FOA 219: Strip Tillage and Becoming a Farmer's Favorite Company

Future of Agriculture

The idea for today’s show happened as I was working on another podcast I produce for NDSU Extension Soil Health called “Soil Sense”. I was interviewing a farmer named Mark Olson about strip tillage. It was a fascinating topic, but what really piqued my interest was the way he spoke about the company behind his strip tillage equipment. He kept talking about his SoilWarrior guy that had been so helpful. I believe he said something to the effect of “I just can’t say enough good things about SoilWarrior.”

So naturally, I wanted to learn more about this SoilWarrior company. It turns out that SoilWarrior is the product and the company is called Environmental Tillage Systems based in Minnesota. Today’s episode is about this SoilWarrior equipment, but also about strip tillage in general, and what it takes to become a farmer’s favorite company.

Brian Ryberg, who is a farmer in Minnesota and a SoilWarrior Evangelist - one of over 500, I have since found out. And Brent Brueland, VP of Sales & Marketing at Environmental Tillage Systems - which again, is the company that makes SoilWarrior.

If you’re new to the idea of strip-tillage, I’ll start with an oversimplified explanation: it’s a process where instead of a farmer tilling an entire field, he/she only tills a strip wide enough to plant into. That way, most of the ground is undisturbed which has benefits for erosion, compaction, trafficability, and overall soil health. However, the tilled strips provide benefits such as warming up faster in the spring and placing nutrients right in the root zone. There are many other benefits that Brian and Brent will discuss.

Even if soil conservation doesn’t interest you - which it should - I still think this is a worthwhile episode for you to learn more about a farmer’s throught process and what it takes to be the type of company that creates evangelists.