Articles by Martha Mintz

What I've Learned From No-Tilling: No-Till Lays Foundation for Consistent Crops, Rain or Shine

Financial challenges pushed Mike Belan’s family into conservation practices, but the Ontario no-tiller is focusing on improving soil health to propel the farm forward.
High interest rates were the push my dad and uncle needed to make the switch to no-till on our farm. They had long raised wheat, corn and soybeans on our generally flat Brookston clay fields that sit just 30 miles north and south, respectively of Lake Erie and Lake Huron.
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What I've Learned From No-Tilling: Cover Crops Transform Challenging Acres to Efficient Yield Leaders

No-tilling and cover cropping help Mark Turner reduce fertility needs and take fields considered too poor to grow corn to 200-bushel yields.
Pastures used to help hold the soil in place on the rolling hills that dominate our Kentucky farm. My dad raised cattle, so he would rotate fields between corn and hay. When he eventually retired, he liquidated the herd and shifted to row crops.
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What I've Learned From No-Tilling: No-Till, Cover Crops and Wheat Pull Farm Out of a Yield Rut

Yields had stalled for Dick and Chris Nissen until no-till, tiling, cover crops and wheat helped them manage water issues and improve their soils.
Our farm hit a plateau in the 1990s. Yields were flat and we just weren’t making the gains we thought we should be. It’s not that we sought out no-till as the magic solution; we just knew we had to try something different, as conventional tillage wasn’t cutting it.
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What I've Learned From No-Tilling: Rejuvenating Acres and Ramping Up Soil Productivity

No-till is just one component of the system Dan DeSutter is using to break up compaction, store water, increase organic matter and improve yields.
My dad gets the credit for taking the initial steps of reducing tillage on our farm, but I can probably take some credit for pushing us into a full no-till system. And I do mean system, because no-till is just the tiny tip of the very large iceberg that is our farm management strategy today.
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What I've Learned From No-Tilling: Cover Crops Take Root for Indiana No-Tiller

Jamie Scott became the go-to cover crop guy for an expanding group of neighboring farmers after success with the practice on his own farm.
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.
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What I've Learned From No-Tilling: Covers, Continuous Cropping Advance No-Till Game

Dan Buerkle finds benefits of a continuous cropping system have ramped up soil health and made weed control more economical and effective.
Leaving fields in fallow, and heavily tilling to keep them that way, is a deeply ingrained tradition in the often-parched southeastern corner of Montana, where I farm with my wife of 41 years, Lana.
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Keep Covers in Your Rotation Without Breaking the Bank

No-tillers can reduce the cost of their cover-crop program and still keep most of the benefits by closely examining their seeding rates and methods and potentially trimming back mixes.
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.
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What I've Learned From No-Tilling: Breaking Through the No-Till Barrier with Cover Crops

Adding winter wheat, livestock and cover crops helped Paul Ackley overcome his no-till plateau, simplify his planter and build more productive soils.
I never was one to like tillage. It just didn't make sense. You would go through and make a perfect seedbed to plant into and then, without fail, you couldn't get back in the field with the planter before it would rain. Then you would have to start all over again.
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What I've Learned From No-Tilling: Donning No-Till Armor To Save Soils

Lucas Criswell is pushing his 30-year no-till system another step higher by seeding row crops into taller cover crops and using precision technology to safeguard nutrients and the environment.
I wish I could rewind and start over no-tilling with what I know now. The longer we no-till, the more we learn about what was really happening in our fields as we made the transition, and what we could have done then to take our soils farther, faster.
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The National No-Tillage Conference returns January 12-15, 2027! Build and refine your no-till system with dozens of new ideas and connections at the 35th Annual National No-Tillage Conference in Indianapolis, Jan. 12-15, 2027. Experience an energizing 4-day agenda featuring inspiring general session speakers, expert-led No-Till Classrooms and collaborative No-Till Roundtables. Plus, Certified Crop Adviser credits will be offered.

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