Strip-till certainly isn’t a secret or new concept. For more than 20 years, Charlie Hammer and his wife Nancy Kavazanjian, have been strip-tilling corn on their nearly 1,900 acres near Beaver Dam, Wis.

Todd Mooberry, strip-till farmer in Low Point, Ill., introduces his "strip-freshener" unit that he designed and is selling to Yetter for production. Runs in the spring over strips made in the fall to help them dry out and apply fertilizer to the strip. Also able to improve the ride of his planter, at least 8-10 percent.

One of the challenges of strip-tilling is that there's not always a next-door neighbor handy to bounce fertilizer-application ideas off of, or discuss residue-management strategies.

Heading into his third year of strip-tilling, Jeremy Swanson is still waiting to see what kind of a yield improvement he'll get after moving away from conventional tillage.