The fourth annual Strip-Till Farmer Hall of Fame Class includes Mark Bauer of Faribault, Minn., Charlie Hammer and Nancy Kavazanjian of Beaver Dam, Wis., and Jeff Martin of Mount Pulaski, Ill.

The Hall of Famers will be honored at the 2026 National Strip-Tillage Conference, Aug. 6-7 in Springfield, Ill., for their pivotal role in moving the strip-till practice forward and their overall impact on the industry.

Charlie Hammer & Nancy Kavazanjian (Beaver Dam, Wis.)

For more than 25 years, Charlie Hammer and Nancy Kavazanjian have been strip-tilling corn on their nearly 1,900 acres near Beaver Dam, Wis. The husband-and-wife team was among the first in the area to adopt strip-till.

Always looking for new ways to improve, they’ve experimented with many different strip-till equipment brands and innovative setups over the years to deal with residue challenges.

“You could say we trade equipment for a hobby,” Hammer says. “We’ve had so many different things already and we’re still looking for the setup that’s going to give us the best results.”

Strip-till is a big piece to the soil health puzzle for Hammer and Kavazanjian, who have been entrenched in conservation ag since they launched their family farm in 1980 with the motto, “Our Soil, Our Strength.”

“We dedicated ourselves to doing what’s best for our soils and our crops 45 years ago,” Kavazanjian says. “All of our conservation and agronomic efforts to build healthier soils continue to pay benefits. And we’ve always been very involved in water quality because we have many lakes here in Wisconsin. Now we’ve installed an innovative proof-of-concept system to remove phosphorus from tile water and keep nutrients on the land.”

Winners of the American Soybean Association Conservation Legacy Award in 2020, Hammer and Kavazanjian have worked hard to leave a legacy of healthier soils and reduced erosion through their strip-till, no-till and cover crop practices.

While strip-till helped reduce erosion on their rolling farmland, Hammer and Kavazanjian were still seeing significant soil loss. Encouraged by their crop consultant Bill Stangel, they decided to try prairie strips — small areas of diverse native grasses and wildflowers incorporated into row crop fields to hold soil in place and protection water quality.

Hammer and Kavazanjian have hosted and attended several field days and industry meetings over the years, helping educate hundreds of farmers about the benefits of strip-till and other conservation practices.

Jeff Martin (Mount Pulaski, Ill.)

Jeff Martin, named a No-Till Legend at the 25^th National No-Tillage Conference, was one of the first in Logan County, Ill., to try no-till in 1982. But in the early 1990s, he experienced a succession of cold, wet springs that stymied timely no-till planting. Those years drove his decision to try strip-till and he’s never looked back.

“Success doesn’t come overnight,” Martin told Strip-Till Farmer in 2009. “But if you pay attention to details, strip-till has the potential for higher yields in rotated or continuous corn and more profitability than any other tillage method. And at the same time, strip-till can lead you to fun, soil-saving and even money-making conservation and wildlife-enhancement activities.”

On Martin’s farm, the combination of strip-till, no-till and cover crops has proven to be a winner, boosting soil health and unlocking valuable nutrients from residue.  

“We make fall strips, but we haven’t used P and K in 10 years,” Martin says. “Our soil biology is working to make those nutrients available. That’s the key, making those huge amounts of P and K in the soil last us for years. With soil health, we’re making those nutrients more available to the plants.” 

Martin has worked hard to educate other farmers and landowners about the benefits of strip-till. He currently works with 24 landowners across his 9,000 acres, most of which are rented and strip-tilled or no-tilled. 

“Most of the acreage that we picked up in the last 7 years has been from our current landowners, so they’re happy with what we’re doing and the return they’re getting,” says Martin, who used to serve as president of the Chicago Farmers organization. “Communication and education are keys to success. Explain what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. One of the big reasons I went to the Chicago Farmers was to help educate people. There are a lot of people in that area who own farmland across the country and in central Illinois.”

Strip-till, no-till and cover crops are big selling points for Martin. He’s found that many landowners, especially from the younger generation, are interested in soil health and taking care of the farm. 

“We talk to our landowners about a dozen times per year on average. Some of the landowners within a 40-mile radius of us, we talk to once a week,” Martin says. “That’s key to helping them understand the benefits of what we’re doing. 

Martin is happy with the results he’s seen with strip-till over the last 35 years, noting the biggest benefit is better soil health, which is the key to better yields. Martin has passed the practice on to his sons, Doug and Derek, and is eager to see what the next chapter of the family farm brings. 

Mark Bauer (Faribault, Minn.)

Mark Bauer, the creator of the Environmental Tillage Systems (ETS) SoilWarrior, grew up on a farm located northeast of Faribault, Minn. He started farming full-time after graduating from high school early in 1975. Later that year, he married his high school sweetheart Sue, and they’ve been a team ever since. 

Bauer stopped moldboard plowing in the late 1980s and started coulter-chiseling cornstalks in the fall. “It left the trashiest, ugliest fields in the country,” he recalls. This made the landlords very nervous, but to make the process work, Bauer significantly modified a Wil-Rich cultivator to handle the residue in the spring.

Bauer eventually tried no-tilling corn, which produced variable results. His response was to buy a tile plow and install drainage on all the land he farmed. Bauer participated in a research project with the Univ. of Minnesota in the mid-1990s comparing drained vs. undrained land. When he expressed impatience with the project, extension educator Brad Carlson asked why he was so anxious given that he was being compensated for any loss. Bauer replied, “I want to get that field drained because when I have all of my drainage under control, I am going to change the way I farm.” 

Bauer, Carlson and a van full of other farmers attended the 1998 Upper Midwest Ridge-Till and Strip-Till Conference (which later became the Conservation Tillage Conference and eventually the Soil Management Summit) in Spirit Lake, Iowa. At the conference, Bauer purchased an air cart for banded fertilizer application, which would eventually become the fertilizer delivery system on the first SoilWarrior. 

By 2002, Bauer was working with another farmer using a B&H strip-till unit, and while he felt there was something there, it had a tough time handling rocks. Additionally, their varying soil types, and aggressively rolling terrain made it extremely difficult to manage. In 2003, he tried using a Brillion unit which he rented. A year later, Bauer cut out the original cog wheel row unit that looked like a saw blade and would become synonymous with the SoilWarrior. 

With some help from his friend Kevin Kuehn, Bauer mounted the row unit on the 3-point hitch of a tractor and discovered that it produced a strip that he liked. Bauer then took the bold step of selling off all his tillage equipment to pay for the manufacturing costs of the first SoilWarrior. 

The Bauers participated in another research project with the Univ. of Minnesota — the Minnesota Integrated Tillage Trials (MITT) in 2005, and it was at a field day for this project that the SoilWarrior ran in public for the first time. A large crowd witnessed the machine painted lavender in color. Bauer originally wanted to paint it pink to emphasize that it was gentle on the soil, but thought better of it, and settled with the shade of light purple. 

The original SoilWarrior garnered enough interest that other farmers and friends invested in the newly formed ETS, and the company was off and running. The first several units were built on Bauer’s farm before they eventually moved production to a factory that had been owned by Nutting Truck and Castor foundry in Faribault. It didn’t take long for Bauer to realize he wasn’t cut out for the corporate world, so he turned management of the business to others and returned his focus to farming. Bauer eventually sold the majority of his ownership in the company to invest in his farming operation.  

Today, Bauer still uses the SoilWarrior that he built 20 years ago, but he’s achieved such improvement in his soil that he's down to just a single wavy coulter used only in the spring on most of his ground. As a participant in Minnesota’s Adult Farm Management program (which works with farmers on records and cash flows), Bauer is in the top 15% for yield and the bottom 5% for cost per acre.  

Bauer has spoken at many meetings and welcomed dozens of groups to his farm. A group of no-tillers from Argentina recently visited and marveled at 8 inches of roots below corn plants that were just at the two-leaf stage. Bauer remains on the Univ. of Minnesota’s short list any time the extension needs a good cooperator for a research project or educational video.