Beautiful Pictures.   The results you posted earlier are good information.

I do think though that the other half of the story needs to be told.  Long term is hard to measure, and you cannot be expected to be the one to do it, but it needs to be brought up every time there is a yield drag from covercrops or Notill.

The long term effect that I am talking about is only discovered when a field that has been farmed conventionally for a long time is expanded into previously non-farmed areas and a significant yield bump is observed in the new farmground.   One of my first posts on Agtalk was to a Kansas farmer who saw 70 bushel wheat next to 40 bushel wheat in the same field and the only difference is that the 40 bushel wheat ground had been disked for the past 30+ years and the 70 bushel ground hadn't been farmed until that year.

The question to ask is if a 5-10% yeild drag trumps preventing 70 bushel wheat ground from becoming 40 bushel wheat ground over 30 or 100 years.  I can increase my profitability this year if I sell my seed wheat along with the rest of the crop, but It would come back to bite me in the grawlix.

P.S.  If you farm flat swampy ground in southern MN, Northern IA or Central ILL, this post is not ment for you.