Mark Legan and his family live by four core values: stewardship, relationships, integrity and continuous improvement. 

The pursuit of these goals led Mark to adopt near 100% no-till and cover crop practices on their 1,000 acres of corn and soybeans near Coatesville, Ind., which is also farmed by his wife Phyllis and daughter and son-in-law Beth and Nick Tharp. 

Mark believes combining these techniques with judicious management of manure produced by several thousand sows allows him to supply much of his farm ground’s needed fertility naturally while enhancing soil biological activity and organic matter.

The Legans’ farm received the American Soybean Association’s Conservation Legacy Award for the Northeast region in 2014. 

Though Legan feels he’s settled on a powerful trifecta of manure application, cover crops and no-tilling, he doesn’t plan on dialing back experimentation and evolution. In the coming years, he sees himself becoming more of a manager than a tractor driver.

“A lot of what we do takes more management than conventional tillage,” says Legan. “But on our farm, we’re trying to emphasize the management aspect of farming and becoming better stewards of the land and resources,” he says. 

Taming Tough Soils

Legan started no-tilling in 1983 on a small 60-acre plot to prove the concept to himself. Since then, he’s expanded the practice as his farm has grown. He’s transitioned to full no-tilling in the last 5 years, except for occasionally having to till up some of his substandard fields.

Legan says the silty clay loam soils they…