No-Till Farmer
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Farmers who are committed to continuous no-till and cover crops already know the value of “parking the plow.”
In 2024, a no-tiller in eastern Ohio had corn yields of 10 bushels per acre higher than a farmer across the road who subsoiled, providing the farmer a net economic benefit of $50 per acre. A farmer in Northwest Ohio, working with some of the worst soils in the region, has increased corn yields by 50 to 75 bushels an acre with no-till and cover crops.
In eastern Iowa, a 30-year no-tiller expects to get 200 or more bushels per acre every year. Despite sneers from some neighbors about his “trashy fields” he’ll stick with no-till because he doesn’t want to “go back and work that hard again.” And he’s already getting about the same yields as his neighbor critics.
In the Palouse area in southeast Washington, on 60% slopes, severe erosion goes back to the days of horse-drawn tillage and harvesting equipment. Hilltops have lost 5 to 10 feet of topsoil.
One prominent farmer has been no-tilling for 50 years, and the biological activity in his soils is phenomenal. The 15 to 20 inches of annual rainfall soaks in where it lands, and wheat yields are as high as 100 bushels per acre or more. Most area farmers have recently switched to continuous no-till and observers note that roads and ditches no longer have must be cleared after a rain.
With these examples, and hundreds more, why do so many farmers…