Tom Barcellos consistently uses strip till in silage

Tom Barcellos of Barcellos Farms in Tipton, California, has been in the no-till and strip-till business perhaps longer and more consistently than just about any other dairy silage producer in the entire SJV.

Gordon Foster (pictured at right), a Barcellos Farms employee, has done the bulk of the farm’s no-till and strip-till corn seeding since Barcellos started with CT in 1993.

“The bulk of our corn is now strip-tilled,” he said, “due to the overall advantages we’ve seen with this system.”

Time and costs between crops are reduced. One of the primary lessons that Barcellos has learned through his years of using CT is the absolute need to be on top of water management.

“You may end up putting on less water with CT than conventional tillage systems, but you’ve really got to be prepared for earlier and perhaps more frequent irrigations," has been a learning-curve consideration that he reinforces to folks who are interested in getting into CT.

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