From fertilizer management to coulters versus shanks, the “how to” from growers making it work! Ben Rosser, OMAFRA Panel: Warren Schneckenburger and Mike Schouten
2. Cedar Lodge Farms
• Corn, Soybeans, W Wheat,
Black beans
• As much no-til as possible,
strip tillage, some
conventional tillage.
• Used to have cattle.
3. The mind set
• 2011, heavy corn “rotation”
• heavy tillage
• Plowing up to 2010
6. Why Striptill?
• Stones!!!
• Efficiency
• Mostly labour efficiency
• Natural evolution of a controlled
traffic farming system
• Significant reduction is COP for corn
• Much less iron required…in theory
7. Scalable to any size!
24 Row planter (24-32ac/hr)
8 Row Planter (7-10ac/hr)
31-42ac/hr needs to be
prepared each hour!
8.
9. Out with the old
• 500hp 51ft cultivator
• 400hp 32ft cultivator
• 200hp spreading fertilizer
• 130hp picking stones
• 4 people working at about 40-50ac/hr
10. In With The New
• 35-42ac/hr
• 1 person doing the work of 4
• 390hp vs 1330hp
• ~45$/ac reduced costs
11. What about fall?
• 40ft @ 9mph vs 21ft @ 6mph
• 0.5L/ac fuel vs 2.5L/ac fuel
• Seedbed ready vs spring tillage a must
12. What Do I want to see in a Strip?
• In fall a 2” berm
• Chunky structure with few fines
• No soil outside of the berms
• A messy strip with residue armour
13. Separating the Men from the Boys
• Corn on corn is the white whale
• If done properly can completely eliminate the yield penalty
• High yielding corn means high yielding residue!
14. What about spring?
• Spring pass shouldn’t leave much of a berm
• Higher speeds till the soil much finer creating a “potting soil”
seedbed
• All residue out of the seedzone
18. Weed Control
• Very different weeds between the strip vs in the strip.
• Perennials and more common “no-til” weeds add
costs to our herbicide program.
• Our incidence of respray in strip tillage is about 40%
lower than conventional tillage.
19.
20. Side Dressing
• High residue environment means a high C:N ratio
• Why did we bother banding all the fertilizer and leaving an untouched
strip only to destroy it and fight the residue 1 month later?
26. Challenges
• The bigger the machine the more reliant on GPS it gets.
• Keeping product fed to the rig
• Residue management!
• High Speed means high impacts!
27. GPS or Markers?
• 6 row and below I believe you’d get along fine with markers.
• We run dual receiver RTK on both the striptiller and the 24 row
planter.
• Handles all rate control, steering, mapping, automated turning.
28. GPS
• Square headland patterns are a game changer for striptillers!
• With this system a 100% green worker can get in and be working at
28ac/hr because of the assistance the GPS provides. Experience gets
you up to 40+ac/hr
29. Soil Compaction
• Striptillage eliminates a lot of in season seed zone compaction.
• What about when you shift over 15” next year?
• Sprayer…patience…what about 2017?
30. Soil Compaction
• The sprayer is the number 1 offender of compaction on our farm.
• 710 floater tires help, VF tires help. Still very heavy.
31. Soil Compaction
• The easiest way to stop soil compaction is to avoid it.
• Patience is the cheapest investment in your farm you’ll ever make!
• Can be hard to do watching your neighbours mud everything off
32. Tendering Fertilizer
• The whole house of cards falls down if the product stops flowing.
• 6 hrs window between stripping and planting
• Need to be flexible.
33. Fall Fertilizer
• There is no line at the mixer in October!
• Without putting down at least potash in the fall why bother?
34. Residue floating
• Bigger issue in soybeans stubble than corn or wheat
• Is the main reason for the spring pass.
35. The future?
• Integrating cover crops ahead of corn without going broke!
• Getting about 25% of the acres into a fall only strip program.
• Experimenting with Spring only strips.
• 10 year plan to transition to 100% no-til
36. The Future?
• Figuring out the high residue farming thing!
• Putting an end to full time stone picking jobs!!!!!!!
