Bill Preller is on a mission to help farmers be successful with strip-till in their operations — a mission he chose to accept long before the public launch of his strip-till equipment manufacturing company AGuru Machinery in 2020.
“The ‘guru’ name started as a joke from a customer of mine during my crop consulting days,” Preller says. “I’m originally an agronomist by training, not an equipment guy. He tagged me as the corn guru. The guru part stuck. We want to be the gurus of strip-till.”
The Strip-Till Farmer Hall of Famer cut his teeth as an independent crop consultant for about 15 years before joining the research and development team at DMI and eventually Case IH where he became a leader in equipment sales and marketing. Now, Preller teaches growers across the country about the benefits and intricacies of strip-till, visiting their farms and learning about the unique challenges they face.
Preller says strip-till is the future of farming because he believes it’s the only soil management practice that optimizes agronomics, environmental concerns and economics in most soil types. While some organizations try to elevate one group of benefits over the other, Preller sees them as equally important and working in tandem.
“If you believe one of those three is the driver, treat these as one thing because they're all related,” Preller says. “Strip-till is the best row crop production system — in many soil types. That’s the asterisk I'm going to put on it. It almost never hurts you regardless of soil type, but the response to strip-till relative to something else will depend on soil type.”
Agronomics
Preller points to five drivers that make strip-till an agronomically sound practice. First, crop residue is left on the soil surface to protect the soil. Secondly, strip-tilled soils have good soil tilth, meaning they have an appropriate balance of air, water and soil. Third, strip till increases plant food availability by putting the nutrients directly in the root zone.
“Strip-till wins because we are putting nutrients in the root zone,” Preller says. “Our job is to feed our crops. If you think fertilizer, you're not thinking right. Think plant food. We're talking about fertilizer that can become nutrients. For them to be nutrients to the crop, we have to think about them as feeding the crop.”
Fourth, strip-till creates superior seedbed conditions based on temperature, moisture and uniformity.
“Strip-till, compared to no-till, is drier and warmer,” Preller says. “Five degrees, eight degrees, four degrees, whatever it is depends on the conditions and residue, but it's drier and warmer. It's also more uniform because no-till has hot spots and dry spots, and we get better seed to soil contact than mulch-till.”
Finally, Preller says, strip-till makes for a smooth planter ride that increases seed placement accuracy.
Adding cover crops to a strip-till system increases organic matter by producing more biomass, Preller adds. Cover crops can also provide significant weed control. In one of his soybean research plots, growing a cereal rye cover crop and then spraying one herbicide pass provided significantly better waterhemp control than three herbicide passes.
Environment
Preller points to strip-till as a way to reduce the runoff of nitrates and phosphorus (P) that have damaged Lake Erie and the Gulf of Mexico. Strip-till allows the farmer to place nutrients directly into the root zone, and while they potentially could still leach out, they won’t leave the field as runoff.
“The problem with no-till is we are putting nutrients on top of the soil and they don't stay there,” Preller says. “At some point the phosphorus is high enough in the surface that even though phosphorus tends to stay put, it doesn't.”
Environmentally, strip-till helps build soil structure through the incorporation of air and water. Preller says that one of the biggest myths is that no-till on its own solves compaction. Strip-till allows the farmer to break through the plowpan compaction layer and then begin to rebuild soil structure.
“Strip-till does create better air and water infiltration in many soils compared to straight no-till,” Preller says. “Strip-till also has faster, more uniform crop establishment compared to no-till because it’s warmer and drier. Compared to mulch-till, there’s seed to soil contact as opposed to seed to residue contact.”
The resulting faster germination then catalyzes the biology in the soil sooner, Preller says. The synergistic relationship between the biology and the soil provides an environmental advantage in Preller’s eyes. Adding cover crops to the system puts more carbon into the soil via biomass which helps feed the biology.
Economics
“Capital-use efficiency compared to conventional tillage is dramatic,” Preller says. His typical customer transitioning from a conventional tillage system can save significant amounts of money by reducing their amount of passes across a field and also by eliminating the need for disc rippers and cultivators.
“We took two tractors and four implements and turned them into one tractor and one implement,” Preller says of his average strip-till customer’s fleet of equipment.
While the reduction in field passes increases labor efficiency, Preller says a higher quality operator is needed in a strip-till system.
“Anybody can drive a chisel, but your planter person better be driving that strip-till rig because you are planting and there's no second chance. So labor-use efficiency is very high, but it takes a higher quality person doing it.”
Preller acknowledges that recommendations for cutting fertilizer rates in strip-till vary widely from not cutting back at all, to a 100% reduction depending on who a farmer talks to. Preller opines that to be profitable despite low commodity prices, farmers should focus on yield.
“Here is my personal philosophy,” Preller says. “I'm feeding better and better crops which is the point because that means I have better soil biology and better yields. Even at $3.75 corn, I'm here to tell you price is not the answer, yield is.”
Preller says the strip-till yield increase comes from more uniform plant stands resulting in 3,000-4,000 more ears per acre over no-till.
“That high-class customer that's doing a really good job, and literally is spending $20 an acre more for strip-till than no-till, is going to see a minimum of a 30-bushel increase. That’s $80 per acre minimum net improvement. Done. Paid for the strip-till rig in one year. That's the math. We're back to the economics.”
