Ask Ed Winkle how to raise profitable no-till corn yields and he'll tell you it starts with your planter.

It's hard to believe, but in a few parts of the country, there are still counties where not a soul no-tills. It was this situation that prompted the Umatilla River Soil and Water Conservation district and others to contact the Regional Geographic Initiative Group (RGI) funded by the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

If there's anything that Jim Leverich isn’t, it’s a follower.

A cropping system with the potential to increase farm income while hedging production risk is Modified Relay Intercropping (MRI). MRI is the planting of soybeans into standing wheat 20 to 30 days prior to wheat harvest. The goal of this planting date is to have a well established soybean plant 6 to 8 inches tall (V2-V4) at wheat harvest.

You can make rope out of it. Not to mention clothing. And diapers, cookies and lubricants. There's even talk of a new "super metal" that's stronger than titanium and lighter than aluminum. In fact, it seems there's not much you can't make out of it.

Last spring, David Richesin planted only 66 acres in corn, down from the 82 acres he planted in 1998.