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| Thanks for that Jim, I'll try looking further north. I'm not looking to use strip till exactly the way it is used in the US. I'm looking to adapt elements of the system .If I can find a machine off the shelf to do it, great, if not I'll try and find the most suitable components and develop it from there.
I'm trying to find a way to establish canola in high trash levels following 10-12 tonne/ha wheat crops. Canola is the biggest break crop in the UK and most of it is now established by some form of 'till-seeding', whereby the cultivator has a seeder mounted on it. We need to find ways of producing a clean row of good tilth to seed into - so why not look at the US example of corn on corn strip till that has the most difficult conditions. The main problem I see is that after wheat you have to move the root balls to get a clean row, with corn you just have to move the loose trash off the top and plant between the old rows. We also need something very durable to tackle varying soil types and potentially some stones. I'm interested to see how these things cope in sticky soils. How wet can it be. How soon do they bung up. How much pulling do they take. How deep can you go. What are the problems. I need to know as many of the downsides as possible. Only then can I made a call on whether this would work or not.
As for the size of this market, the UK sugar beet area would lend itself to this approach ( Norfolk for example doesn't grow corn as you point out, but it does grow a lot of sugar beet). Strip till in sugar beet is already being tried in Holland. There is legislation coming which will mean that a winter cover crop has to be established and removed before a spring crop is planted to protect soils from erosion. Some growers on lighter soils are already doing this and planting into the cover crop just after it is sprayed off. Other spring crops such as field beans would also lend themselves to this system as well especially on heavier soils where a cover crop would be difficult. Given the soil conservation benefits of strip till and the extent of its use elsewhere I would have thought a good case could be brought to circumvent the legislation by using it.
Forage maize grown to the West would also be suitable as they have a lot of soil erosion issues that could be alleviated by not cultivating the entire area. Might not be grown for grain, but the crop still has to be established.
Further south and there is a lot of canola grown in France and Germany. They are looking at precision drilling pelleted canola seed that would be on wide rows and again appropriate for this system. The french also grow a lot of sugar beet. There is also a lot more maize (corn) grown at these lower latititudes due to the similarity in thermal intensity to the US etc. GM has been approved in Spain and France and will probably see an increase in area as a consequence. As for eastern europe, there is a massive land area with potential for another 40 million hectares to be developed. A large area in the Ukraine and Russia's black earth region is chernozem soil that can also extends into North America. Cropping and climate is again more similar to the US, given colder winters, a slower start to spring, shorter season and rapid rise in temperatures curtailing the growing season.
Whilst I'm considering this for the UK, there is also scope for the rest of Europe, as this system does not seem to have really been very widely adopted here yet as no one has really seen it. Given that there are a lot of UK ,French and German farmers with farms in Eastern Europe uptake would be pretty rapid if it turned out to work in the west. The UK is also the test bed for cultivation equipment for the rest of Europe. If it will work here it will work anywhere else - just look at the gear that is currently being used in Eastern Europe by farmers from the West, and it isn't from North America (apart from the tractors !)
To my mind the potential is enormous from a manufacturers point of view and I'm surprised that we haven't seen more trial work to see if it is a suitable option.
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Any strip till field days / demonstrations ?
