Yesterday, I spoke at First United Methodist Church in Throckmorton, Texas and met a man that shared he has been doing no-till farming since 2008. When he started no-till farming, he jumped in with both feet and moved all of his acres to no-till farming. He said that the “old timers” would laugh at him and say that he was so lazy that he didn’t even bother plowing his farm.

The benefits of no-till farming include:  labor savings, fuel savings, erosion reduction, moisture retention, increased water infiltration and improved soil microbiology while achieving the same or increased yields over conventional tillage systems. No-till farming has been growing in adoption every year and reached almost 100 million acres in the US in 2012 which is nearly 35% of all cropland acreage. In addition to this, 76 million acres (27%) are cultivated using “conservation tillage” methods. This means that 62% of all tillage acreage in the US saw some type of conservation tillage practices and this number is growing each year.

This hit home with me because the benefits of using Farming God’s Way have shown proven increases in yield of around 7-10 times over traditional farming practices. One of the major technologies of Farming God’s Way is no-till farming; however, we receive the same response from others when we are preparing our fields using Farming God’s Way. People would walk by and laugh at us and comment that “we were not serious farmers” because we were not plowing our land. They would say that what we were doing would never work just like the “old timers” would say about the farmer in Throckmorton.

It is very difficult to get people to change the “way they’ve always done it”, but that doesn’t mean we should continue to train people on these farming practices. Real change is hard and being a pioneer is difficult, but it is worth it.

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