Editor's Note: The No-Till Roundtable is a department appearing in every edition of Conservation Tillage Guide. For each issue we’ll send out an email asking for your thoughts and opinions on a no-till topic. If you have a topic you’d like to see addressed, please email jgerlach@lessitermedia.com.

A: I’ve only been back on the farm for 1½ years after 20 years at the Chicago Board of Trade. We’ve been no-till since I can remember. Dad was one of the first to advocate it in our area.

Runoff still happens, but it’s not nearly as bad as the tilled fields. Tillage did seem to allow farmers to plant earlier this year. It will be a true test for our soil cover as a late blast of “catch-up” nutrient base. We did some green planting this year and Dad was not impressed with the struggle our corn had, and now we’re watching for fungus left by the cereal rye.

— Lyle Opheim, Decorah, Iowa

A: I am long term no-till. This year no-till did not shine, but no system is perfect 100% of the time.

The good: my no-tilled corn into soybean residue worked very well despite a lot of wet areas. I suffered very little erosion on my sloped fields. No-tilled corn into a moderate residue of cereal rye, peas, radish and barley also worked well.

The bad: my heavy clover residue would not die after being sprayed and the soil wouldn’t dry out. I couldn’t spray it in the…