Conservation tillage: Marrying for money

Excerpt

WAIST-DEEP in a dollar-green soybean field in Todd County, Kentucky, two farmers are talking yields.

The farmer in the dark business suit is the secretary of agriculture. This explains the television camera crews and scribbling journalists who have poured out of the big tour bus to pluck and trample perfectly good soybeans. The other farmer, whose crisp khaki work clothes and remarkably smooth, thoughtful monologue make the cameras, tour bus, and top brass of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) seem like a routine part of his job, is award-winning farmer Alan Franks, proprietor of Sunrise Farms, on which we stand.

Franks does most of the talking. It is a brisk, efficient commentary, running from the subject of tile-outlet terraces to Bicep and Round-up, doubled-cropped wheat and soybeans, 30 to 40 bushel beans (“At least,” says John Block), fertilizer banding, hog-finishing capacity, and other topics you expect to hear about from what Franks calls “the modern farmer-businessman.” Franks remarks …