NEILFarmer - 12/25/2015 21:25

While I can't answer for Dave, I think he is talking more about equipment, fuel, and labor. They were conventional tillage, and heavy hitter conventional tillage farmers at that.

We have fields going into 7 years no-till strip till, and only light tillage for at least 7 years prior, gets better with time.

The whole idea that strip till takes more power is just bogus. Let's think about this. In the fall your combining tillage both spring and fall along with dry fertilizer application. Spring were running planter with part of our N program and a "giddy up go" pop up fertilizer. Sidedressing remaining pass with NH3. Spraying 1-3 times. So COC I'm running 3x30' passes and say 2x60' passes. Locals are running 2x that and typically they are plowing or chisel plowing at 12-18' with 300-500hp tractors. So yeah, strip till is huge power requirement.