Illinois farmer Rich Follmer reflects on how a desire to warm the soil while still maintaining his conservation efforts led to the invention of strip-tilling and shares what methods are working on his farm today.
Rich Follmer didn’t set out to become a businessman. In the 1980s, the corn and soybean farmer from central Illinois — considered by many to be the “grandfather” of strip-till — designed and built a system that would allow him to till the ground and plant soybeans simultaneously.