"If you want to double the size of your farm, farm vertically,” says Ray Rawson. The developer of several pieces of zone tillage equipment and a no-till corn and soybean producer from Farwell, Mich., for many years has taken the time to look beneath the soil surface. The result has been higher yields on his own and and many other farms.

A simple question about converting a disc to an aeration tool sparked a heated discussion on the No-Till Farmer message board this month. No-tillers gave their thoughts about making this conversion and also the compaction problems that can go along with no-tilling in cold, wet soils.