Change isn't always an easy sell to farmers who have relied on the same methodology for years or even decades, especially if they've had success. Farmers tend to rely on the two T's -- tillage and tradition, Minnesota strip-tiller David Legvold told me during a recent visit to his farm. In my opinion, you need to shift away from the traditional, and from practices that are damaging the soil.

In order to develop variable-rate prescriptions for crop inputs like seed and fertilizer, it is first necessary to delineate fields into regions of distinct yield potential (Butzen, et al., 2012), also known as management zones (MZ).

Strip-tilling ranks high among the ways growers are contending with the challenges of continuous corn.

This producer modified strip-till equipment to inject fertilizer at and below the seeding depth for crop nutrition and long-term soil improvements.

Starting back in first decade of this century, the buzz words of carbon sequestration has appeared in articles and has become frequently discussed with farmers in the USDA's Farm Service Agency and NRCS offices as one of the methods to reduce or offset carbon emissions.