On Steve Duwe’s 1,120 acre farm near Johnson Creek, Wis., making the most of his strip-till corn and no-till soybeans operation on moderately sloping ground, requires more than a steady hand.

Scott Mavis is no stranger to precision farming equipment and at times, the challenges it can create. He and his father, Gary, grow primarily corn and soybeans near Edgerton, Ohio, no-tilling all soybeans and no-tilling about half their corn, depending on the crop rotation.

Keith Schlapkohl’s corn-growing philosophy turns it up a notch.

Don and Brian Glenn squeeze five crops out of three years on the 1,500 acres they no-till on Glenn Acres near Hillsboro in northern Alabama.

Dean James got his first piece of precision equipment, a yield monitor for the farm’s combine, in 1998. It paid for itself in two years by quantifying how much yield was lost due to edge effect in tree-lined fields.