Often we don't know if we're going to have a good or bad crop until well after the corn is too tall to run a tractor through the field. I've gotten to where I just assume we're going to have a good crop and pour the coals to it. Average yields in this area for dryland seem to be about 80 bu/acre. I fertilize for 115 bu per acre and if we get unexpected rains, I'm in good shape, and if it burns up, we didn't have enough to leach it out so the next crop should get it.

For irrigated, I'm not sure I agree with Lucas on stand establishment being the only issue. We can move a lot of trash out of the way with a sharks tooth row cleaner on the planter without plugging. With RTK we can easily split the rows, and if we were serious about it we could probably put narrow guage wheels on the planter and only move over 10" at a time and we could probably keep doing that indefinitely. We have split the rows before, and gone in no-till. Even after 1 year, we're starting to have a hard time keeping the water from the pivot in the field. It's not too bad, but it's certainly not ideal.

Actually, I just no-tilled an irrigated field last year (not by choice). I had to go across the rows because it was our first year farming it and the previous farmer did not plant with RTK and had a different sized planter than we do. It still made 222 bu/acre. So stand establishment was not a terrible issue (although I admit it could have been better), but we were already having a hard time getting the water to stay in the field as we were irrigating (it had been strip tilled the previous year).