Inaugural National Strip-Tillage Conference in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, will provide farmers practicing strip-till a platform to learn valuable strategies.

The organizers of the largest farmer-attended no-tillage conference in the Midwest have announced they are launching a 2-day educational event next summer to help farmers practicing strip-till pick up numerous valuable, proven strategies.

The inaugural National Strip-Tillage Conference will be held July 30-31, 2014, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Organizers say the host Marriott Hotel will provide an ideal learning environment for farmers to absorb dozens of actionable strip-till practices from other farmers, consultants, university specialists and more experts through general sessions, strip-till classrooms and roundtable discussion groups.

“There is a strong, growing core of strip-tillers today who need a venue where they can bounce ideas off each other and learn from the experiences of people knowledgeable on the practice of strip-till so they can improve their onfarm practices,” says Darrell Bruggink, executive editor and publisher at Lessiter Publications, which has sponsored for 21 years the annual National No-Tillage Conference held each January. “Our goal is to provide growers with 2 intense days of peer-to-peer strip-till learning that gives them tried-and-proven practices to take back to their farm and put to good use.”

Bruggink says the event will be modeled after the format that has been successfully utilized for the National No-Tillage Conference, which set an attendance record of 1,153 at the 2013 meeting in Indianapolis and has broken site attendance records for the past 7 years. Besides the numerous speakers and educational sessions that occur during the event, the hallway networking that takes place between growers has proven to be equally valuable.

Initial plans call for approximately eight general session speakers, several sets of classrooms with several topics to choose from at a time and several sets of 10 roundtables during each session. The tentative schedule calls for the conference to begin in early afternoon on Day 1 and conclude late afternoon on Day 2.

“While growers will undoubtedly hear numerous practices, tips and ideas during this 2-day event, our no-till conference attendees tell us that several new ideas typically rise to the top of their mind that they are able to put into action to help them be more efficient and profitable in the coming year,” Bruggink says.

No-Till Farmer has been published since 1972 and has regularly featured strip-till operations in its newsletter and quarterly magazine Conservation Tillage Guide. More recently, the company introduced Strip-Till Strategies, a twice-a-month electronic newsletter with grower feature articles, videos about farmers strip-till practices, product information and news. It also launched a web site at www.StripTillFarmer.com last summer to provide more information to this growing segment of farmers.

Bruggink says the National Strip-Tillage Conference has already secured nine companies who have joined on as partners for the inaugural event. Dawn Equipment Co., Environmental Tillage Systems, FHR, Ingersoll Tillage Group, Kuhn Krause, Inc., Montag Mfg., Orthman Mfg., Thurston Mfg. Co. and Yetter Mfg. Co. will all be Title Sponsors and exhibit during the conference.

More details of the inaugural 2014 event can be found at www.StripTillFarmer.com.

As part of the registration price, growers will receive a 1-year subscription to No-Till Farmer (a $44.95 value) and more valuable special reports, as well as dinner and breakfast tickets. The opportunity to reserve hotel rooms at the special $104 conference rate will be available shortly.

For more information about the National Strip-Tillage Conference or other farmer-focused events and publications offered by Lessiter Publications, contact Darrell Bruggink, executive editor and publisher, at (800) 645-8455, x420 or dbruggink@lesspub.com.