We're no doubt biased, but my family and I think there are few more breathtaking views of production agriculture than seen from the highest point of our farm in the Palouse region of eastern Washington. In midsummer, flowing fields of crops — which may include wheat, canola, barley, sunflowers, mustard, alfalfa, peas and lentils — stretch across the hills to the horizon.

Some 41 years ago, when a few colleagues and I began what would become a three-decade scientific effort at New Zealand’s Massey University, we did not set out to invent a new no-tillage system.

When I joined the Henry County, Ohio, Extension service, it was more or less a “midcareer” move.

The interest in sprayers following the Asian soybean rust threat in 2005 has really never waned, for several reasons.

The shift to continuous no-tilling on our farm has more or less followed the development of planting equipment suited to this method of farming. Rock County, Wis., which borders northern Illinois, is the top soybean producing county in the state.

If your familiar with the cyclical weather patterns (very dry to very wet) we’ve experienced in North Dakota since I started no-tilling in 1986, the fact that I’m still in business might say an awful lot. Not only am I still no-tilling, but I have expanded from 1,000 to 4,000 acres of cropland. And thanks to the many hours I no longer have to spend in the field, I’ve built up a busy grain cleaning and processing business.

When I started no-tilling in 1989, I didn’t really understand many of the benefits, such as much-improved soil quality, that I would see later on.

Our gradual transition to conservation tillage began 43 years ago when we parked the moldboard plow and hooked onto a chisel plow in 1964.

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.