We made our initial commitment to continuous no-tilling during the early years of Roundup Ready soybean development. We had gained experience with no-tilling double-cropped soybeans into wheat stubble, but we weren’t totally impressed. We found that heavy residue from the wheat crop tied up nitrogen and was costing us fertilizer dollars. We were also experimenting with no-tilling soybeans into corn stubble, which was getting easier with new narrow-row equipment.

It’s hard to remember when we didn’t do some type of no-tilling or reduced-tillage on our southeastern Illinois farm. We really got into high gear around the mid-1980s. Some of our first results were with corn planted into wheat stubble or a red clover cover crop. We took advantage of the PIK (Payment in Kind) federal farm program during those years to make a serious commitment to long-term no-tilling.

THE ANNUAL National No-Tillage Conference has evolved into part meeting of the minds, with no-till experts and novices gathering from across the country and the world, and part family reunion, with even first-time attendees bonding quickly during the intense but friendly event.

OUR farm in southwestern Iowa has been a leader in soil conservation since the “dirty” 1930s. My father was one of the first individuals to install field terraces on our highly erodible land to slow water runoff and save the topsoil. We’ve kept a copy of the Des Moines Sunday Register from October 1968 that describes how Dad (Edgar Wahling) and I constructed the first push-up grassed-backslope terrace in the United States.