Foreward At the 2004 meeting in Raleigh, NC, the steering committee of The Southern Conservation Tillage Conference for Sustainable Agriculture changed the name to The Southern Conservation Tillage Systems Conference. This was done to emphasize the systems approach that is needed to optimize productivity and profitability while protecting and enhancing environmental resources with conservation tillage management. Though the name of the conference has changed several times since its inception in

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... 1978, its purpose has remained constant: to serve as a means of communication among people interested in conservation tillage systems. Times have changed in the South. Conservation tillage management has become common on southern farms. The theme of this year's conference, The Science of Conservation Tillage: Continuing the Discoveries, was chosen because as we begin this new era in crop production, we begin a new era of discoveries about how soils, the ecosystems surrounding fields, and the economics of production are affected with this new way of growing crop plants. The 2005 Proceedings contains papers and abstracts of research and extension projects on a number of different aspects of conservation tillage. It contains reports on animal production, animal waste, pests, fertility and liming, soil water and irrigation, and soil physical and chemical responses to conservation tillage management. Although there are papers about most of the agronomic crops of the southern region, prominent this year is the large number of papers on conservation tillage production of peanuts. Special to this year's conference was a session on site-specific farming and those papers are included. We in South Carolina appreciate the opportunity of hosting the conference. We thank the authors, sponsors, and participants who contributed to this conference. Southern Conservation Tillage Planning Committee