The term strip-till refers to an agronomic technique of strip tillage: only specific, well-defined portions of the soil are worked while the inter-row spaces remain untouched, ensuring the protection, balance and nutrient richness of the soil. As the natural resources of our fields are limited, the Strip Tillage method is suitable for optimising soil yields while limiting soil degradation.
In fact, the strip-tillage method combines the advantages of classic tillage with no-tillage: several tillage cycles such as ploughing, seedbed preparation, fertiliser burial and seeding can be carried out effectively in a single operation. This results in considerable time and cost savings.
Strip-tillage has achieved excellent results over the years on maize and soybean crops, in first and second harvest, but can be used regardless of the type of crop. The seeding of the combined crop must be done with a seeder equipped with a precision seeding system to ensure that the tilled row is perfectly centred, leaving intact the rows covered by crop residues that will be transformed into organic matter.
MaterMacc customer Wojtyla embraced this technique and took to the field with the MS 8230 12-row precision planter in combination with a 6-metre strip-till from the well-known Polish manufacturer Czajkowski. Wojtyla is a structured contractor based in North West Poland, near the town of Szczecin, close to the German border. With the MaterMacc seeder he sows sugar beet, maize and rape (the main crops for the Polish market). The customer appreciates the seeder's flexibility of use for different crops, its ease of conversion from one row to another, and its ease of transport by road thanks to its small footprint. A further strength of the MaterMacc seed drill is its compactness and light weight, which means that it does not have an excessive influence on the overall weight of the 'working configuration’.
The technique applied by the customer is a combination: the strip-till works the strips of soil predestined for sowing, fertilising at the same time. The seeder coupled to the machine follows it, distributing, in precision seeding, the crop desired by the customer. The solution combined with the MaterMacc seed drill avoids double passage, saving the contractor considerable time and money, while maintaining high seeding quality thanks to the electronic management of the MS8230 from the tractor's Isobus terminal.
What are the main agronomic and economic advantages of this seeding technique?
- Reduction of work time and speed of execution by reducing everything to a single pass over the soil
- Reduction in fuel consumption and consequent reduction in emissions
- Increased effectiveness of fertilisers as they are placed exactly in the tilled strip
- Improved soil structure, which is left undisturbed and free for a large part
- Reduced soil trampling due to the reduction of soil passages
- Applicable to a wide range of crops and soil types
