Solving Strip-Till Dilemmas with Dave

The term strip-till may be foreign to some, and the idea of changing a practice that has been done for many years on your farm can be mind-boggling. Until you fully comprehend that strip-till is a systematic approach and not a cure-all, you may be telling yourself every reason in the book why it won’t work on your farm.Having been with Environmental Tillage Systems for over 14 years, Dave has heard every excuse in the book for why “strip-till won’t work on my farm.” Let’s see how Dave helps farmers overcome the idea of switching to strip-till and using a Soilwarrior.

“It will never work on MY ground.”

When I hear this statement, people are referring to how unique their soils are. Each soil type and each farm is unique in some way or another. At ETS, we pride ourselves on making the SoilWarrior work in all kinds of field conditions. We have machines running in the volcanic soils of New Zealand, to the beautiful soils of Illinois, to drought conditions in Texas. This has allowed us to understand what it takes to strip-till on YOUR ground.  

With all the experience ETS has gained over the years, we are accustomed to examining all circumstances and developing an initial setup for the SoilWarrior. When it’s time to run in the field, we can make adjustments such as the pitch to the toolbar, pitch of the containment coulters and coulter type, travel speed, and airbag pressure. These adjustments can be made quickly and require little or no tools.  

“We have rocks.”

This is one of my favorites. Many customers think rocks will be an extreme obstacle to manage with strip-tillage, but the opposite is true. The SoilWarrior row units have air pressure for the downforce and have parallel links that allow up to 17” of vertical travel. With a coulter-based row-unit (no shank), the row units can roll up and over rocks. The hubs that hold the coulter are tapered roller bearings/oil bath hubs, which aid in durability. Another great benefit of a coulter-based row-unit is that you will not be pulling rocks to the surface, and picking rocks will become a thing of the past. “When people tell me ‘we have rocks,’ I usually reply, ‘Great, that does not bother us!"

For customers who want to or need to run shanks/knives (NH3 applications, for example), we have a hydraulic trip with automatic reset that works extremely well in rocky conditions.

“Tillage is the ONLY way my soil will dry out.”

Traditionally, the thought process was that we needed to perform intensive tillage to dry out our soils in the spring, break up compaction, warm the soil quickly and prepare an ideal seedbed for planting. Most research has suggested that conventional tillage and strip-till warm up simultaneously; some indicate that strip-till might be faster. In addition, research has shown that strip-tilled fields see less temperature variation overnight than conventionally tilled fields. Also, minimizing the amount of tillage allows the soil to create larger soil aggregates, allowing better water infiltration. In return, the amount of standing water after significant rainfall is less. Those large aggregates also absorb water faster.

“I don’t have enough qualified operators.”

I’m not going to lie: it will take an operator more attentive to details and planning.  I recommend that you have your planter operator running the SoilWarrior or someone you would trust running the planter. The logic behind this is that those lines established by strip-till will be exactly where you will be planting and need to be planting.  I always advise that if the operators (planter vs. SoilWarrior) will be two (or more) different people, you should have them meet and plan how they will lay out the fields. Either way, you want to ensure everyone is on the same page. This also includes how fields will be labeled with regard to field names, headland names, etc.

“It’s too expensive.”

When people first start looking into strip-till, specifically the SoilWarrior, a common first reaction is “that’s too expensive.” Initially, people are still thinking along the lines of keeping most, if not all, of their conventional equipment and continuing to make just as many passes across the field. However, the SoilWarrior is meant to replace all your conventional tillage equipment and fertilizer spreaders. Growers start to add the numbers up. Most of our customers tell us they immediately realized a 30% - 50% reduction in fuel consumption and a 50% decrease in tractor hours. Another popular approach is to apply fertilizers at variable rates. In some instances, growers have reduced their overall fertilizer use by up to 30% through the use of VRT and placing the fertilizer in the zone right where the plant will use the product. All of these factors: equipment savings, fewer passes across the field resulting in reduced tractor hours and fuel savings, and increased fertilizer efficiency, add up fast. A SoilWarrior can pay for itself quickly. Now that we’ve been strip-tilling for a long time, we have seen data and trends. The great thing is that strip-till yields the same as conventional tillage. Traditionally, growers were worried about yield drag with strip-till; however, that has not been the case. So, by having the ability to grow comparable yields to the conventional crops you’ve been growing and doing it with less money spent on inputs, you’ll have more money in your pockets. 

“The technology is complicated.”

At one time, this was an accurate statement. However, technology has become easier to use and more intuitive over time. ETS wants the technology on the SoilWarrrior to be as user-friendly as possible and make it universal. The SoilWarrior comes with its own technology, SWICM, which stands for SoilWarrior ISOBUS Control Module. It is compatible with practically any ISO system on the marketplace and can be used with almost any monitor. ETS always offers full support to our customers to help eliminate complications. When a machine is delivered, an ETS employee will hook the machine to your tractor, install everything in the cab, and then teach you how to use the technology and the machine. We will not leave until you are comfortable running the machine. Our service team is available 24/7 for remote assistance.

Whatever your hesitation about diving into strip-tillage, you’re likely not the only farmer who has ever faced it. Don’t let a particular dilemma stop you from starting the conversation about strip-tillage and toward improved soil health and nutrient stewardship.