Farmers have many reasons for moving from conventional tillage to strip-till, whether it’s minimizing erosion, being more precise with inputs, building soil health or getting more bushels per acre.

A few years ago while planting double-crop soybeans, David Wolfskill got out of his tractor, walked into one of his adjacent cornfields and noticed the ground was completely bare.

Three decades of no-till, or “never till” as John Rigdon calls it, is certainly long enough to establish a tradition at Rigdon Farms, but that’s only part of the story.

Researchers at Beck’s Hybrids are turning precision farming methods up a notch.

Even after more than a quarter-century of no-tilling, Koepke Farms continues to fine-tune its practices to keep soil in place, make the most of manure and fertilizer applications and consistently reach 200-bushel corn yields without irrigation.