A wise man once told me you learn more from your failures than successes. But who wants to put their failures under a microscope for all to see? It takes a lot of courage, and that’s why I commend our readers — they’re often willing to share their challenges and mistakes so that others can learn from them. 

With that being said, I received an email from a farmer on the East Coast whose switch from no-till to strip-till hit a snag. He’s not failing, but he’s not seeing the immediate return on investment (ROI) he was hoping for.  

“We ran a strip-till coulter unit 2 years in a row and didn’t see anything that would make us money,” he says. “Fertilizer savings, yield increases (less than 2 bushels per acre), all of that leads us to seeing a return on investment in 15-20 years minimum. But I want to make strip-till work because it creates a much nicer seedbed, and I think it could help us grow cover crops longer into the spring without having to terminate them.”

Let’s add some context here. He didn’t see tremendous fertilizer savings, despite cutting his rates by a third, because he uses poultry manure. The manure has enough potassium (K) that he only has to apply nitrogen (N) and sulfur, and those applications are mainly made at planting or after planting to minimize leaching in his sandy soils. He also says there’s enough phosphorus (P) in his soils that he won’t have to apply MAP or DAP for decades. 

What do you think? Should he continue to give strip-till a shot after 2 years of no ROI? I asked one of my sources who strip-tills and no-tills in the Corn Belt for his take. 

“I know we want to promote strip-till, but I would advise him to not spend the money on strip-till because in his situation that’s a lot of money being tied up,” he says. “Without knowing more about his operation and soils, it’s hard to give specific advice, other than to keep the covers going. In our soils here, if I didn’t have cover crops, I wouldn’t have success with no-till.” 

Strip-till has proven to be a resilient and versatile system that can work in all types of situations. In the last few years alone, we’ve covered strip-till success stories in Arizona, central California, Georgia, Michigan, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas just to name a few. But oftentimes that success doesn’t happen overnight.

“You have residue build-up, the soil is adjusting and you might not fully see the benefits until year 3. Just stick with it,” says Shawn Feikema, who admits it took a couple years to clear some of the mental hurdles that came with switching from conventional tillage to strip-till in Luverne, Minn. 

Let me know if you have any advice for our East Coast friend at [email protected], and I’ll pass it on to him. In the meantime, let’s keep the conversation about strip-till payoffs going July 31-Aug. 1 at the National Strip-Tillage Conference in Iowa City. Hope to see you there!