Dale Strickler SEEING IS BELIEVING: The value of maintaining straw mulch is evident with these two photographs. The cornfield on the left is growing where wheat straw had been baled off yearly. The cornfield on the right is a neighboring no-till field with straw mulch. Farmers can do better at getting moisture into the soil and keeping it there. Images of the 1930s Dust Bowl are nearly a century old, and the images linger in our minds, but Dale Strickler doesn’t feel farmers have done enough to adapt soil management practices to keep those black-and-white images in the past.