Concern over a large initial investment in equipment and time can have farmers second guessing a switch to strip-till. However, there are affordable and innovative entry points which can ease the transition.
Since 2012, Seth Wenzel has been strip-tilling corn on the family’s 4,000-acre farm near Kent, in northwest Illinois, embracing economic approaches to machinery, technology and fertilizer application that have helped increase yields.
Tracking cost savings and efficiency gains, Seth admits there were initial growing pains. “Change is hard,” he says. “There’s that convention of having to do things a certain way. When comparing conventional tillage to the first year or two where we were doing corn-on-corn strip-till, there were places where the crop didn’t look so healthy. But our minds changed when we started looking at yields which have increased as much as 20 bushels per acre.”
In today’s Strip-Till Farmer podcast, Seth shares top takeaways for starting out in strip-till and experience-based examples for how he’s been able to add bushels to the bin by budgeting for change.
Strip-Till Farmer's podcast series is brought to you by Topcon Agriculture.
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