To meet the needs of their diverse farm conditions in northern Illinois, the Book family use strip-till as a foundational farming system.
The Book family, who farms about 2,400 acres in Harvard and Union, Ill., make use of a variety of tillage methods. They no-till acreage 16 miles from their primary operation because the soils are sandy and the organic matter is only around 2%. On their corn-on-corn acres with heavy residue and sometimes close to 20% organic matter, they vertical till and chisel plow. However, they get their best results from the 600 acres of first-year corn that they strip-till.
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