Planning before planting went on for several years and included the input of dozens of producers as well as many researchers. The whole project requires a coordinator in addition to Johnson, and that coordinator is Mark McLendon. On McLendon's head falls harmonizing the army of researchers who want to learn something from this field. He decides when to plant, when the weeds need to be sprayed, when to harvest, even how to coordinate rides to the site to conserve travel money. That's one thing that drove the size of the project.
Most farmers use air seeders when they plant no-till fields.
The smallest air seeder appropriate for this work had a 12 foot width, so all plots are multiples of that size. But it wasn't just equipment requirements that drove the project's size. Larger acreage also is mandated by the research design. At any time, half of the system will be in no-till, half in conventional mechanical tillage, with each half having a complete set of crop rotations. It took several days to lay out the site and three full days to get the massive baseline soil-testing done, then two days to plant the site, which is 30 miles northwest of the research center on Peterson's land.