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Then he spent most of an hour making farmers laugh and ponder some bold statements.

"My intent is to make you think," said Beck, a plant science professor at South Dakota State University and research manager of the Dakota Lakes Research Farm near Pierre, S.D.

Afterward, he collected mostly handshakes and praise Tuesday after opening the 16th annual No-Till on the Plains Winter Conference at the Salina Bicentennial Center.

Beck lectured more than 1,300 farmers, ranchers and others involved in agriculture, who rewarded some of his remarks with applause.

Beck recalled a visit from a group of Kansas farm scientists to Dakota Lakes. The farmers wanted to know more about no-till farming. He started the tour by visiting farmsteads.

"I took them to one farm and said, 'This guy is a no-tiller. He has a new house.' " Beck said. The next stop was a farmer who tilled his soil.

"I said, 'This guy is not a no-tiller. He doesn't have a new house,' " Beck said.

Don't fight Mother Nature

Instead of fighting Mother Nature, he urged them to work with her, mimic her systems, and keep crop residue, organic material, nutrients and moisture on their land.

Increasing organic matter from 1 percent to 3 percent doubles the soil's capacity to hold water, he said.

By reaping more of the natural benefits, Beck suggested, many terraces wouldn't be needed to hold water and prevent erosion.

Farming without tillage means less diesel fuel is needed to raise crops, he said.

The average wheat price in 1970 was $1.37 a bushel, roughly 40 percent of the price of a barrel of oil. If that commodity had kept pace, it would be worth more than $35 a bushel today. Wheat closed at $6.71 a bushel, up 13 cents, Tuesday at Cargill Ag Horizons wheat terminal 1112 N. Halstead.

Those numbers are one reason to cut your diesel costs, Beck said.

"If we're going to be profitable, separate from energy. Separate from energy costs," he said.

Doing things differently

When it takes more energy to transport and make ethanol, Beck said "We need to do some things differently," such as feeding cattle in fields and not feedlots. What they don't use to make beef stays there.

To control weeds, create a "diverse system where weeds don't have opportunities," Beck said. Instead of herbicides, crop rotations and good canopies of crops keep the sunlight away and prevent weeds.

"Use cover crops as cow feed, and to capture nutrients," he said. "Let Mother Nature do it instead of somebody you buy it from. The best biomass digester has four legs and goes 'moo.' "

Keep more of your money

In 1994, at a conference hosted by the Monsanto chemical company, Beck said he predicted there would be a resistance to Roundup herbicide, which came true.

"Nature is an opportunist," he said. "Keep more of your money. Don't give it to John Deere or Monsanto."

If man disappeared from the Earth and came back in 200 years, he would find that the bison and grasses had returned.

Bison eat the grass, wolves eat the bison and most of what is left over stays on the land, Beck said. What did make it down the river was returned by sturgeon.

"Now, phosphorous ends up on the coast and there's nothing to bring it back," he said.

Food in a bottle

Conversations continued after Beck's talk.

"If we keep sending (nutrients) down the river, in 200 years, what are we gonna look like? A desert. We're already halfway there," he said. "Then we'll be raising food in a bottle I guess."

Americans sell beef to Taiwan, but nothing returns.

"It makes no sense ... to feed 9 billion people. They really can't afford our food anyway," Beck said.

The best way to learn to be a good farmer is to start learning from natural systems, he said.

"We didn't think about that 150 years ago. White European males thought they were smarter than nature," Beck said.

His closing speech, beginning at 4:20 p.m. today, will include more thoughts on how man has changed things, including: "We killed all the beaver because somebody in Europe wanted hats," Beck said.

Then, to hold the water -- Dakota Lakes is along the Missouri River -- they built dams, and the resulting reservoirs "are silting in, rather than putting the beaver back," he said.

At the AIM Syposium -- Agriculture's Innovative Minds -- from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thursday at the Bicentennial Center, Australian farmer Colin Seis will discuss adding crops, such as wheat, to perennial pastures to improve soil health.

The cost to attend is $199, and there is a combination price of $299 to attend both the conference and the symposium.

An impressive crowd

Tuesday's large crowd perusing some 70 commercial exhibits impressed Dennis Hupe, of Topeka, director of field services for the Kansas Soybean Commission and a No-till on the Plains board member.

"There are several walking around with hand-printed name tags," he said, indicating that they're attending as walk-ins. More than 1,300 pre-registered for the event.

Nearly 100 walk-ins paid their $200 fees Tuesday, said Sylvia Rice, director of Visit Salina, a division of the Salina Area Chamber of Commerce, which handles registration at the Bicentennial Center.

She's expecting close to 1,400 when the conference continues from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. today. That would make it one of the biggest in 16 years, said Brian Lindley, executive director of No-Till on the Plains, based in Wamego.

All over the world

Farmers from all over Kansas, several states, Canada and countries overseas are in attendance, along with experts from South America, Australia, and France.

High grain prices and memories of last summer's drought are swelling attendance, Hupe said, plus, "people are trying to be better stewards of the soil."

Another board member, Doug Palen, 41, a Glen Elder farmer, made the switch to no-till in 1993, and hasn't missed the plow. Roughly 4.5 million acres -- 35 to 40 percent -- of Kansas cropland is farmed with no tillage, Lindley said.

"I truly believe in the system," Palen said. "It's the future of production agriculture."

-- Reporter Tim Unruh can be reached at 822-1419 or by email at tunruh@salina.com.

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