no till agriculture in northwest indiana

this morning found me out in the nexus and the soybeans in the suburban field have grown a bit over the past week and so has the volunteer corn...the indiana soybean alliance has been remiss about returning my emails so i have turned to the indiana department of agriculture for help and will be going to their office in the county seat soon...while perusing their website i have run across some interesting information that has me looking at local fields far more closely than before...first the cold and wet winter we just had loosened the soil and so made this spring particularly attractive to no till agriculture...and no till is gaining traction locally...the 2011 statistics show that 19% of the corn crop in lake county and 3% in porter were no till...the soybean figures were 59% for lake and 48% for porter...beans seem to be more tractable for no till but as i drove farther south i found numerous no till fields ( this was in porter county ) of bean and even a no till corn filed that has been mulched with straw...i am curious as to whether that is more to retain moisture or to damp down weeds, or both ( certainly when i use mulch in the garden it is for both purposes and i can't see why it wouldn't work in a large field )...so no till is a much larger facet of suburban agriculture than i had imagined...i really need to find a farmer willing to chat to find motivations behind it...the state is making an effort to popularize it for a number of reasons from erosion to water quality issues...what's are the people at the point of attack thinking?