Dryland with only 16 inches of annual rainfall means farming a lot of acres if you want to support a family and turn a profit in eastern Idaho. That also means farming a lot of hours — at least it did when we were farming conventionally.

Desperation pushed us into no-till. It was the early 1980s and it wasn’t a great time to be a farmer. It also wasn’t a great time to need new equipment, which we did, unfortunately. We were out of money so instead of buying big new tractors and heavy new tillage implements, we made a few tweaks to our planter, took a deep breath and started no-tilling our crops.

A little nudging from the former owners of some of our farms helped move us to 100% no-till in the early 1980s. A little more nudging and before you know it we were diversifying our farm — and a large percentage of our neighboring farms — with cover crops.

With corn prices looking a little more bear than bull these days, many no-tillers may be looking for places to trim their input costs. Fair or unfair, the newest management darling of no-tillers — cover crops — may find themselves in the crosshairs.