When Dave McLaughlin took over his wife's family farm in 1994, he decided to take the conservation-tillage practices his father-in-law implemented a little farther.
He started by no-tilling his forage seedings and small grain crops. By 1999 the entire farm had been transitioned to no-till.
While the timesaving benefit of no-till was McLaughlin’s original motive for parking his moldboard plow, the practice has taught him to view farming as a system that feeds the soil…