Dr. Elaine Ingham has done a lot of work on this, and talked about it a lot, too, at conferences and in videos. I had mentioned her and a brief gist of her work in an HN thread about no-till, some months ago, here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24828524

Her claims are huge. It would be great if they were true. And they may be, based on her arguments and research.

Check out her video, The Roots of Your Profits.