Integrated Crop Management is published by the Department of Entomology , Iowa State University , Ames, Iowa. As planting season nears, we need to talk more about tillage.
Growers benefit from using no-till because it offsets production costs and reduces soil erosion.
In 1994, Iowa no-till acreage increased significantly. Last year, Iowa State University staff conducted a survey using 121 soybean samples submitted to the Plant Disease Clinic. We classified the disease samples according to the tillage systems from which they were taken. Only 3.5 percent of our samples were from clean tillage, which accounted for 23 percent of 1994 soybean acreage. This means that more soybean diseases were reported from no-till fields than from plowed fields.