No Till Notes: Harvesting water

“I am a farmer. I take sunlight, water and carbon dioxide and make them into products that I can sell.” Dr. Dwayne Beck made this statement at a recent No-Till winter conference sponsored by the Panhandle No-Till Partnership. Dr. Beck also stated “No-till is not about the lack of tillage, but about managing soil water, soil structure, soil biology and carbon compounds in the soil.”

It is a common misconception among producers and educators that no-till is simply stopping tillage and replacing tillage with herbicides.

If you simply replace tillage summer fallow with a chemical summer fallow you...