BERTHOUD, Colo. (AP)--For many, farming brings to mind pitchforks, hoes and the most traditional and time-tested ways to plant and harvest: plowing, disking, mulching, planting, irrigating and picking

But with the prices of diesel fuel and fertilizer rising as fast as the dollar-per-acre rate Front Range land developers are willing to pay, even a farmer committed to his land can't afford to drive a tractor over every inch of his soil seven times a year.

And nor should he have to, say local farming associations and soil conservationists.

The Longmont Conservation District has launched a two-year pilot program to make local sugar beet farming not only more earth-friendly but more lucrative to farmers.

The technology is called a strip till. Already widely used in the Midwest, the till, a large attachment which hooks behind a tractor, is composed of three rows of circular blades and up to a dozen nearly 2-foot-long tilling knives that create rows for planting. With a tank of liquid fertilizer and a planter hooked up to it, the innovative machine can do in one pass what local farmers have been taking four to seven passes to do.

"You have to find shortcuts and more cost-saving ways, or you won't be in agriculture any more," said Brad Buehler as he watched a strip till being dragged in perfect lines across a section of his 1,500-acre farm east of Berthoud. "If we can still get about 25 tons of beets per acre, and save money on the way, I'm for it."

Buehler and Artie Elmquist are two of eight farmers in Boulder and Weld counties participating in the project.

"This will save me on (planting) costs, easily," said Elmquist pointing to a till. "And if you consider wear and tear on equipment and driving time, I'll save even more than that."

Strip tillage cuts precise furrows for planting and leaves organic trash such as dried corn stalks lying undisturbed on fields year-round. In traditional tillage, every inch of farmland is plowed and organic trash is buried underground.

Conventionally, the ground is then disked to break up clods of dirt, mulched several times to prevent erosion and control weeds, and then repacked into a seed bed before planting can occur.

Pete Dillan, a strip till distributor from Nebraska, says a strip till farmer in his state spends only $360 per acre to produce corn compared to the $420-per-acre cost for a farmer using traditional methods.

"A sugar beet farmer, with all those passes, will save even more--around $75 per acre in costs," Dillan said.

Farmers in the Midwest, where heavier rainfall makes for more fertile soil, have strip tilled for years. Colorado farmers, however, need to irrigate more aggressively and often use flood irrigation water channeled through troughs to water their fields.

Many in Colorado have feared the surface trash necessary for strip tillage would clog water flow and create small dams, making for uneven irrigation. Only extraordinary results from the strip till experiment, some farmers say, will make them believers.

"We'll just have to see how it turns out come October of next year," said Louis Rademacher, a 77-year-old Mead grower who farms more than 2,000 acres of beets, corn and other vegetables with the help of his sons. At his son Doug's suggestion, Rademacher reluctantly volunteered 5 acres of his land for the minimum tillage sugar beet trial.

Rademacher was also one of 60 farmers, soil conservationists and agriculture industry representatives who came to a strip tillage field day and luncheon Nov. 16, at the Rinn Church in southern Longmont.

"The verdict is still out," Elmquist said.

"But we'll come back in August for the next field day and show them fields full of big healthy beets. Because of fuel and fertilizer costs, it's not going to take a lot to convince farmers that strip tillage is the way to go."

The Natural Resource Conservation Service of Longmont won a roughly $20,000 grant to conduct the experiment. On each sugar beet farm, 5 acres will be strip tilled, and next to it, 5 acres tilled using conventional methods for comparison. The money has helped to bring in experts, rent the tills themselves, and will pay for an intern to interview participating farmers for the next two summers. The intern will compare dollar-per-acre net profits on the eight participating farms.

"Even if the yield is lower, if you're saving on fuel, you're money ahead," said NRCS soil conservationist Don Graffis. "The bottom line for farmers is making payments."

Unlike other businessmen, farmers can't raise the price of their product even if expenses have risen, Graffis said. The market dictates crop prices. A lucky year is keeping $30,000 to support your family, he said.

Though it sounds simple, strip tillage isn't cheap. A six-row strip till may cost between $15,000 and $18,000, an auto-steer system and GPS to till and plant perfect rows run from $6,000 to $30,000 and a tractor may cost nearly $200,000.

"It's a large investment," said Keith Kennedy, a Westminster engineer working with auto-steer technology on the project.

"But the idea is to prove a point to locals that it can be done, it works, here's how it works and yes, it will save you money."

From a conservationist point of view, leaving trash cover in place reduces the dust clouds that cause wind erosion, and holds moisture in place so flowing water doesn't drag dirt downstream and away from crops. The minimal surface disturbance of reduced tillage also leaves more earthworms and microbes at home to keep soil soft, Graffis said.

But environmentalists already know strip tillage promotes natural resources; the question is whether the technology proves itself a wise economic investment for farmers struggling to make a living.

"When we harvest the beets next year, we'll weigh the tonnage, check our bank books and see," Buehler said.