward a no-till system, the recent increase in continuous corn appears to put the two practices at odds.

Wet fall, wet spring, wet fall, wet spring. It seems no-tillers need to get used to making things work in a more aquatic-type system, our recent survey of No-Till Farmer readers found. In fact, how our readers’ no-till planter setups worked in wet conditions was a common thread in the replies we received.