ridger finally turned this discussion into something meaningful.    I watched part of the series that loran posted, just really couldn't take the bs any more, there is probably pretty good info in it, my brain was just hurting from weeding out the chaff, will finish watching it later.
 
anyway, back to the present discussion,   ridger's premise is thus, there is enough nutrients in the soil, they just have to be released, the natural weathering or conversion of insoluble nutrients can only supply so much, so the attempt is to speed up or increase the rate of conversion.

to follow this road takes a lot of faith. where strip till or banding nutrients ties in is that a certain percentage of the broadcast nutrients we apply is eventually rendered unusable, because they are tied up or eroded away. supposedly if the nutrients are applied in a band then the detrimental effects are minimized. 
so the thought process is that depending on how much of the nutrients you believe are tied up when broadcasting you, are mining your soil anyway,.... well kinda.

so the belief is two fold, one is whether or not you can ramp up the soil biology to supply sufficient enough nutrients for maximum crop production, and secondly that there are enough tied up nutrients to begin with.

I've got enough years of different cropping systems and tests and trials that I believe the truth lies somewhere in between in our area.