Paul Hamann
Paul Hamann has learned the nuts and bolts of taking a bare toolbar and turning it into a complete, fully-functional field implement. Nearly a decade ago, he and his son, Cory, adopted a “building on a budget” mentality with equipment on their row crop and livestock operation.
They’ve been through several iterations of strip-till rigs, different sizes and row unit setups, all with an eye on achieving an economic return on their machinery investment.
For assembly of a 12-row strip-till rig, Hamann saved about $10,000 by buying a used toolbar and spent another $2,000 building it, not counting the cost of the row units. Total cost was less than $50,000 and their most recent 6-row project was assembled for about $20,000.
"You can find a cheap, used, complete strip-till rig that maybe a farmer tried and didn’t like that you can always update or change anything you don’t like on it,” he says. “We chose to build our own because we’ve become savvy at finding cheap parts and updating them. It has helped us keep our investment costs down.”
During a classroom session at the 2018 National Strip-Tillage Conference, July 26-27 in Iowa City, Iowa, Hamann will share some of the considerations and cautionary tales for building and modifying strip-till equipment.
The 5th annual National Strip-Tillage Conference will be held at the Marriott Coralville Hotel & Conference Center and feature 2 days of strip-till education through an array of thought-provoking general sessions, strategy-packed strip-till classrooms and highly collaborative strip-till roundtable discussions.
Registration is available for just $269, and attendees who register their farm and family members receive additional savings. For more information and to register for the conference, visit striptillconference.com.
Title sponsors making the learning and networking opportunities possible for strip-tillers include AgroLiquid, Copperhead Ag, Dawn Equipment Co., Environmental Tillage Systems, Ingersoll Tillage Group, Kuhn Krause, Montag Mfg., Schlagel Manufacturing, Thurston Mfg. (Blu-Jet), Topcon Agriculture, Vulcan Equipment and Yetter Mfg.
