Tanner Schoff’s dad, James, started no-tilling corn and soybeans almost 30 years ago in Walnut, Ill., to keep the soil in place on their highly erodible land. Not too long after that, they started strip-tilling their corn

“We mainly started no-tilling and strip-tilling for erosion control, but after a few years we saw even more benefits,” Tanner Schoff says. “Our compaction issues improved over the years. We can dig into the soil now and see a ton of earthworms. It’s amazing what the switch has done for our soil biology.”

Today, the Schoffs implement a corn-corn-soybean rotation. They strip-till all their corn acres and no-till their soybeans. Although the switch to conservation practices delivered significant payoffs, it also came with a big challenge. 

“Residue management was a huge problem for us, especially in the strip-till corn-on-corn environment,” Schoff says. “When you’re not doing full tillage, you’re left with plenty of residue. We’ve always fought the old corn stalks, which are even more vigorous today and harder to break down. The gauge wheels on the planter would ride over those stalks and create less seed-to-soil contact.”

Dawn of the Rezidue Reaper 

Schoff, who graduated from Illinois State Univ. with an ag business degree, tapped into his passion for building things and started working on a solution that would solve their residue Rubik’s Cube.

“I had a vision one day while running the combine — I’m already lined up with the rows, I could be managing these stalks with the corn head,”…