Let’s kick things off with some new economic data from the Precision Conservation Management program in Illinois. They’re comparing all the field passes in no-till, strip-till and multi-pass systems to see which one gives farmers the most bang for their buck.

Right now, no-till is leading the pack on cornfields with high soil productivity ratings (SPR).

“No-till here in that full data set actually makes up a little less than 20% of all of the high SPR corn acres, but we see it being used more and more in recent years. It has performed really well in those 3 most recent years. And since we think that 2025 and 2026 are likely to be more similar in terms of price and input costs, we would say that no-till was more profitable than expected in 4 out of 10 years. This is notable, since 3 of the most recent years are years that no-till performed really well.”

Higher machinery costs over the last 3 years factor into the equation. The data also showed that strip-till performed the best in fields with low soil productivity ratings.

Watch the full version of this episode of Conservation Ag Update.