I don't care who you are or where you live, seeding crops into your no-till fields is never a vacation. There’s always things that break down, conditions that are less than favorable or just not enough time in the day.

Dwayne Beck, manager of the farmer-owned Dakota Lakes Research Farm near Pierre, S.D., isn’t like most folks. He hopes to have much less trouble at seeding time, and it’s all thanks to his originally designed seeding rig.

“The purpose of this project is to build a seeder that tests the feasibility of combining the best concepts presently utilized in high capacity air seeders and highly precise row-crop planters to make a single machine capable of accurately seeding and fertilizing all of the crops on our no-till farm,” he says.

Not concerned about the aesthetics of the machine, Beck set out to create the almost perfect seeding rig. What he ended up with was part John Deere, part CaseIH and everything in between.

Advantages, Disadvantages

The first thing Beck did was decide which types of seeders had the features that he preferred. These three charts show what he liked and disliked about various types of no-till seeding rigs.

Set To Work

Once he knew what he did and didn’t want in a no-till seeder, Beck and his farm crew got to work incorporating the best of these ideas and trying to avoid the worst.

“All the weight on our new seeder is carried by tall, fat tires,” he says. “The bridge…