NDSU Offers Help to Find Right Strip-tillage Equipment

The North Dakota State University Extension Service and Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering Department, in cooperation with the Lake Agassiz Resource Conservation and Development office in Fargo, will have a strip-tillage equipment demonstration during the Big Iron Farm Show in West Fargo on Sept. 10.

The demonstration will begin at 1:30 p.m. in a field just south of the Red River Valley Fair racetrack. The demonstration is a part of the annual NDSU Extension Service educational program at Big Iron.

The demonstration will begin at 1:30 p.m. with a 30-minute introductory program. Greg Endres, NDSU Extension Service area specialist/cropping systems; Laura Overstreet, NDSU assistant professor and soil conservation and management specialist; and David Franzen, NDSU Extension Service soil science specialist, will provide summaries of the NDSU strip-tillage research programs.

Jodi DeJong-Hughes, University of Minnesota Extension regional educator, will discuss strip-tillage research programs at the university. Dwight Aakre, NDSU Extension farm management specialist, will talk about the economic considerations of including strip-tillage in a crop production system. Earl Erickson, Natural Resources Conservation Service district conservationist, will present information on the United States Department of Agriculture’s strip-tillage incentive programs.

Following the introductory program, companies selling strip-tillage equipment will demonstrate their machines on a wheat stubble field. At the beginning of each demonstration, a company representative will describe the features of his or her equipment.

The trend among northern Plains farmers is toward using less tillage to produce field crops so more residue is left on the soil surface. Strip-tillage is a system that combines no tillage and full tillage to produce row crops.

Narrow strips 6 to 12 inches wide are tilled into crop stubble and the area between the rows left undisturbed. Fertilizer often is injected into the tilled area during the strip-tilling operation. The tilled strips correspond to planter row widths of the next crop and seeds are directly planted into the tilled strips. Normally, strip tilling is done in the fall after the harvest, but it also can be done before planting in the spring.

“Comparing the economics of strip-tillage production to conventional production involves changes in production costs that should eliminate the need for whole-field primary and secondary tillage, but may require a chemical burn-down operation that would not be necessary under conventional tillage,” says Aakre. “Also, adding GPS guidance equipment may be beneficial.”

“Strip-till systems remove residue from the soil surface over the seedbed, which results in soil temperatures similar to conventional tillage systems,” Dejong-Hughes says. “No-tillage systems leave residue on the soil surface over the seedbed and soil temperatures are often several degrees lower than in tilled soil.”

John Nowatzki, NDSU Extension Service agricultural machine systems specialist, maintains a farm monitor Web site at http://www.ageng.ndsu.nodak.edu/farmmonitor/ that displays the daily readings of soil moisture and temperature at Overstreet’s Prosper strip-tillage research site.

Strip-tillage demonstration videos and links to equipment manufacturers are available at http://www.ag.ndsu.nodak.edu/abeng/conservation_tillage/.

NDSU Agriculture Communication