Farming in dryland areas, three Colorado and Washington no-tillers are looking for new crops to add to their rotations in order to increase yields and profits while making it easier to control weeds.

1. No-Till Corn Looks Good.

By adding 95-day maturity no-tilled corn to the rotation, Ken Remmington sees an opportunity to boost profits.

“By no-tilling Roundup Ready corn into prosso millet stubble, we’ve been getting three to five bushels less corn yield per acre, but it’s just a matter of working out the problems,” says the Akron, Colo., no-tiller.

“Prosso millet is a very low water user. We can start no-tilling this crop earlier in the spring and don’t have to deal with no-tilling corn into wheat stubble, which almost always leads to problems. With wet wheat stubble, we normally can’t start no-tilling corn until at least noon because our no-till planter won’t cut through the damp stubble.”

Remmington drops only 15,000 corn kernels per acre. “We get five to six acres of corn out of a bag of seed corn,” he says. “That works out to only $3 to $3.50 per acre for Roundup Ready seed corn. Along with the tech fee we have to pay for using this herbicide-resistant corn and the herbicide costs, we have $10 invested per acre. Other options can’t be done for less than $16 per acre.”

2. Adding New Crops.

“We are working hard to find other broadleaf crops other than sunflowers,” Remmington says.“We are no-tilling field peas and soybeans and…