Subscribe to this podcast

---

Brought to you by:

On this episode of the Strip-Till Farmer podcast, brought to you by Yetter Farm Equipment, we sit down with Illinois custom strip-tiller Luke Koffman. 

Koffman, who started strip-tilling several years ago on his family farm, now helps others implement the practice on thousands of acres and different soil types across Illinois. 

“I’m going to quote Monte Bottens (Cambridge, Ill., farmer) on this,” Koffman says. “He spoke at the National Strip-Tillage Conference a couple years ago and said that the principles of strip-till apply everywhere, but the practices of strip-till are local.

“On tougher ground, to make strip-till work, the farmer needs to know why they’re trying to strip-till. Then they need to commit to making it work. I’m on my 5^th configuration of strip-till bars right now. You might not get it right on the first one, but I guarantee there is a bar that will perform very well for every field.”

Technology editor Noah Newman catches up with Koffman for a conversation about his strip-till system, equipment setups, fertilizer recommendations and cover crops. Koffman also shares some of the top strip-till lessons learned from his travels.

The Strip-Till Farmer podcast is brought to you by Yetter Farm Equipment.

Since 1930, Yetter Farm Equipment has been providing farmers with profitable solutions. From residue management and fertilizer placement to seedbed preparation, our equipment is designed to maximize your inputs, save you time, and deliver a strong return on investment. Explore our full line of planter attachments, precision fertilizer placement options, strip-till units, and stalk rollers at yetterco.com. Let Yetter help you prepare your equipment lineup for success today.

Past Podcasts

Full Transcript

Hey, welcome to the Strip-Till Farmer Podcast. Great to have you with us. My name's Noah Newman. Big thanks once again to Yetter Farm Equipment for making this podcast series possible. And today we're catching up with Illinois custom strip-tiller Luke Kaufman. We're going to talk about his equipment setups, fertilizer recommendations, cover crops, and also some of the top strip-till lessons he's learned from his travels. He started strip-tilling several years ago on his family farm and now he helps others implement the practice on thousands of acres and several different soil types across the land of Lincoln. Let's jump into the conversation.

So getting started in farming, I am the third generation family farm in Wisconsin, and unfortunately the last generation to farm on that farm. I grew up on a small dairy in east central Wisconsin. The cows actually left this past April. So now I focus primarily on the custom strip-till business is really the only thing left I've got from that. But we started strip-tilling in 2018 after the previous summer, seeing a stripped SoilWarrior at the farm technology days and going to a field day, watching it run. And we did that up and through the, like I say, the cows leaving and dad renting the land out now. But then I've still got the strip-till business down in Illinois, which is kind of a weird come about.

So you're on the road a lot, I assume, then, if your business is in central Illinois. How does that work in terms of your travel?

So for a few of the years there, I was actually commuting a tractor and a SoilWarrior the 11 hour trip it is from the home farm to where I happened to find some custom work. Did that for, oh geez, probably three years. We went down to Illinois, did some custom work, went back home, took care of our own. Drove back in the spring, drove back in the fall and did that for a few years. And then in summer of '22, I walked away from the family farm pretty well for good because the business had grown enough that it could be, it needed my full attention. While we were getting it, when we were getting it started, having the security of the family farm and a day job, kept the lights on and then gave me the flexibility. If the weather were good in Wisconsin, I'd go home and work there. And if the weather were good in Illinois, I'd stay and strip down there.

And then like I say, in 2022, we said, "All right, we got enough that the custom work in Illinois is where I need to be putting my full focus." This whole one foot out the door, seeing which one was going to work. The custom business took off enough that we bought a place down here and now focus full-time, my wife and I do on running the custom business.

Wow, that's great to hear. Business is booming for you. We'll kind of jump into how you've been able to expand that business, but I wanted to go back to the beginning. When you first saw that strip-till rig, what was it you said, it was a technology days conference? And where was that and what was it about strip-till that really kind of caught your attention and convinced you that that was the way to go?

I think it was Portage Counties was hosting the Wisconsin Farm Tech Days that summer. We bumped into the ETS booth, saw SoilWarrior in person, and that's got a whole lot of wow factor to it. And then Dave invited us out to a field day, we got to see it run. And I had actually at that point already been reading strip-till farmer magazines, no-till farmer magazines. We grew up chisel plow, field cultivator, just like all the neighbors did. And I knew there had to be a better way. So on the strip-till side of things, you can consolidate equipment, you can be much more efficient across the acre. The fertility placement from an uptick standpoint was so much greater than just us spinning on and field cultivated in. You need to dive into the soil health part of it, the water retention, the traffic ability from when your soil actually goes and turns that corner to start acting like a whole different beast.

Learning about strip-till and then seeing it actually my first time watching a demo and seeing some actual strip-till corn in person, it was kind of transformative that after that there was no going back. Dad and I ended up getting into a SoilWarrior that following spring and we've been hooked ever since. That's what we believe and we practice. And then so much so that trying to help other guys in that same medium sized farm where it's a little cost prohibitive to go out and buy everything it takes to convert to strip-till. So I'm trying to fill that need to help other people realize that there is a, like I said, a fertilizer efficiency, a time efficiency, a nutrient uptake efficiency.

And I'm not supposed to brag about it because it sounds braggy, but we've seen some yield increases. I was actually sitting down with the farmer the other day and since we started strip-till four years ago, on farm corn yields went 213, 214, 216, and 226 this last year. And that is, we attribute it all to the soil getting to that health that we've been chasing.

Yeah. Wow. I mean, you do get the best of both worlds with the soil health benefits and the higher yields and everything. Did you see all these benefits right away on your farm, the first year, or was there any kind of learning curve when you first started strip-tilling?

On our personal acres, the family farm, we saw it the first year. As a good skeptic would, I made it do it. We did half a field, conventional till chiseled in the fall, filed cultivated in the spring, side by side against a strip-till pass. And the funny thing about that year is all season, the strip-till corn looked shorter. And I called Dave and I said, "What's going on here? What did you get me into? This corn is a foot and a half shorter. It's the same hybrid. What's going on here?" And just kept saying, "Just wait, height doesn't mean anything." And that was all chopped for silage that year and it was a ton or two better an acre on the strip-till corn.

On our personal farm, we saw a first year, oh my God, there's no going back from this return. On some of the farms down in central Illinois that I'm helping with the custom side of things, a couple of first year huge success stories. A lot of these last two years have been a little dry and that's when it's actually started to shine is that yields didn't really drop off as much as some of the fields that were conventionally tilled. I got a couple of farmers that do some strip-till, some conventional till, vertical till yet. And the multiple year strip-till stuff was the stuff that seemed to handle the drought, droughty conditions best.

Yeah, that's one of the big positives you hear about strip-till is how resilient it is. I mean, I visited a pumpkin farm out here that just started strip-tilling their pumpkins, which I know is a completely different ballgame than corn and soybeans, but there was a rain event where they had almost over a foot of rain in a 24 hour stretch. And the guy said that if they didn't switch to strip-till and cover crops, that he didn't think that their pumpkin crop would've survived it, but it did and he attributed that to strip-till.

Yeah, the pour space helps just sponge it up. There's the difference between rain soaking in on a road and rain soaking into a sponge. Yeah, I hear that.

So you're having personal success with strip-till back in around 2018, 2019. And then how did you get into the custom strip-till business? What motivated you to kind of help other people out with strip-till?

I saw the need. We were happy enough with it, exceptionally happy with it on our own acres and kind of realized that nobody was offering it. And by dumb luck, I bumped into someone in central Illinois that knew of a couple of farmers that needed someone to come do the strips for them. I said, "Sure, I can road trip. Sounds like fun."

Yeah, the custom business came about because I believe in strip-till to my core, that it is a very solid practice that could benefit every farmer in one factor or another, whether it's the fuel and the time savings, whether it's the better fertility placement. I know on some of the rougher ground, let's just call it, the highest yield increases we have seen come on the rough marginal ground where it's not the 20 CEC stuff, it's the 14 stuff where that placement directly leads to yield increases.

Nobody was offering a customer. Even now, six, seven years later down here, I'm the only legit custom guy that I know of. Co-ops aren't doing it, the retailers aren't doing it. A bunch of farmers are starting to do strip-till on their own, but there's still a need for, and I'm assuming it would be the case everywhere that there's need for people to have access to custom strip-till without all of the purchase price of getting started on their own.

Yeah. You know what? Come to think of it, I've heard of custom strip-till operations in the Dakotas and Southern Indiana. But yeah, Central Illinois, you're the first I've heard of. So you might be the first one.

Yeah. Hey, it makes it pretty easy to be the best one, doesn't it?

That's true. One of one. So how does it work in terms of the inputs you're applying now? Does a farmer come to you and say, "Here, this is what I want to do with my nutrient management plan?" Or do you kind of have a suggestion for them that you put together?

Some guys have agronomists that they've been working with and they trust, and the agronomist is onboard with the strip-till. For those guys, they come to me and say, "Hey, this is what we're doing." And I say, "Hey, great. I can do that." I got a few guys that have, I've earned the trust on where they say, "Hey, Luke, what do we do?" And I say, "Give me a soil test. Let's figure this out." And then I've got some guys I work with where I'm much more involved in the conversation. It's kind of all in between. Some guys tell me what to do, seems like a plan and we do it. And then I help two main farmers that I work with who say, "Hey, I don't want to have to come up with this. What do you got?" And I help them out.

Let's burn a quick timeout for a word from our sponsor, Yetter Farm Equipment. Looking for innovative solutions to maximize your farm's productivity, look no further than Yetter Farm Equipment. They're dedicated to providing farmers with the highest quality equipment, from row cleaners and closing wheels, to fertilizer equipment, strip-till units, and stock devastators. Yetter has the tools you need to optimize your farming operation. Visit yetterco.com. That's Y-E-T-T-E-R-C-O.com to learn more and find a dealer near you.

Are you doing mainly fall strip-till, spring strip-till, or both?

I am primarily doing two pass strip-till. In all the different products I've applied, timings we've done, trials we've done, where we are, the consistent it works well system has been fall banded P&K, come back in the spring, freshen the strip, and use the freshening pass as an opportunity to apply upfront nitrogen and sulfur ahead of the crop. And we've had real good success with that down here. Most of my guys are doing that two pass. I work with a few guys that insist on a single pass. A few guys handle the nitrogen and sulfur with their planter, but most of my work is two pass, handle all the P&K in the fall and then the upfront portion of the nitrogen sulfur with the strip-till bar.

And this might be a little too technical because I'm sure it varies farm to farm, but for you, what's the ideal rate of P&K that you're applying in the fall and the ideal rate of nitrogen and sulfur in the spring?

I have a much better answer for you on the nitrogen and sulfur. The P&K, this fall, I applied anywhere from zero pounds of fertilizer in the strip, running just naked strips, all the way up to 200 pounds of MAP and 200 pounds of potash. That question is tricky for me to answer because of the... I strip across six counties and the fertility levels on any field is different, the economics of any given farmer are different. Through all of, even this fall, and last fall with the corn prices being low and MAP and potash starting their nice little sense to unreasonably priced, we pulled back on some fields and even threw yields this year. It seemed like with strip-till and the banding, we could make high rate work well and a pulled back rate work just as well.

This year I did have one farm due to economic reasons just say, "Nope, we're waiting for prices to come down." I said, "Hey, I know your soil test. You got enough P&K out there. We can get by with nothing for a year." And I think the PTI farm actually had a strip-till study that said, "Yeah, with the prices where they're at, most economical fall application is zero." Long term, not sustainable. Short term, very sustainable.

On the nitrogen and sulfur, as I said, I got a much better answer for you. We are usually in the 25 pounds of sulfate and 20 pounds of nitrogen on soybean spring acres, which is, it's 100 pounds of AMS is what I've been doing with most of the guys. And on corn, we throw in 100 pounds of urea, which is about 67 pounds of nitrogen, 24 pounds of sulfate upfront. And that we found is enough to carry over to the side dress pass where most of my guys are coming back between V4 and V8 and putting on the rest. That's 60 to 75 pounds of nitrogen upfront seems to be enough to carry the crop into side-dress. Most of my guys believe in the keep the nitrogen in the tank for as long as possible and only put it out there at the right time. So that 60 to 75 seems to be the sweet spot. Enough it can get a couple of extra inches of rain and not all leach out, but not so much you risk getting burnt.

Yeah. About how deep are you making strips and applying that fertilizer?

The fall strips, I'm set at about six and a half, seven inches. That runs with a shank. We run a Gladiator in the fall, and then I've got a Colter hub conversion kit I made up that I can convert the Gladiator to spring strips. Freshening depth, we try and set our spring strip freshening depth at about three inches.

I gotcha. And how many strip-till rigs do you have now? Do you just have that Kuhn Krause Cross Gladiator? Do you still have some SoilWarriors or what's your arsenal look like?

Right now, it's one main tractor and the Gladiator is the main bar. We started with the SoilWarrior. It was a 12 row, we outgrew that. We went to a 16 row, like the Gladiator that we run now. And then actually for convenience of switching between the shank and the Colter, I'm looking at going home to SoilWarrior. I've been in talks with Dave to get me back into a SoilWarrior going forward. And that one might actually be their big boy, that big 60 footer they got. Because again, people are catching on to all the benefits of strip-till to the point where 16 rows is almost not getting it done anymore where we're about to make that next jump where we're probably going back home to SoilWarrior.

Yes. You're covering a lot of acres now, so you're thinking about going up to 24 row or?

Yeah. Yep, yep. Last spring, we got crossed about 4,600 acres. And with all the road time I've got factored in, I lose a lot of working days just getting from one half of the territory to the other. So we're hoping that with a 60 foot bar, we can really get across acres timely. In fall, it ain't so bad. That's not really the issue. It's the spring when everyone, the first week of April, everyone says, "Hey, get here when you get here." By the second week of April, everyone calls me wondering why I wasn't there last week.

So we're hoping that the bigger bar lets us get everybody done timely so that nobody's planting later than they want to be planting. It's all about that planting window they say is such a huge determiner of end yield where I want to make sure that I'm not the reason my guys are being held up.

Yeah, so here's a question for you. What's one piece of technology or it could be an equipment add-on or something, an attachment, what's something that's really key, you think, to making strip-till work?

I would say the obvious one is the RTK. Make sure the strip-till tractor and the planting tractor are both running really good guidance. It's not a necessity because the first few years in Wisconsin, I stripped with RTK. And I drove a two-wheel drive, 2105 white tractor and a six row corn planter, and I planted all of that by hand for the first year. It works, it does. We saw a great yield driving it by hand. From a convenience standpoint and kind of idiot proofing the whole thing, making sure you're in the strip, the RTK would be that one big piece of tech that you need.

Second, and this would be the big difference between my first SoilWarrior and the bins I'm running now would be, I run an RCM on the Gladiator that has the ability to have ISO scales tie right into the virtual terminal for calibrating fertilizer. I would put super easy to calibrate fertilizer application as number two, because the old system had just had a scale head on the front and there was a very chicken scratched, jotted in hieroglyphic notebook in that tractor that I'd write down the scale and then we'd fill and write down another number. And then you keep track of your acres, where the RCM with the ISO scales, you just hit start calibration, run a couple of acres, calibrate, boom, done. That dials in that fertilizer accuracy convenient enough that anyone can do it, but it'll actually get done is probably the more important part of that.

Your density cups, you check your fertilizer with first is great. I would consider that 10% margin of error, if you can actually calibrate your bins, your meters, and your scales quickly and easily. I've dialed in less than half a percent already, and I think that's pretty important to the whole success of the thing.

Absolutely. And do you have any experience strip-tilling through cover crops or pairing cover crops with strip-till on some farms?

Yes, I do. If a person decides the soil health journey is the path their farm needs to go on, I would consider strip-till the right boot. Cover crops is the left boot. The SoilWarrior actually had a cover crop cedar and I could apply cover crops with the bar. But then I got a few guys that they'll run their no-till drill out over the bean stumble ahead of me., I let it germinate for a week or two, and then I come back, put the strips in through that. And we've had real good success pairing the two. I think that the cover crops, having some alive all winter and then having some extra biomass to have the microbes working on during the season, keeping everything fed and healthy and alive is a huge component to making the system work and work well.

Yeah, that's a good analogy. I've never heard that one before. Strip till's the left boot, cover crop's is the right booth. I like that.

My wife made it up. She gets credit. I'm just...

We'll give her a shout out for that one.

Yeah.

Well, I know you're getting ready for a busy day/week, it sounds like they're in central Illinois. So kind of what's on your docket for today? Are you going to multiple farms or just one or?

Today, we are waiting for snow to melt, Noah.

Oh, that's right. I heard they got a big snow event, snowstorm down there.

Yep. I've got probably inch and a half of snow on the grass right now. Originally, we had 114 acre field that we were going to bang out first, then we got to move almost all the way over to Decatur for the second field of the day. And I woke up and I realized I had to shovel my sidewalk and I thought, "Hey, Wednesday it's supposed to be in the 50s. Maybe throwing on long underwear and a Carhartt just isn't necessary to get everything done today." So we are actually going to get caught up on some maintenance projects and I got a parts run to go on. We're going to wait for the snow to melt for that whole good conditions thing, and then we'll get back at our end of the week.

Nice. Well, that's good to hear that it's going to warm up a little bit later in the week. So I guess one more question before we go is just kind of a big picture type question. You deal with a lot of farms and you've seen strip-till work on, as you said, different soil types and people are choosing different amounts of fertilizer to put on. So just what can you say about how strip-till is a system that can really thrive no matter the conditions, even if you're in some harsh conditions?

I'm going to quote Monte Bottens on this one. He spoke at the strip-till conference, oh, I think it was a couple of years ago now is the last time I was able to attend. He said "The principles of strip-till apply everywhere. The practices of strip-till are local." On tougher ground, in order to make strip-till work, I would think the biggest component is a farmer's got to know why they're trying strip-till, why they want it to work, why it's important, whether it's soil health or having everything in better condition for the next generation, and then they need to commit to making it work.

I'm on my fifth configuration of strip-till bars right now. You might not get it right on the first one, but I guarantee every acre out there, there is a bar that will perform very well for every field.

And that'll wrap things up. Big thanks to Luke for joining us for that conversation. Thanks once again to Yetter Farm Equipment for making this podcast series possible. And for all things strip-till, head to striptillfarmer.com. You can also listen to past podcast episodes on striptillfarmer.com as well. All right, thanks for tuning in. I hope you have a great week. I'm Noah Newman. See you next time.