Corn yields have increased 15 percent to 20 percent for no-tiller Doug Smith when planted in six-row strips. But 15-foot-wide soybean strips planted next to the corn have seen yields decrease as much as 5 percent to 10 percent from conventional no-till soybean yields.

Some 15 years ago, no-tilling tomatoes wasn’t even thought to be possible. But no-tiller Steve Groff has found huge success transplanting tomatoes into a thick cover crop with the aid of a Buffalo rolling stalk chopper and no-till planter developed at Virginia Polytechnic Institute (VPI).

For no-tiller Doug Smith, inputs like fertilizer, her­bicides and fuel tend to be more expensive for the Thames­ville, Ontario, farmer than for his U.S. counterparts. So when you can get some­thing for free, you take advantage of it.

Compaction can be a real killer. That’s why John and Alan Merchant of Cass City, Mich., are extremely sensitive to this critical no-till concern. Heavy equipment puts a pounding on poorly drained clay soils north of Detroit.