Transition with someone who has done it.

Before Levi transitioned his own ground, he became an organic inspector — to learn the practice from the inside, visiting farms across Iowa. What he saw shaped everything: organic farmers losing the battle against weed pressure in their soybeans, many forced out entirely. He set out to design a system that didn’t have that weakness.

That meant studying roller-crimping research from the Rodale Institute and the University of Wisconsin–Madison — and when the equipment wasn’t available in Iowa, building his own roller-crimper, renting it to neighbors, and proving the system on sixty acres of his own. Today he runs joint organic no-till research with Iowa State and Wisconsin.