Harold Grall already had extensive experience growing corn and grain sorghum in the Texas Panhandle when he bought out his mentor, Dale Coleman, and started farming on his own in 1994. At that time, he was farming 3,700 acres of High Plains silt-clay loam just north of Dumas, Texas, and was committed to ridge-till and furrow irrigation.

Jermey Tuttle knows all about the benefits that strip-tillers in the Corn Belt cite about the practice, ranging from saving fuel and reducing erosion to precision placement of fertilizer.

Taking extra time this summer to give strip-till equipment and precision technology a thorough tuneup could make a big difference in yields and farm profitability next year, experts say.

Strip-tillers and agronomists agree about the need to maximize the use of fertilizer to produce high-yielding corn and soybean crops.