Eight years after building a 32-row strip-till “beast,” Greg Vermeersch says the MegaStripper has become one of the most efficient pieces of equipment at VanMeer Farms — but that doesn’t mean the farm is finished tinkering with it.
In this episode of RealAgriculture’s Soil School, Vermeersch takes a closer look at the home-built strip-till unit at the Courtland, Ont., farm and shares what his team has learned about strip tillage, fertility placement, cover crops, and where the machine could still be improved.
When RealAgriculture first visited the MegaStripper five years ago, Vermeersch explained that the farm had built the machine around an 80-foot, 32-row planter frame. The goal was to match the planter width, reduce tillage, concentrate fertilizer in the strip, and maintain efficiency in the farm’s relatively small fields and sandy soils.
Today, those fundamentals haven’t changed. The MegaStripper remains a spring-only machine, using relatively light row units to create strips without requiring excessive horsepower. It can carry 12 tonnes of dry fertilizer and uses high-flotation tires and swivelling rear wheels to help manoeuvre through fields.
“This machine... is probably covering 50 to 60 acres an hour when he’s going,” says Vermeersch. “All your fertility, all your tillage, one-man show. It’s really good. We just love it.”
The fertility program, however, has evolved. VanMeer Farms initially continued applying liquid starter with the corn planter, concerned that inconsistencies in the strip could limit early nutrient uptake. Those concerns didn’t materialize, and the farm eventually removed liquid fertilizer from the planter altogether. For the past five years, dry fertilizer applied with the MegaStripper has been the priority.
Variable-rate application has also become an important part of the system. After initially applying flat rates, Vermeersch says the farm became more comfortable with the machine and its fertility program and began using variable-rate technology, which he says has delivered positive returns.
Strip till also complements the farm’s use of cover crops. On sandy soils that can lose moisture quickly, the strips help warm the seed zone in spring, while cover crops help hold soil in place during heavy fall rains and reduce erosion risk.
After eight seasons, however, Vermeersch already has a wish list for the next version. He would favour a five-section bar rather than the current three-section design, along with scales on the fertilizer cart for automatic calibration. Hydraulic residue managers and hydraulic downforce would also provide greater in-cab adjustability, particularly when moving into heavier soils.
“We’re always changing and adapting,” says Vermeersch.
Despite those potential modifications, efficiency remains one of the MegaStripper’s biggest strengths. Pulled by a 400-horsepower tractor at roughly eight to nine mph, it combines tillage and fertility into a single high-capacity pass — exactly what Vermeersch and his team set out to accomplish eight years ago.
Check out more soil management insights on Soil School.
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Read more » Today on Soil School, we are checking out the Mega Strip-Till. Courtland, Ontario's Greg Vermeersch and his team at Van Meer Farms built the 32-row strip-till unit 8 years ago. On this episode, Greg shares what he's learned about strip-till over the years and potential modifications to make the stripper even more efficient. Soil School on RealAgriculture.com is brought to you by the Mosaic Company. Greg, a great event here today. The Ontario Soil Network is here, they're looking at your farm, looking at this strip-tiller. You're going to take them on a tour. Let's get a private tour here. Take me around this machine and tell me what you're going to tell them.
Yeah, for sure, for sure. Let's start with the row units. A lot of people are always questioning row units and why we picked these. So these are a strip freshener. We didn't feel the need that we needed to go super deep In our soils here. And also we want to keep the horsepower requirements down to a minimum. So this is what we come up with. We made custom tubing. There is dividers down here into the delivery between the blades so that we don't get the seed burn when we're right in the middle of the strip. Um, we have— it's been very trouble-free, this row unit. It has air Uh, downforce on it, which we don't adjust too much. We kind of set it and forget it unless we get into maybe a little heavier soils. But I know a lot of people have, you know, maybe 1,000-pound row units that really need to get into that soil, and maybe they're a little more fall application. But we are strictly spring, so we do our headlands first like you're planting, and we go up and down the field.
Right.
And there's really no berms, there's nothing to contend with. So that's, um, That's how we've designed it, and it's working just as such. Stainless steel tubing as much as possible so we don't have tubes and slow down fertiliser or air velocity is a big thing because we are pushing it 80 feet. We also worked extensively on the load of the machine, so it holds 12 tonnes of fertiliser. So when you get into big stretches You can load this thing up and go for a while. So high flotation tyres, low pressure, swivelling wheels at the back so it doesn't bind when we back up to our corners and square it. So this was all custom built ourselves, and a machine shop helped us out with some of the geometries and things. There were a few mistakes along the way, but, uh, yeah, I think we got it dialled in by now. So We're really happy with that. The technology is important on it. We've really used the variable rate after a couple years of flat rating it. We said, okay, now we can really dial that variable rating in, and it's shown really positive results, ROI as well.
Hey, let's talk about strategy here. You have very sandy soil, you know, why cover crops and strip tillage?
Uh, geez, that's a great question. Uh, I think the strip-till bar itself was done for soil tillage. We need to keep our soils a little bit warmer in the spring, especially for our frosts here, because we do lose soil moisture early because it's so sandy. So it allows us to warm up the soil a little bit better, and cover crops are a nice mix to hold soils together in the fall with our heavy rainfalls and you know, high soil erosion potential here. So that's kind of how the synergy works.
Yeah. Now you've been running the Mega Stripper here probably about 8 years.
Yeah, we're playing, I think, 8 years. Yeah, it's been a while since you've been back.
Yeah, we were here 5 years ago. Hey, just for a refresher, tell folks about how this machine came together. A lot of parts, a lot of ingenuity, a lot of smart people here on the farm.
Yes, we have so many talented people here and just the ingenuity that goes into it. We, uh, we had an 80-foot planter, 32 rows, and we didn't want to go back to 2 16-rows. We're like, ah, but we don't want to lose our tillage. But how do we, you know, quit broadcasting our fertilisers and do something that, you know, is manageable? We love the planter, so how do we mimic the planter? So we're like, okay, let's find something that's similar row unit weight to like a John Deere row unit that has like the— no more than the equivalent of a 3-bushel hopper on it. So that's what we did. We increased a bunch of supports on the top of the frame to take the extra stresses. And then, yeah, we started building our custom frame on the back to hold the Alari cart, because at 40 feet we feel you can tow a cart. At 60 feet, for us and our field sizes, you need to, you know, square corners. You have to square corners. So then the 80 feet is very easy. You have to square square corners, which is what the corn planter does. So this worked out really well.
Greg, fertility is so key, strip-till, especially when you're doing corn as well, getting it down in the strip. Tell me more about the Olari cart here and how you move fertiliser across this machine.
Yeah, so that was a challenge because it does have to go 80 feet and it does have to be even. So Olari did some work with us and made us a custom fan and custom manifolds to accomplish what we needed to do with section control because that's important in our fields and our overlap. Yeah, so it has variable rate on it, which is something we didn't utilise our first couple years, but as we got more comfortable and we got our fertility programme down, we were definitely able to utilise that technology more.
Tell me about the fertility programme. I mean, you were putting, you know, fertility down with the strip, and you're also putting in on the planter. Tell me about what you were doing and how it's evolved.
So before, we were doing just a straight flat broadcast dry fertiliser, and then we were going in with, let's say, 5 gallons of liquid starter. Doesn't matter what it is, and that was kind of our programme. We were really concerned about, you know, maybe not having that early pickup on the corn planter when we got into this, and so we kept doing the liquid system on there. We switched it from liquid fertiliser, our starter fertiliser, to 28% dribbling behind the seed after it closed, just to make sure if the strips off a bit that we didn't have yellow plants. We're really concerned about that because we cover a big area, it's going to really look, look bad. So we didn't really have the issues we thought, and so we ended up ultimately dropping all the liquid off the corn planter completely. We haven't used it in 5 years, and we've dumped everything into the dry starter as our priority. Everything is dry starter. It's way more efficient.
Break down the fertility for me. PK, sulphur, macros, what are you putting into the strip?
It varies per farm. It's whatever the agronomist says, that's our blend for the farm. And then one of the key points, talk about the Elara a little more, we wish we had scales in it. That would be scales that self-calibrate, so you're always ending up with the right pounds at the end, right? That's one of our big things. We, you know, on the next thing we build, we'd like to have scales on it.
A lot about efficiency, Greg. The last time I was here, you talked about fuel, labour hours. You were really happy with what this machine was delivering.
This machine, geez, he's probably covering 50 to 60 acres an hour when he's going It's really efficient. It doesn't take a lot of power. He's got 400 horse in the front. You know, he may use it on the sand hills, but generally it goes along pretty efficient with one person. All your fertility, all your tillage, one, one-man show. It's really good. We just love it.
What about termination, Greg? Cover crop rye.
Yeah.
How are you handling that? I mean, when I was here last time, you were thinking about, you know, different ways, different timings for termination. Where have you landed?
Uh, we've ended up with a lot of mistakes. It's the best way to learn. We've hit rye in farms that we've forgotten that is literally 24 inches high, planting or stripping green into it, and we've tried that. My overall is you have to terminate 2 weeks before or 2 weeks after. It seems to be the best. Anything in the middle, when that rye's dying off, it just isn't great. So yeah.
What about future tweaks here now? Are you happy where you are, or— I know you've been talking to your son here, you guys have got some ideas about what you want to do.
I don't know, like, it takes really— the Strip-Till Bar really takes somebody who has that planter knowledge, right? Because he's the guy setting up the farm for that whole year following planting, you know, harvesting, side dressing. But in our system of no-till, he's also setting it up for for the next year with a guy with no-till soybeans. So it really is an important job setting up the farms properly with the strip-till guy. So he's got to have that mindset of the big picture in mind, but it's such an important role for sure.
Hey, final question for you, and that is 8 years with this machine, obviously stripping here and cover crops. What do you tell growers when they say, hey, Greg, what have you learned? What can I take to my field?
Oh geez, what have I learned? I've learned, um, that we probably should have went to a 5-section bar instead of a 3-section bar, but we were trying to keep the cost down on our build. Um, the strips, you know, one of the things we do is we put rye into the tank and then we make a pass, and then, you know, 2 weeks later, 3 weeks later, you see where the rye comes out. You know exactly how your fertiliser is going down then. So that's a little test we use. But I mean, air is wonderful, but hydraulics are great. I mean, it gives you that adjustability from the cab. That's one of the things we wish we had— hydraulic trash whippers on the front and hydraulic downforce on the back. If we got into heavier soils, that variability would be more important. Now he just probably overcompensates with air pressure on the back because he has the depth wheels. So those are some of the things that we've run into, but as far as horsepower requirements, I don't think you can get much more efficient than what we are.
So yeah, so 400 to run this one?
It's 400 to run this one, yeah, yeah. And he's, uh, 9 mile an hour, 8 mile an hour, like he's, he's pretty good. So yeah.
Well, good stuff, Greg. I really appreciate making some time. We'll be back in another 5 years, how about that?
Yeah, yeah, we'll see what goes on in another 5 years. We're always changing and adapting. We got a lot of trials always on the go. We're playing with twin rows a little bit. It's just a little soybean twin row with the strip-till this year. I don't know if we're going to follow up on that in some of these events later, but yeah, that's something exciting we're playing with too, is variable rate fertiliser with variable rate twin row soybean seed. That's, I think we're in year 4 of that now, so it's interesting, the results.