Soybean Strip-Till vs No-Till Trial Soybeans are not always easy to conduct research on and traditionally in the Midwest have been thought of as the crop that you grow when you are not growing corn. Some of the reasoning for this thought is that in the past many growers would not fertilize soybeans. More recently consistent responses to fertility have been proven in soybeans and additions of fertilizer and genetic gains has increased the popularity of raising soybeans for profit. We have observed over the last several years that in mid-June soybeans that are fertilized look better than those that are not fertilized. Taking this a step further I have observed that fields with strip-till looked better than No-Till and if fertility was applied in the strip-till operation, the soybeans looked even better. Soybean yields are hard to estimate in the field and looks don’t always equal yield with soybeans. However, the Orthman research farm has consistently raised some very good soybeans. Therefore, we decided to measure strip-till soybean yields compared to No-Till surface dribbled fertility. Because the Orthman research farm is ridge till we were not able to do complete No-Till because we needed to pull the old corn root balls out of the ridge before planting. For this trial, after the stalk puller had ran across the field, we strip-tilled 16 rows with a blend of 28 gals 10-34-0, 10 gals 12-0-0-26, ½ gal 10% Zinc, 2 gal QLF Boost, and 2 gal water. Next we raised the strip-till rig and applied the same blend to 16 rows for the No-Till dribble band check. Soybean Strip-Till vs No-Till Results and Discussion As we planted this trial the 16 rows that we did not strip-till were noticeably rougher than the strip-tilled rows. The planter bounced a lot less in the strip-till than the No-Till. As the strip-tilled plants emerged, even though we had emergence issues, they seemed more consistent than the No-Till check and planting depth. This makes sense because of the bounce that was observed in the planting process. The next question was will these observations show anything in yield differences? The No-Till soybeans yielded 84.1 bpa while the strip till yielded 87.6 bpa. We feel that the increase in yield of 3.5 bpa is due to a combination of better planting conditions and along with placing the fertility where the plant will better utilize it and finally addressing and eliminating a shallow compaction layer. Interestingly enough the increased yield even after accounting for additional fuel expense of 0.6 gal per acre due to pulling the strip-till applicator through the ground provided an additional $48.63 per acre net revenue. This could be an additional $48,630.00 across 1,000 acres of soybeans. Figure 13 shows the data in a table. Certainly this trial is a demonstration of how strip-till can help improve the profitability of your operation.
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