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NAME: Ross Bishop

LOCATION: Jackson, Wis.

YEARS NO-TILLING: 16

ACRES NO-TILLED: 700

CROPS NO-TILLED: Corn, soybeans, winter wheat, alfalfa, cover crops (annual ryegrass and tillage radishes)

With the dire economics agriculture faced in the early 1980s, there was no opportunity for me to join our Wisconsin family farm operation. But farming was my first love and you might say, I was blessed.

 After working a short time at a Milwaukee foundry, I was asked by the owner if I would help with planting crops at his 280-acre farm and beef cattle enterprise near Jackson, Wis. He must have sensed my intense desire to farm because he later offered me the opportunity, just after my 22nd birthday, to take over as manager.

Shakey No-Till Start

The soils of Washington County in southeastern Wisconsin are rolling, with stones and high bedrock left behind by the glaciers. A rock picker is standard equipment on nearly every farm. And even after clearing a field, conventional tillage just brings up a new batch.

It was one of the primary reasons we first considered no-till. If you don’t disturb the soil, we figured the rocks would stay below the surface. Our first efforts at no-tilling, however, left us less than impressed.

On our home farm, we experimented with one of the industry’s first no-till corn planters, the 800 introduced by International Harvester in the 1970s. It may have been our inexperience as much as the machine, but nevertheless, yields dropped enough to be…