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On this edition of the Strip-Till Farmer podcast, brought to you by Environmental Tillage Systems, we catch up with Mercer, Mo., strip-tiller Galt Porter for a conversation about his award-winning 405-bushel corn yield.

The 27-year-old is the reigning national NCGA Yield Contest champion in the strip-till non-irrigated class. Porter shares the keys to his high-yielding success and reveals how strip-till has been a game-changer for his family’s operation. The 5th-generation farmer also details his nutrient management strategies, which include split nitrogen (N) applications, and goes over the top lessons learned from his national championship yield that will influence how he manages the rest of his acres.

The Strip-Till Farmer podcast is brought to you by Environmental Tillage Systems.

SoilWarrior® systems help you defend your land and improve soil quality. With a choice of durable models, features and accessories, your SoilWarrior helps you minimize erosion while creating precise, nutrient-rich zones.

Let us help you defend your land and improve soil quality. Check out SoilWarrior systems online or request a demo today at www.soilwarrior.com. 

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Full Transcript

Hey, great to have you with us for another edition of the Strip-Till Farmer Podcast, brought to you by Environmental Tillage Systems. I'm your host, Noah Newman.

Today we're catching up with Mercer, Missouri strip-tiller, Galt Porter, for a conversation about his 405 bushel corn yield. The 27-year-old is a reigning national NCGA yield contest champion in the strip-till non irrigated class. Porter shares the keys to his high yielding success and reveals how strip-till has been a big time game changer for his family's operation. The fifth generation farmer also details his nutrient management strategies and goes over the top lessons learned from that national championship plot. Here's Galt.

My name is Galt Porter. I'm 27 years old and I'm a strip farmer at Porter Farms and my grandpa started it back in the day really ramping up the crop side of things. We had a lot of cattle and that was our main focus for quite a few years. And then when dad started taking it over a little more from grandpa, they both started switching it over to more row crops and that's actually when we first started our high yield contest. Dad put a few plots in each year and he started winning a few in the nineties and early two thousands and then he got busy with coaching us all on baseball and all that and tractor pulling and whatnot and slowed down on it a little bit. And then here in the last five, six years, me and my two brothers, I have an older one and a younger one, we really started ramping it up, trying to get back and do the high yield contest. It started with sorghum and now we're venturing back into corn a little bit and playing with some new ideas and seeing how it goes.

Yeah. So you guys have been doing this for quite some time. 2024, you had your 405 bushel yield. That was the number one in the country for the strip-till non irrigated category. So just what did that mean to you to become the national champion?

It is my first national champion in the corn for sure. I haven't won. I think I was third in national in sorghum at one point. My brother has won sorghum before, so it really means a lot to me to actually get to see all the hard work pay off and the long hours and all the soil samples that you're not sure if it's making sense to do all this and whatnot. It's really gratifying for it to all pay off and see that dedication and hard work really can get you somewhere and improve things all at the same time.

Now do you and your brother have a friendly competition going back and forth to see who can get the top spot?

Yeah, so my younger brother and I, we actually purchase the bottom that I won on. We purchased it together. It's split in half. It's a river bottom and the plot is mainly on his side of the farm. So two years ago when we had corn in it, then 2022, he took the high yielding entry out of there and he ended up winning state and I think third in the nation maybe. I'm not entirely sure. And so this year it was my turn to get the top entry out of the plot and we've been going back and forth quite a few years.

Oh, that's a lot of fun. Hey, competition. That's how you get better.

Exactly.

Now I see that you're listed as a Mercer Missouri native, but are you right on the border of Iowa? Because your plot was in Iowa, correct?

Correct, yes. The state line's not even a half mile behind my house. And then the farm, the headquarters is maybe two miles south of the Iowa line.

And now how long have you been strip-tilling?

This would be our fifth year of strip-till. So last year's plot was our fourth year.

And how'd you get into strip-till? What was the motivation for getting into it?

Well, we were looking at different ways to apply our nitrogen, was our key focus. We were trying to split apply it, knock it down a lot more. Well not really knock it down but more spoon-feeding added in more different stages. And we started talking to a local co-op around here that had a few strip-till bars and they couldn't really find anyone that wanted to put them to work and couldn't talk anyone into using them. And so we talked to them for a bit and that just gave us the idea of putting all that nutrients in a band six to eight inches right below our plant that doesn't have to search for it and all that. So that piqued our interest and we could put a lower rate in with the strip-till and then we could come back in and top dress some more on there and split up our nitrogen application.

So that's what got us started. That and we have a lot of HEL ground in this area so we can't work it like we'd like to work some of these hills and other stuff. So strip-till was a double-edged sword for us. It banded all that nutrients right below our plants so we could use less and utilize more of that nutrients. And it worked really good on some of this HEL ground that we weren't allowed to disc up or rip up like we normally would.

And are you still using the strip-till bar from the co-op or did you guys buy your own?

No, we are still currently using it from the co-op.

Oh nice. What brand is it?

It's a Land Luvr.

Land Luvr? Okay.

Out there, I can't remember the gentleman's name. They tell me every year the guy out in Indiana or Illinois that's started it all and they still follow all his blends and everything like that?

Yeah, well we had our strip-till innovator award winner from last year, Chris Perkins, yeah, he's a big Land Luvr guy.

That's him. That's him, yeah. Chris Perkins.

I figured that's who you're talking about, yeah.

Yeah. That is exactly who it is. Yeah, they talk about him all the time.

Yeah. So how many rows is that Land Luvr rig?

18 or 19 or 16. Somewhere right in there. It's the biggest one that Land Luvr makes I think or used to make.

Pretty big it sounds like.

Right, right.

All right, well let's dive into the high yielding plot. So take me through it. How did this start in the fall to prepare this plot for the contest?

In the fall we used a Holganix product. We've been using it for the last couple of years. It's a Bio 800 and Bio 800 Breakdown. So in the fall we started with the Bio 800 Breakdown. It just feeds the micronutrients and whatnot and the microbials in the soil and helps break down all that plant material and get it broke down to where we can actually use it the next year. And also the whole bottom is pattern tiled and so that really helps. In the springtime we have it drained and dry so we can get in there early. The strip-till pass is the first thing we start with and we put on a plot rate of it. It's roughly 200 pounds of nitrogen and then about a 100 and a 100 of the P and K. And then from there we go to a weed and feed pass. Liquid nitrogen in there, usually about 20 to 30 pounds is what we like to run on it. And then we planted early April.

The weed and feed pass, besides the liquid nitrogen, what else is in that, and then what are you using for that pass? Is that with a strip-till rig or is that with something else?

It's a herbicide pass.

Oh, okay.

So my sprayer, I'm running my burn down and about, I think it was 25 to 30 pounds of nitrogen, and we really think that bridges the gap from the strip-till to the seed in those early couple of days. That really gives it something to fuel it to get those roots down to the strip-till. And there's a little bit of a gap in the spring, we've noticed, in strip-till where it takes a little bit for that plant to find the strip and really green up and dark green. There's kind of a yellowish stage in there and so that liquid nitrogen early and some starter in the planter bridges that gap to get those roots down to that strip-till and really jumps it out of the ground and it really just takes off from there.

About how long do you wait to make that weed and feed pass after you make the spring strips? About how long in between that and the weed and feed pass?

Oh it just depends if we're crunched on time. If we're doing it in an ideal situation for our test plots, we probably wait a week and get it to burn down on after that strip-till pass. Let everything grow back a little bit, make sure we get a good kill.

So do you have cover crops on that plot?

Nope.

No cover crops. Okay.

No cover crops.

All right, so you plant and then once you're done planting, what's the next thing you do?

The next stage we do is we're taking multiple soil samples and leaf tissue samples once it gets to the appropriate height. Once it's up, we're just taking the whole plant and we're just monitoring it the whole stage through there until we end up Y-dropping it around June.

What are you Y-dropping it with? Is it just nitrogen?

What do we run? I think we run about 60 pounds of nitrogen and we run another 10 pounds of sulfur, some boron, and then a few other little micronutrients in there as well.

Gotcha. So then after that, the whole Y-dropping process, then what do you do the rest of the season? Is just monitoring and keeping eye on what it needs?

Yeah. Just monitoring it the whole way through. We do a lot of fungicide and insecticide passes just to really make sure that there's never any bad days on that plot. I think we ran three total fungicide passes on it last year and have residual 21 day residuals.

Do you know the name of the fungicide and insecticides that you're using off the top of your head?

I believe it was Veltyma, but let me double check before I tell you that for sure. Yeah, Veltyma.

Veltyma? All right.

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So going back to your planter, is there anything unique on your planter, any precision technology or anything that gives you that edge when you plant?

Nope. No precision, no 2-by-2, just starter is all we've got.

And off the top of your head, do you know what's in the starter mix?

Oh, that's a whole laundry list of every thing. So the base starter, just a 3-18-18 and then from there there's a slew of Biovante products in there. They're out of Dexter, Missouri,

It's called Biovante?

Yep. B-I-O-V-A-N-T-E.

Yeah. Do you go to a lot of conferences or presentations or watch a lot of stuff online to learn about some of these new products that you're using or strategies?

Yeah, we learned a lot through online and my brothers and I finding different companies and whatnot through various platforms or dad has a lot of connections. He was on the Missouri Corn Board and the National Corn Grower's Association and he has a lot of contacts through there that we talked through with a lot of different people. Jerry Cox and Kip Cullers, just to name a few of them, we bounce ideas off of and get lots of ideas from.

Oh, nice. It sounds like you have a pretty strong network.

Right. Right. That's a big, big contribution to how we get everything done around here.

So going through the growing season, this high yield plot, what kind of challenges did you deal with? How was the weather? Did it cooperate?

This was actually our best weather that I've actually had for a plot year. We got the absolute perfect rains and the absolute perfect timing on those rains. Early on we did have a little bit of a wet spell, but the pattern tile really dried that out for us and kept the plants happy.

Would you say that was the biggest contributing factor to breaking the 400 bushel barrier? Was it the perfect weather? Was it a new product you used? Was it strip-till or was it the combination of all these things at once?

I think it was probably just a combination of everything. I know two years ago we got a touch too wet in the bottom and that ended up hurting us with a few wet holes and just having some rougher crops being in that saturated soil. So I really think that the pattern tile played a big role in it and I think the strip-till played a big role in it. We did use strip-till two years ago, but we didn't manage it like we do now. We've got a special blend in there for our plots and we really like the emergence with the strip-till. It seems like we get dang near every kernel out of the ground using that strip-till. I don't know if it's the fluffiness of the dirt and we can get really good seed to soil contact when the planter goes through it, if it allows that water to fall below the seed. I'm not entirely sure, but I think it's a combination of those three things. Perfect weather and tile and strip-till.

So safe to say that, are you looking at increasing your strip-till acreage across your entire farm after learning how effective it could be?

Absolutely. We already bumped it up from about 500 more acres than we've done in the last few years and hopefully carry on more acres. The only issue we have with it is just the amount of fertilizer we're putting in at once, trying to upkeep that. That's why we're still doing it with the co-op at the moment, 'cause it just takes too many semis and manpower to really put in the amount of acres we're trying to get put in. But the co-op, the Premier Ag, they do a great job of keeping it all up and getting it in the ground.

Premier Ag. And are they in Missouri?

Yeah, they're over by Bethany, Missouri.

I wonder, have there been more people getting into strip-till in your area?

We've been really trying to get people to sample it and that's about all that you can get most people to do, is just to try it and I don't see why anyone would be against it. I see all these guys in this town here that didn't get their gas on in the fall and they're gassing it here last week and they still can't plant their corn. Shoot, with that strip-till bar, you'd be in there in the afternoon and be gone and you can plant it the next day, ready to go.

Yeah, that's a good point. Well, I mean you sharing your story, I'm sure that'll spread the word and maybe put strips on people's radars.

Exactly.

All right, back to the high yield plot. I know I keep jumping around. Sorry about that.

Yeah, you're fine.

So you're getting ready to harvest. So take me through harvest. What kind of combine do you have? Is there anything unique you're doing?

Nothing too particular unique? I don't think we're really doing anything different than most guys. We run a John Deere 780 and we like to harvest. This might be the biggest factor in our harvest. Anywhere from 27% to 30% is where we like to harvest our high yield plots at.

And then what was your plant population and your final population at harvest, if you remember?

Right. We were shooting for about 40,000 and we were right there just below 40,000.

Okay. And is that pretty standard what you do most years or is this the first year you've-

That's pretty standard for our plots. Nothing like just our regular acres but for our plots we like to be up in at least... I think this year we'll be shooting for at least 42,000. So we just keep bumping it up each year and it keeps proving itself to us.

So what did you do? What was your dad's reaction when you told him, Hey, we broke the 400 bushel barriers.

He was down there with us when we was combining and he just said the whole time we was combining, he is never seen anything like it. The whole head just constantly was full of ears of corn the whole time. He just never seen anything like it. He knew it was going to be a good number and when we got the final number back he was blown away, that's for sure. First time he's been over 400, that's for sure. He was excited.

Yeah, that's a big time accomplishment. And your brother's probably motivated to step his game up a notch too?

Oh, yeah. He's got all kinds of stuff going on this year. I can't even keep up with him.

I know you talked about how you learned about strip-till from the high yield plot, but any other big takeaways or lessons learned from this experience or anything that you did with this high yield plot that you're going to apply to the rest of your acres?

The biggest component that we learned that we did apply to the rest of our acres that's going to be more incorporated into the whole farm is adding that early nitrogen source like we did with the weed and feed. It just seems like it really bridges that gap when everything's stagnant. Trying to find all that fertilizer is going to run off all year long. If it has that little bit of jump to get its roots down there, it just seems like it takes away the only bad days that corn plant has and really gives it a boost.

Nice. And just to make sure I'm getting it right, the weed and feed you apply before you plant or after you plant?

Yes, before we plant. Yeah.

And then about how long do you wait to plant until after that's applied?

Oh, it just depends. I mean, maybe a week.

Okay. Not that long.

No. Nope, nope. We're rolling right away.

What are your goals for the upcoming year? Are you looking to go even higher than 405 bushels? Are you doing another high yield plot this year?

Yeah, we've got two more plots in two different locations. We won't be to our favorite spot until '26, but Gray and I are working on a few other things this year. We've tried a few other companies and got a few different things going, so hopefully have our name back up there this year.

Yeah, I'm going to be looking for you guys when the next report comes out.

Yeah, we will be there. Absolutely.

All right, well I know you're in the sprayer right now. So how is planting season going so far?

Oh, planting season has been great. We had really great conditions early. We got a lot in there early April and sat for about a week and a half with those rains and it helped bring up that first round of planting and it all looks perfect. And this week and last week we're finishing up the last of it. I think we've got 1,200 acres of beans left we got to get in, and in the homestretch.

All right, that'll wrap things up for this Strip-Till Farmer Podcast episode. Big thanks to Galt Porter for taking some time to talk with us from the cab of his sprayer and thanks to our sponsor, Environmental Tillage Systems, for making this series possible. Also, a friendly reminder, head to strip-tillconference.com for more information about this year's National Strip-Tillage Conference, which takes place July 31st through August 1st in Iowa City. We have our early bird registration rates currently going, so definitely take advantage of that. For more information on all things strip-till head to strip-tillfarmer.com. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next time.