Two U.S. farm equipment manufacturers have teamed up to build a strip-till system they say can help row-crop producers transition into the practice at lower expense.
The Falcon SF700 is an integration of Iowa-based Kinze Manufacturing’s 5700 toolbar platform — along with its weight transfer system and flotation — and Yetter Manufacturing’s 2984 strip freshener CC (cab control) row unit.
The companies say the SF700 was designed as a foundation for a strip-till system minus the deep tillage, high tractor horsepower, slow speeds, lack of narrow-row choices and overall costs sometimes associated with the practice.
In short, it’s meant to let growers pull the unit with their existing tractors to quickly create strip-till seedbeds using shallow tillage.
Andy Thompson, strip-till product director with Yetter, says farmers consider it a good practice but balk at the costly hurdles.
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“The management, the ideology, just everything really has kind of been bred into us to think that if you’re going to strip-till, you have to change every single thing that you do equipment-wise and mindset-wise, and that’s just a roadblock for a lot of farmers.”
But it doesn’t have to be that way, says Thompson. For one thing, strip-till is more flexible than some may think.
“We don’t have to go so many inches deep. We don’t have to go so many inches wide. We don’t have to do it at a specific time.”
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Although the unit includes optional fertilizing capacity, the two companies are marketing it primarily as a tillage machine.
“The benefit of the Yetter strip-till CC design is the fact that you can start as just a tillage operation. You don’t need to have high horsepower. You don’t need to apply fertilizer,” says Brad Niensteadt, lead product specialist with Kinze.
“It can specifically take the place of a tillage tool, but number one, (growers can) use the tractor you already have on the farm, so you don’t need a big, high-horsepower tractor like you do for a deep strip-till operation.”
High speeds, low depth, smaller rows
The Falcon SF700 is a high-speed strip-till tool that accommodates depths of one-and-a-half to four inches and operating speeds from 9.7 to 16 km-h.
“(You can) cover a lot of ground quickly because you’re only going two-and-a-half inches deep,” says Niensteadt.
Yetter, an Illinois-based company with more than three decades of strip-till tech experience, says the SF700 has been engineered to help growers:
- Improve planter-to-strip alignment.
- Support precision nutrient placement.
- Maintain residue management between rows.
- Create a consistent planting environment.
- Simplify strip-till operation.
- Transition to strip-till with greater confidence.
The Kinze toolbar comes in 20-, 22- and 30-inch row configurations and sizes from 40 to 66 feet. Although 30-inch rows are considered the strip-till standard, the 5700 toolbar addresses a growing regional market for smaller rows, says Niensteadt.
“If they’re used to planting soybeans on 15-inch rows, they might transition to 20- or 22-inch rows to get a little more air and a little less disease pressure, especially if it’s a damp spring.”
The 5700 toolbar features 30 degrees of wing flex, says Niensteadt: 15 degrees upward and 15 downward.
This reflects Kinze’s hydraulic weight transfer system, in which a hydraulic cylinder and tractor pressure work together to push weight to the wings, evenly distributing weight across the toolbar.
If producers choose to use the unit as a fertilizer machine, its optional two 750-gallon tanks should fit the bill. Although the Falcon currently supports only liquid fertilizer, Niensteadt says the companies are looking at adding dry fertilizer capacity down the road.
“I realize, in Canada especially, dry fertilizer may be a little more prevalent in certain areas and we need to provide that solution. Liquid’s a little more prevalent now and obviously easier to put on than running dry hoses.
Finally, strip-till configuration can be “easily” aligned with planter configuration to support accurate seed placement, says Yetter.
Niensteadt predicts the Falcon SF700 will enjoy its greatest success in Canada’s row-crop regions where corn and soybeans are grown.
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