Doug Strickler doesn't want to discourage anyone from trying no-till. He does want to make it plain that no-till is not without faults. Nutrient stratification and moisture at planting time are two of those problems.

No-till cropping offers benefits over conventional tillage. Usually. But the practice doesn't fit all operations equally, and no-till is not a cure-all for every management ill.

"Contrary to some opinions, no-till is not a lazy man's way of farming," said Doug Strickler of Iola, Kan. "In fact, it requires more management, not less, than conventional tillage."

Strickler grows more than 2,000 acres of crops, including a sizeable hay acreage. His brother, Steve, runs a 400-cow dairy operation. Their father, Ivan Strickler, is a long-time leader in the dairy industry and for years was president of Mid-America Dairymen. As their father retired and Doug and Steve ascended to run the farm, they divided the operation into separate dairy and crop enterprises.

Doug Strickler did his first no-till planting back in 1988, almost by accident.

"We were behind in planting, and I rented a no-till drill," he said. "At first, no-till was a time management choice: We didn't have to spend as much time in the field. And no-till did save time. We also saw other benefits in erosion control and the need to own less equipment."

Over the next few years, Strickler expanded his no-till acreage.

"It takes at least 3 years to make no-till work well," he said. "We gave it a fair try, but we ran into some chronic problems.

"On ground we had been farming for some time, there was little difference in crop yields between no-till and conventional," he added. "But on some land we rented, we got into trouble with no-till. A lot of the problems we encountered had to do with nutrient stratification."

With phosphate and potash applied on the surface and not tilled into the soil, a shallow nutrient-rich band develops in the top layers of the soil. When this happens in the tight upland soils of southeastern Kansas, crop roots are not stimulated to grow as deeply into the soil to take up moisture.

And there's another problem.

"A lot of our ground stays wet for a long time in spring," said Strickler. "In this area, we have a fairly narrow planting window, especially for corn. If you're 2 weeks late getting corn planted, you're likely to hit the usual July-August dry weather just as corn is trying to pollinate. We conserve about a week's worth of soil moisture with no-till, but the residue on the surface delays drying out and warming up at planting time.

"That's not so much a problem with our bottomland fields," he added. "Those soils are deeper and hold moisture better, so the need to save moisture is not as critical as with more shallow upland soils."

Still, nutrient stratification is the crankiest problem with no-till, Strickler believes.

"I'm still trying to come up with a way to place fertilizer deeper in the soil and do it economically with dry fertilizer," he said. "We've rigged a chisel plow with fertilizer tubes on 30-inch rows. We use an air seeder to blow fertilizer into the slots left by the chisel shank and that works moderately well. And deep placement of fertilizer definitely works. I applied fertilizer in the soil, grew a crop of corn silage, then seeded alfalfa. Although the entire field was brought to soil test, for the first 2 years, the alfalfa over those strips grew taller and lusher. That convinces me that we need to get fertilizer deeper into the soil."

There are methods of placing fertilizer deep that leave most of the crop residue undisturbed on the soil surface. However, finding an economical way to do it is something else.

"And it means a bigger machinery inventory and more time spent in the field," said Strickler. "I'm still using no-till in upland fields where the soil is more erosion prone and doesn't hold moisture as well. But we've gone away from no-till in some fields, especially on bottomland soils that are less erosive and have more water-holding capacity.

"We're still using no-till where it works best, and I wouldn't want to discourage anybody from no-till," he added. "It has allowed me to grow and expand my operation, and I won't get completely away from no-till."