Our Biggest fear in our system has long been drought conditions. A significant portion of the acres we farm are light, sandy soils underlaid with gravel. Periods of drought can quickly become devastating to our crops.

I farm in partnership with my brothers, Tim and Dennis, and my nephew, Greg. We raise corn, soybeans, popcorn, wheat, and cattle in pastures and fields along the Scioto River in south central Ohio. 

While we do get into some heavier soils on the hills, a lot of our fields are sandy loam river bottoms. Water moves through those soils so quickly I can take a rain every day and still have fit field conditions — as long as the water doesn’t come 6-foot-deep out of the river. 

When we still worked those soils, drought years were absolutely punishing. They drained quickly and had very little soil organic matter (SOM) to retain any water or nutrients. We were familiar with no-till from tours with the various boards and organizations we’re all involved with, and decided it was a practice we needed to deploy to conserve moisture.

We went all in, no-tilling all corn and soybean acres with a 60-foot, 15-inch row no-till planter we put together ourselves. At the time, 15-inch rows weren’t common…