How you manage your crop residues this fall can have a major impact on the profit of your 2009 crops.

If you’re going to make strip-till work, Steve Cubbage warns you, first of all, that it isn’t for the “faint of heart.”

In a recent entry on The Mitchell Farm Web site (www.mitchellfarm.com), I wrote that “effectiveness comes from getting the one piece of information necessary to make a decision and leaving the rest unseen.” I was referring to how easy it is to get smothered in GPS field-generated data, but often not knowing how to put it to work.

Back in 1996, we made a commitment to farm more land without hiring any full-time labor. Thanks to a shift to continuous no-till, precision farming and more efficient equipment, we’ve surpassed our goals.

When Erik Hayenga's grandfather (Cal’s father) quit raising corn in the mid-’60s because it wasn’t profitable, 40 bushels was a lot more common than 50 bushels per acre and that’s about as high as it went.

Applying the smallest amount of phosphate for the biggest bang for the buck is what your goal should be. A small amount of seed-placed phosphate can do that, maintains Terry Good, sales manager for the Canadian operations of Na-Churs Alpine Solutions in New Hamburg, Ontario.

For no-tiller Doug Smith, inputs like fertilizer, her­bicides and fuel tend to be more expensive for the Thames­ville, Ontario, farmer than for his U.S. counterparts. So when you can get some­thing for free, you take advantage of it.