The study compared different ways of farming corn in a dry area in the USA. They looked at three methods: strip tillage, no-tillage, and plow-based tillage. They found that the number of corn plants and the amount of corn produced were similar no matter which method was used. The soil quality was also similar between the methods, except for some differences in the types of microbes in the soil. This means that farmers in this area can use conservation tillage without losing corn yield in the first few years.