A special Southeast Minnesota Soil Health Bus Tour will bring up to 50 farmers to the National Strip-Tillage Conference, Aug. 6-7 in Springfield, Ill. The tour is sponsored by the Rice and Steele Soil and Water Conservation Districts. I caught up with Alan Kraus, soil health specialist with the districts, to talk about it, and why strip-till is gaining traction in his area. 

Noah Newman: “So what are some of the unique challenges that growers in your districts deal with and why is strip till the benefits of strip till? Why could that be a good fit for what some of the challenges your growers are dealing with?”

Alan Kraus: “Yeah. Well, honestly, I farmed for 25 years. I used a lot of no-till on my farm. I dairy farmed in central Wisconsin and I really, really, really liked no-till farming. So I was new to strip-till myself when I came over here to Minnesota and I just have been learning a lot about it. And ultimately in my mind for our region here, these are beautiful soils. The strip-till your corn and no-till your beans is just an extremely great way to go. And so that's kind of why I began wanting to attend the strip-till conference and learning more about it and sort of saddling up alongside of farmers like David Legvold, who farms up in Northfield, Minnesota, who's also in the Hall of Fame there with strip till and really learning a lot more about it.”

“I would say in the past 10 years that I've been living and working here in this area, strip till has actually really, really increased significantly. We have a lot of farmers that are seeing those soil benefits and erosion control benefits. I mean, we get a lot of wind here in Southeast Minnesota and we just have a lot of tillage that we can really, really begin to take out.”

There are still spots on the bus. Sign up at RiceSWCD.org. And head to StripTillConference.com to reserve your spot at the conference. 

Watch the full Video of this episode of Conservation Ag Update.