I’m a first-generation farmer. My dad didn’t farm, my uncles didn’t farm, and growing up, I never even worked on a farm. I started in 1991 as a land investor. I had some money saved up from my career selling red farm equipment — primarily International Harvester and then Case IH. I ran into an old high school friend, who’s a realtor, and told him I’d be interested in buying a farm if it’s under $100K. I bought an 80-acre farm, and after that, I continued buying farms year after year.
I transitioned from land investor to part-time farmer in 2008. I was still running our family dealership, Johnson Tractor. At the time, my son, Patrick, was a freshman in a high school, and he was really interested in farming. I figured, good, I’ll give him a little taste. We farmed together until he graduated in 2012.
My wife and I continued buying and selling farms. We tried to improve the soil health on each farm. And by 2022, after 40 years, I retired from my full-time job as president and CEO of Johnson Tractor. I decided I wanted to take farming a little more seriously.
All in on Strip-Till
We sell a lot of tillage equipment at our dealerships, so we’ve tried all the tillage systems over the years. But I always paid attention to what our neighbors were doing. And we have some very good strip-tillers in our neighborhood. After trying all the various systems, strip-till rose to the surface.
I hired a guy to strip-till one of our fields, and the results were mixed. But after doing some investigating, I decided strip-till is the way I wanted to go. I had a lot of questions. I have a 16-row planter, so should I buy a 16-row strip-till rig? What brand should I choose?
I wanted something simple. I’m not a mechanic. I’m not a soil expert. And I’m certainly not an agronomist. I didn’t want to prove how stupid I am to all my neighbors. I needed someone smarter than me to help with the process.
Finding Answers
I picked the Kuhn Krause Gladiator because our dealership sold them. I went with an 8-row unit because I wasn’t sure if my 340 hp tractor would handle a 12-row. It was delivered in December 2022, and it sat in my shed for about a year before I used it for the first time in 2023.
“I needed someone smarter than me to help with the process…”
Our Rochelle, Ill., store did a great job helping me set it up. I also worked with a guy at Kuhn, Rob, who came out and helped with initial calibration and the startup process. I have him on speed dial.
The National Strip-Tillage Conference is the best thing anybody that’s contemplating strip-till could possibly attend. When my strip-till rig was still in the shed, and I hadn’t used it yet, I went to the conference and got all the answers I needed.
Rookie Season
We bought a Montag 9-ton tank and settled on a fertilizer rate of about 300 pounds per acre. My local fertilizer supplier helped me determine the mix and the rate. I needed to decide if I was going to make strips in the spring or fall. Everybody around here says the worst day of tillage in the fall is still better than the best day in the spring. We have some clay in our soil, so I believe that’s true. My goal was to make as many strips in the fall as I could.
After corn harvest, I was nervous about running the Gladiator for the first time. Rob came out and helped me with the guidance lines. We labeled every guidance line, so we could come back and figure out where they were the following spring. I wanted to set the depth as deep as I could and still run the rig at 8 mph. I found out quickly that on my soils, I could go 6-7 inches deep quite comfortably and reach my targeted speed. We strip-tilled about 500 acres of our 1,000-acre farm.
When spring rolled around, I took the temperatures of our strip-tilled and no-tilled fields because I wanted to see how soon I could get in and start planting. One of the real advantages of strip-till is we’re able to plant a little earlier. We planted the whole field and never missed a strip. Our guidance worked really well.
We’re not super scientific, but the early indications are that our strip-tilled fields outyielded our no-tilled fields. When I was thinking about what kind of tillage program I wanted to fully commit to, and I landed on strip-till, I jumped in with both feet. I guess I kind of do that with everything in life. Make the change. If not now, then when?