Tall standing stubble, achieved by harvesting with a stripper header and leaving stumble at full-crop height, can conserve water and reduce residue decomposition rates in the Palouse region, says a new study by Washington State University Extension.

My son, Mike, and I recently spent 6 days looking at no-till in the Palouse, a 3,000-square-mile area located in the southeastern corner of Washington, north central Idaho and northeast Oregon. While I've visited this area several times where no-tillers grow crops on slopes as steep as 60%, I’d never been there during harvest of wheat, barley, peas, lentils and garbanzo beans.