Soil-moisture sensing and analysis allows Colorado strip-tiller Chad Godsey to make smarter irrigation decisions and increase yields on his family's farm.

While some strip-tillers rely on custom spraying, getting applications done in a timely manner isn't always a priority for retailers in the fall, especially when customer demand is high.

Steve Duwe understands the anxiety that comes with heavy rains and the havoc they can wreak on fields in the fall. In 2008, extreme flooding pushed corn harvest back, and an early winter prevented him from doing any fall tillage.

Mike Bland wasn't expecting higher corn yields when he switched to strip-till 6 years ago. Having used conventional tillage and dabbling in ridge-till and no-till, the Bethany, Ill., farmer wanted a more economical approach to manage fertilizer application and improve efficiency overall on his 2,000-acre farm.

Strip-tillers take a lot of pride in the planning and preparation that comes with the farming practice. More and more, strip-tillers I talk with are paying closer attention to managing seed populations, variable-rate fertilizer application and soil health. Precision technology is certainly assisting them with improved accuracy and regulating input costs.

When Nick Viney partnered with Josh Trautman to form Badgerland Grain Farms LLC in 2006, they started with just 155 acres in south-central Wisconsin. But during the last 7 years, they've grown their Evansville, Wis.-based operation to more than 1,800 acres, an even split of strip-till corn and no-till soybeans, with about 180 acres of no-till wheat.

Driving through Wisconsin at the end of September, all was still relatively quiet in the cornfields that I passed.

Technology, split fertilizer applications and higher seed populations are putting Illinois strip-tiller James Schoff on the path to profitability.

When talking with strip-tillers, one question I’ll ask is what they’d most like to learn more about to help improve their farming operation.

Illinois strip-tiller Mike Bland admits that he's a stickler when it comes to equipment maintenance. The last thing he wants when heading into the fields to build fall strips is wasting time diagnosing and fixing a problem that could have been prevented.