While some farmers are driven purely to make a buck, you might say that David Uchtmann is driven to get a buck.

The shift to continuous no-tilling on our farm has more or less followed the development of planting equipment suited to this method of farming. Rock County, Wis., which borders northern Illinois, is the top soybean producing county in the state.

The first time I saw what Dwayne Beck was doing on the irrigation research farm near Redfield, S.D. (before he developed the Dakota Lakes Research Farm), I knew we were on the verge of a new type of crop production in our area.

When it comes to developing the best management strategies, Dale and Larry Landreth worry about only one crop — wheat. That’s because the father and son team from Reardan, Wash., grows wheat every year on all of the 2,500 acres that they own and rent.

If your familiar with the cyclical weather patterns (very dry to very wet) we’ve experienced in North Dakota since I started no-tilling in 1986, the fact that I’m still in business might say an awful lot. Not only am I still no-tilling, but I have expanded from 1,000 to 4,000 acres of cropland. And thanks to the many hours I no longer have to spend in the field, I’ve built up a busy grain cleaning and processing business.