The moment that convinced Max Martin to park his plow and switch to no-till came as he witnessed the fate of precious May rainfall on his farm after enduring years of drought.

“I stood in my rubber boots in one of our standing dirty ditches on the ranch, watching all that water leave the ranch and going to the next ranch. And at that point in time I said, ‘You know, this isn’t fun,’” Martin told attendees at the Southern Soil Health Conference in January.

“We had to change the way we think about water. We had to sell cattle during the drought because, quite frankly, we got tired of taking the tractor out and pulling dead cattle out of mud holes.”

Since then, Martin has built four lakes on his farm ranging from 3 to 22 acres to hold rainwater. And in addition to eliminating tillage he’s begun seeding various species of cover crops to provide more nutritious food sources for cattle, address compaction problems, fix nutrients, control weeds and erosion, improve pest suppression and feed soil biology.

Max Martin

The Right Ratio

The CEO of a major computer programming company, Martin runs a 500-acre calf-stocker-feeder operation and raises 550 acres of wheat and cover crops, 100 acres of Bermuda and 12,000 acres of additional pasture near Loving in northern Texas.

While he’s mostly rotated wheat for the last 20 years, Martin has added radish and rape to the wheat, and he planned this fall to seed a rye/triticale…