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On this episode of the Strip-Till Farmer podcast, brought to you by Yetter Farm Equipment, we catch up with McGuffey, Ohio, strip-tiller and Land Luvr owner John Rohrs at the 2024 National Farm Machinery Show. Rohrs showcases his 16-row strip-till bar and discusses important factors to consider when making strips this spring.
We also stop by the Beck’s Practical Farm Research (PFR) insights meeting for a conversation with PFR location lead Brandon Somers. We ask him, “With an unlimited budget, what would you put on your ultimate planter?”
Later in the podcast we pay a visit to the DigiFarm and Trimble booths for an up-close look at new RTK, smart-spray and rural connectivity solutions.
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The Strip-Till Farmer podcast is brought to you by Yetter Farm Equipment.
Yetter Farm Equipment has been providing farmers with solutions since 1930. Today, Yetter is your answer for finding the tools and equipment you need to face today’s production agriculture demands. The Yetter lineup includes a wide range of planter attachments for different planting conditions, several equipment options for fertilizer placement, and products that meet harvest-time challenges. Yetter delivers a return on investment and equipment that meets your needs and maximizes inputs. Visit them at yetterco.com.
Full Transcript
Noah Newman:
Great to have you with us for another edition of the Strip-Till Farmer Podcast, brought to you by Yetter Farm Equipment. I'm your host, Noah Newman, technology editor. Okay, so today we're taking the podcast on the road, to the National Farm Machinery Show in Louisville, Kentucky. Our first stop takes us to the Land Luvr Booth where Land Luvr owner and strip-tiller from Ohio, John Rohrs shows off his 16 row toolbar and shares some tips for strip-till success this spring.
John Roars:
My name's John Rohrs, owner of Roars Manufacturing, where we make a Land Luvr's strip-till bars and strip fresheners and nitrogen applicators and we've got one of our 16 row bars here at the show. This bar runs on tracks and we can carry dry fertilizer, liquid fertilizer, and we can put a hitch on the back of one and Hydrus, we put all three with one pass. Unique things we have about our row unit and stuff. It's just the ease of maintenance, ease of use and everything. It's non-complicated, because it's built by a farmers for farmers. We have different row configurations here at the booth, you can see them and stuff. This one's set up here with an air release and a J ASSY blocking sensor and stuff. And this row unit we call a mid-mount row unit, we have different basket configurations you can put on there depending on if you're going to run in the fall, the spring or you got heavy clay soils.
The other neat feature we have is, we have the lid in the fill auger all in one. The auger is open right now and that's in order to lift and open the lid that covers the fill area there from debris. Once that's done, the augers flip back up and you can start filling the tank. It's a true 12 ton tank for low-density products. We can hold 14 ton of potash and MAP and the tank we have on the front is a 525 gallon liquid tank and that's particular to whatever a farmer would want to run, all can go into the same trench in the same depth. We run anywhere from two inches to 12 inch deep on our row units.
Noah Newman:
Yeah, it seems like a really versatile machine. Would you say that's one of the biggest strengths of it from a strip-tillers perspective? Is that it can do multiple different things and multiple different soil types?
John Roars:
Yeah. The nice thing we have about it, once you have it set in a particular field for a soil type, you don't have to change once you switch to a different field or if you have variable soil types. There's really... On our bar we use on the farm, we run several bars at the same time and once it's set you pretty much leaving it there. Now spring to fall you may change the basket and the depth or the down force on the basket, but that's it. It's simple. You get in there that kind of our philosophy is if you're not in the seat running, you're not getting stuff done and everybody's busy and then whether it's in the fall or the spring in strip-tilling, the goal is to keep running.
Noah Newman:
Has this toolbar evolved a lot over the years? Any new additions lately? How have you perfected it over the years?
John Roars:
So any one of our strip-till bars, you can drop the shank out and slide in a double wavy coulter or we have our freshener that'll slide up into there. So you can use, in theory, you can use the bar in the fall and put your P and K down, drop it out, put in our freshener shank for example, and then put nitrogen and just freshen the soil up with the same mainframe. So your costs drop so you're not having to have two different machines to do that.
Noah Newman:
So you're a strip-tiller yourself then, you said you have your own farm?
John Roars:
Yep.
Noah Newman:
So I guess a lot of people might be getting ready to make spring strips here. Do you have any kind of advice for strip-tillers out there? Maybe some tips for some success this spring?
John Roars:
If you're in the Midwest and you move from fall to spring, we did it on our farm, not because we thought that was the way we were going to go at first, but we got caught one year. We didn't get any fall strips done, so we ran in the spring and there's so much technology out there, whether it's in bars now or the fertility that you can put into the liquid system or the dry fertilizer with encapsulated and you could get to the point where you are doing a full application in one pass. We run about 6,000 acres of corn on our own farm and we run a 20-inch corn so our row units can get down to 20 inches. We go anywhere from a 20-foot bar up to a 40-foot, or excuse me, our 45-foot bars at 20 inches, which is a 27-row machine.
Noah Newman:
Gotcha. And it was a dry year for a lot of people last year. Any advice in terms of what strip-tillers might need to look out for when they're making strips after a dry year?
John Roars:
Yeah, the difference that we have, and a lot of times you get caught up in, well I can't work it in the spring. We kind of thought it's the same thing, but once we've got into it and doing it, we're doing it differently than you would if you're opening a field up and trying to get it to dry out. We're simply moving the soil, placing the fertilizer and putting the strip back down and letting it lie, so we're not drying the strip out. Preferably you'd like a shower or rain or irrigate to get the fertilizer started, but if there's moisture down below there tends to be in a lot of the Midwest, all fertilizer is going to start to dissolve and become available.
Noah Newman:
And if there are any first time strip-tillers watching this or people thinking about getting into strip-till, do you have any kind of tip or advice for them as to what they should do to maybe avoid any kind of yield hit in their first year doing strip-till?
John Roars:
Yeah, I don't think there's ever a yield hit on going to strip-till. There's a lot of ways to look at it. I think the first time we were doing strip till and starting it, we looked at it as maybe a cost savings. Maybe we cut the fertilizer rate back, prices were really out of whack for a while there, to going all the way to feeding the corn, really pushing for high yields and stuff like that. So there's really never have we ever had a lag going to strip-till and we've done some form of strip-till, our bar other people's bars trying things out over the years. But all in one, like that, like we have is you're just saving passes, you're combining workload. Labor is hard to find, but the technology on GPS and guidance and things, it doesn't take a superior driver like we used to have to be able to do and stuff. If the guy can keep it together and can do math and make the next load of fertilizer he is got to have available, you're off to the races.
Noah Newman:
Great stuff there from John Rohrs. We appreciate him taking the time to speak with us. Okay, next up we are crashing the Beck's Practical Farm Research Insights meeting for some insight on how to build the ultimate planner. We're here with Brandon Summers in the Beck's Practical Farm Research Insight Center here. You just did a round table discussion. How much do you enjoy getting out here and sharing some of the results from the 2023 research?
Brandon Summers:
Yeah, this is one of the most fun things we do, just come out and share everything that we worked hard on this summer. It's really gratifying for all of us to be able to share it with customers and see it get taken to the field.
Noah Newman:
And one of the questions you got here that I thought really stood out is everything you know from this research book, given that if you had an unlimited budget, what's going on your ultimate planner? And in this case a lot of our audience, there are no-tillers and strip tillers. So what would go on your ultimate planner with an unlimited budget?
Brandon Summers:
Yeah, so that's a tough question because there's a lot of good options out there, but I think there's two things I think are tied for number one. First is downforce. Hydraulic downforce is really kind of changed the game, especially for no-till, being able to change that downforce as the planter's going across the field multiple times within a second, that's making a big difference. Even in our small plots of being 300 to 400 feet long, we're seeing advantages in it and that's usually some fairly consistent ground. Number two is, two by two by two. Being able to put some nitrogen down right next to where that plant needs it to get that plant off to the best start we can I think is really key. Those two are probably my top one. To go to number two, I think having a good meter system is key.
We want to have good singulation out there, get good placement of that seed. And when I say metering system, that kind of goes into having something like a speed tube on there, being able to control that drop all the way until that seed gets in the ground, because from that point on we do nothing but lose yield potential. So let's get it set up for the best yield potential we had to get. And then number three I think is closing wheels, especially in a no-till situation that can make a big difference. We want to get that seed trench closed, protect that seed, get good seed to foil contact. It's good for germination, keep some of the pests out of the trench and all the testing we've done and we've tested a lot of different closing wheels, anything we put on there seems to be better than just that standard rubber tire closing system that we typically see.
Noah Newman:
Let's talk RTK technology now. Steve Riddle and Dylan Nemmers from Digi Farm. Give us the inside scoop on the company's new Elevate slim modem and more.
Steve Riddle:
Hi, this is Steve Riddle with Digi Farm. We're here at the National Farm Machinery Show. I cover a sales territory within Digi Farm and I'm excited to be here at the 2024 show. Got my counterpart here with me.
Dylan Nemmers:
Hey everyone, my name's Dylan Nemmers. I cover the western sales for Digi Farm. We're here excited at the show. We're doing a couple of things here at the show. First things first, we are giving away a free year of RTK service, that includes hardware and subscription to our network to get you guys in RTK and see what value we could provide to your farm.
Steve Riddle:
We've got several options depending on the system that you might already have, assuming you may be a winner or interested in Digi Farm, RTK. And we've got several modem devices and a Bluetooth beacon piece. And so we'll be working with the winner obviously to pick out what's best based on his equipment and operation. The Elevate Slim modem is something relatively new for us and that modem device really took something that was used in the industry and very cumbersome. It was a lot of individual pieces, took a lot of time for installation and kind of difficult really to move around as you move through equipment during the course of the year. And so I'll let Dylan talk a little bit about the design on the Elevate modem.
Dylan Nemmers:
Yeah, so we designed everything that went into the Elevate, all the hardware and software we put into it. It's protected on our VPN and everything like that. The Elevate is going to be a turnkey solution. So for you guys that have a lot of people in and out of the cab or maybe a little bit tech illiterate, this is going to be a great option for you. Turn the tractor on your RTK is going to boot up. Off you go. So as simple as that.
Steve Riddle:
Yeah, as Dylan said, no operator interaction at all. Just truly plug and play and a really robust solution, especially if you're in some challenging cell areas. So we're excited to have that a part of our product offering.
Noah Newman:
I know there are a lot of different kinds of RTK technologies that we've talked about in the past, so what kind of umbrella does Elevate fit into?
Steve Riddle:
I think what Dylan hit upon was that fact that maybe there's operators and a lot of various operators throughout the grow season and something that's just reliable, no operator interaction and the reliability of picking up that cell signal so that we can deliver our RTK correction signal. That's the crucial piece. If you're a strip-tilling and repeating passes throughout the grow season, whether it be strip-till planting, then side dressing and spraying and then go back at harvest and start that cycle all over. And that's a really robust solution to make that work.
Noah Newman:
And let's burn a quick timeout to share a message from Yetter Farm Equipment. Yetter Farm Equipment has been providing farmers with residue management, fertilizer placement, and seedbed preparation solutions since 1930. Today Yetter is your answer for success. In the face of ever-changing production agriculture challenges, Yetter offers a full lineup of planter attachments designed to perform in varying planning conditions, multiple options for precision fertilizer placement, strip-till units and stalk rollers for your combine. Yetter products, maximize your inputs, save you time, and deliver return on your investment. Visit them @yetterco.com. That's Y-E-T-T-E-R-C-O.com. Now back to the podcast.
From RTK Technology to Smart Spray Technology now, let's head over to the Trimble booth for a first look at the new Bilberry Smart Spraying system and also for a crash course on the company's automatic stream switching for rural connectivity issues.
Corey Books:
Hey there, my name's Corey Books. I'm here with Trimble. My role at Trimble is, I lead our product team responsible for software and I'm here to tell you a little bit about our Bilberry See and Spray System. Bilberry is a company Trimble acquired in 2022, and ever since then we've been working to bring this product to market in many regions and many crop types throughout the world. The Bilberry See and Spray System is a camera-based spray control system. Ultimately what it means to you as the farm and farmer and what it does is it ultimately enables you to save up to 90% on your herbicide application by only spraying where weeds are present in the field. The system works with cameras, so it points cameras at the ground as the sprayer boom is moving across the field and when it recognizes a weed, it triggers the system to ultimately apply a product at that location in that location only.
Noah Newman:
Now through various trials or people that have used this, farmers that have used it, what are some key takeaways that you've learned about this kind of technology that really helps farmers operations?
Corey Books:
Yeah. Well a few things we've learned is this type of technology requires that we ultimately get a lot of operation time in different crop types and different weed types and different varieties. And once we do that, we can then deploy the technology in those similar types of settings and ultimately get that high precision from a sense and act standpoint and really drive to those very high 90, 90 plus percent reductions in herbicide applications, which ultimately for a farm means one, a lot of savings from an economic perspective, but also a lot less chemical going on the ground from a sustainability and environmental perspective.
Noah Newman:
Now is this something that people could add to existing equipment or how does that work if someone wants to invest in it?
Corey Books:
Great question. So that's a huge differentiator of our Bilberry system. Our system is made to be installed on your existing sprayer so you don't have to buy a new machine. And it can also work with your existing application control system, so you don't have to pull all of your existing technology off the sprayer and replace it. We can actually tie into what's already there and command the nozzles through your existing system, which ultimately as a farmer saves you a lot of money and reduces the barrier to being able to adopt this technology.
Noah Newman:
Now is this available now or going to be available soon or how does that work?
Corey Books:
Good question. So it's available now in different regions of the world. We're currently testing in 10 countries. This is the first time we've showed it at a show in the US. We have a handful of systems running in North America and we plan to test those systems throughout 2024 and hope to be able to offer it for sale a little later in the year or early next year.
Noah Newman:
And then when you think about the ideal customer, someone this would be really good for, is there an ideal customer or who would this be really good for?
Corey Books:
Yeah, so obviously the more spraying you do, the more ground you're covering, the greater opportunity for return on investment. Also, this really is applicable to farms looking to take the next step from green-on-brown to more of a green on green application. So being able to anyone that's spraying mid, mid-season, so needing to go into the field and apply a herbicide mid-season and recognize the difference between a weed and the crop is really the person this applies to and who can get benefit.
Noah Newman:
And we talked about the advantage of having this be something that you can add to equipment instead of buying something from the factory. Do you see that route of technology adoption? Do you see that... I'm trying to think of the right question here. Do you see that being the easiest way for farmers to get invested in present technology as opposed to having to buy a whole new piece of equipment?
Corey Books:
Absolutely. So in the AG tech space, there's a lot of great innovation happening, but for a lot of systems you have to buy a new machine and that's a huge technology. It's a huge investment towards any farm. Most farms can't afford to roll all the machines in their fleet every two to three years, which is ultimately what a lot of technology companies and OEMs are asking farmers to do to keep up. With the Bilberry system and with a lot of things that Trimble offers, we're ultimately focused on enabling you as the farmer to adopt that technology without buying a new machine. This lowers the barrier to entry and enables you as the farmer, regardless of your size, to get those benefits on your farm at a much lower price, much lower investment.
Noah Newman:
Do you want to talk about the streamline switch too?
Corey Books:
Yeah. First off, RTX is our industry leading GNSS correction source. A GNSS correction ultimately enables a very low precision GPS position to become, to have the accuracy and precision required to do things like automatic steering application control, and in the future, even autonomous operations. RTX is an industry-leading technology in that it has some of the fastest conversion times on the market, so it enables you to get to work right away in the field. It also is one of the most precise correction sources available, and now it has industry leading uptime industry-leading.
What that means, and the way we're achieving that is ultimately by changing the delivery source of that correction in real time while running seamlessly behind the scenes. Today, RTX can be delivered to the machine, to the receiver, either by satellite or by cellular. However, with our stream connection technology, we ultimately enable that switch to happen in real-time. So if a tractor's running, say near the edge of a field in a bit of canopy, maybe covered by trees, et cetera, we can quickly switch from satellite-delivered corrections to cellular delivered corrections to ultimately ensure seamless uptime to you as the farmer.
Noah Newman:
And rural connectivity, that seems like a big barrier to technology adoption, a big challenge right now with a lot of farmers. So how does this address that?
Corey Books:
Yeah, absolutely. So a lot of folks are highlighting that challenge and it is a real challenge to farmers. One of the most important types of connectivity for a farmer today is their corrections. Without corrections, you don't have that precision required to operate. With RTX, as I mentioned, we can deliver those corrections via cell or satellite. So in regions where cellular coverage isn't great, we can deliver those corrections via satellite. We can also deliver those corrections, of course, via cellular and with our stream switching when satellites available, switch or vice versa.
Noah Newman:
And is this something people can get right now too? Or is that?
Corey Books:
Great question. So our RTX correction, center point RTX correction service comes out of the box with our NAV 900 GNSS receiver. So if you buy a new Trimble guidance system, it will come free for one year with that system. It's also something that you can purchase through many of the OEMs that install our GNSS technology from the factory such as AGCO.
Noah Newman:
And that concludes our tour around the 2024 National Farm Machinery Show at the Kentucky Expo Center. We appreciate everyone taking the time to speak with us over the course of this podcast. And we want to thank our sponsor, Yetter Farm Equipment for making this podcast series possible. Of course, thank you as well, the listener for tuning in. Until next time, for all things strip-till, head to strip-tillfarmer.com. I'm Noah Newman. See you later.
