The Strip-Till Farmer and No-Till Farmer crew racked up nearly 100,000 steps combined Tuesday and Wednesday at the Farm Progress Show in Decatur, Ill., tracking down new equipment and technology innovations. Here are 5 things that stood out during our trip around "Progress City USA." 

First Look at New Strip-Till Equipment

Just about all the household names in strip-till — AgSynergy, Dawn, ETS, Fast Ag, Harvest International, Kuhn Krause, Lynx, Remlinger, Schlagel, Salford, Unverferth/Orthman, Vulcan, Zimmerman and Yetter to name a few — showed off their latest equipment offerings. We got our first look at the Summers Manufacturing Apex strip-till machine, Yetter's new residue managers for Case IH applicators, the Kuhn Krause Liqui-PRO system and J. Assy's Visum Strip-Till sensor. Check out some of the unique features in the videos below. 

Strip-Till Yield Champion Honored

Charles City, Va., strip-tiller David Hula received a lifetime achievement award during the show for his "decade of dominance." The reigning NCGA Yield Contest champion has set multiple world records over the past 10 years, including a 623-bushel yield in 2023, which topped his 619-bushel yield in 2019.

Hula was joined on stage by his wife and representatives from multiple partner companies — from Brandt to Pioneer — as he accepted the massive trophy. Hula credited his success to a strong network of advisors and his late dad for mentoring him along the way. We also learned that Dave is a big fan of Chick-Fil-A. 

Drones are Hot

When talking with a manufacturer, he said there's no sugarcoating it — it's been a challenging economic year. But he pointed to the drone industry as one that appears to be doing better than others. That seemed to be the case as Agri Spray Drones founder Taylor Moreland was a popular guy at his company's booth. 

Attendees got an up-close look at the new EAVision J150 drone. It has a 20-gallon tank, 180-pound spreader capacity and can cover 65-plus acres per hour at 30 MPH max speed. In the video below, Moreland explains why he brought a drone with over 11,000 acres on it to the show, and also details a unique drone starter kit giveaway. 

Patience Pays with Corn Planting

Jason Webster, manager of Precision Planting's PTI Farm, drew a big crowd for his presentation in the PTx tent. People pulled out their camera phones as Webster, the recipient of the Most Outstanding Speaker Award at the 2024 National Strip-Tillage Conference, shared the top 10 biggest "money losers" at the research farm. Webster explains in the video below why corn planted too early topped the list.

Something That's Never Been Done in the History of Agriculture

"We had the world's first detection of an active fungal infection in real time, first time in 10,000 years of agriculture that's happened, and we detected it in July in northeast Nebraska," InnerPlant's Sean Yokomizo told us when describing the company's CropVoice technology. "We notified the farmers and we actually have control plots in that area, so those farmers had a 4.5-week head start to take action in their field to preserve their yields." 

InnerPlant's CropVoice is a first-of-its-kind platform, powered by a network of plots featuring InnerSoy — a soybean engineered to signal when it’s under attack from fungus, giving farmers and agronomists access to stress signals directly from plants. Pretty cool stuff, see for yourself in the video below.

Stay tuned for more coverage from the Farm Progress Show in the coming days.