Strip Till Encourages Mellow Growing Conditions and Higher Yields for Farmer

Gary Wolf, a farmer in southwestern Missouri, was a no-till farmer for a long time. In his area, “He has a red, shallow, compaction-prone, clay-based soil. “It can be sticky when it’s wet, and hard as a rock when it’s dry,” explains Wolf. “Whenever it gets hard and dry, the rain will run off.”” He was having problems with rain running off of his fields into his neighbor's fields after he would apply ¾ of an inch of water by irrigation. Zero-till just wasn’t working out for Wolf. He heard about strip till up north, and decided to give it a try and bought a Maverick strip-till unit with rolling baskets. The unit was set up for 30 inch rows, and was a six row. He went strip till in 2007, and he could now irrigate without any runoff. The strip that was tilled took the water, and the water flowed into the strips well. Later, Wolf also put a fertilizer system on his strip tillage machine, and applied liquid fertilizer on the same pass as when he put in the strips. He did some strip tillage for a neighbor who practiced no-till, and the strip tilled corn yields were twice that of the no-tilled corn yields. Strip till was amazing for Gary Wolf.

http://www.agriculture.com/crops/tillage/strip-till/striptill-encourages-mellow-growing_189-ar45151

The article above demonstrates some of the successes that the practice of strip tillage can give to farmers. Good water utilization is a benefit of strip till.

Another benefit of strip till is saved time and money for field passes. With this system, field cultivators, disks, and chisel plows are eliminated and don't have to be maintained or ran out in the field, saving fuel and time.