Now see the area of high erosion in the upper left hand part of the state. The second county down on the left hand edge is Sioux County, home of at least two farms which sold for over $20,000 an acre. Here is a map of county farm price averages in Iowa from ISU:
Now maybe I'm just a little more frugal than some folks, but I would get very ill thinking about the rich topsoil I just shelled out ridiculous amounts of money for washing or blowing away (and I'd probably cry). Here in Ohio, there is a lot of variation in soil types, and I think that is one reason why we see a lot of variation in tillage practices here. On our thinner and better drained soils (with lots of rocks), no-till makes a lot of sense. However, a lot of folks practice conventional tillage on many of the high clay content, poorly-drained soils. Now I'm not familiar with northwestern Iowa, but I was around outside of Ames a couple of years ago for the Farm Progress Show, and while we were there, they got about 3 inches of rain overnight. And yet, the grass parking lot where all the visitors to the show parked didn't turn into a muddy mess. That soil, besides being very friable, was extremely well-drained. I really don't understand why anybody would have to till much of that soil. I sure as heck wouldn't do it if it was going to wash away.
A lot of farming practices come down to what the neighbors are doing. If you get into a very conservative culture like the Dutch folks in Sioux County, I bet the mindset is that we've done things this way forever, and there is no reason to change. I would posit that they are incorrect in that thought process. Of course, I also think continuous corn is also a bad idea, so I'd probably get laughed right out of Iowa (however, I'm not this crazy).
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