After Frank Martin talked about cover crops at last winter’s 12th annual National No-Tillage Conference, we discussed the idea of utilizing no-till and cover crops on Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) land to pump needed dollars back into rural communities.

An acre's worth of earthworms can equal the weight of more than 20 hired men. Earthworms are small but productive, eat for free and work all night long in your no-till fields.

Though only 17 years of age, I consider myself an experienced farmer. I have worked alongside my father on our family’s farm since I was a small child, learning the skills of agriculture and developing a desire to make farming my own life’s work. Living on a farm that has belonged to and supported our family for generations, I am acutely aware of how drastically farming techniques have changed over the years.

There was a time when manure was the chief fertilizer on farms. It helped the crops grow, but was eventually replaced by technologically advanced, high-grade fertilizers.

Thanks to the magic of computers, no-tillers and would-be no-tillers from the far corners of the Earth can conveniently get together. That’s what happened recently, when growers from Scotland, England, New Zealand and the U.S. met at Farmers Forum, No-Till Farmer’s online message board. Here’s how they found common ground.

“Improved drainage may be needed on many soils to obtain the best yields from a no-till system. Yields under no-till are often affected by poor drainage, more so than those under conventional tillage,” according to a study by soil scientists at Ohio State University.

You can eyeball how much organic matter there is in your soil, says Jill Clapperton, a Canadian soil microbiologist at the Lethbridge Research Centre in Lethbridge, Alberta. Take a sample of the soil in an old can, mix it with water and shake well.

SINCE STARTING a 1-acre grid sampling program in 1996, the Rulon family has realized considerable fertilizer savings on their 5,000-acre no-till corn and soybean farm.