Twin brothers Gene and Dean Carstens of Minden, Neb., are the type of farmers who use academic research as the launching pad for their own. In the Carstens' case, it was work done in the 1970s by a Rutgers University researcher who achieved 400-bushel-per-acre corn yields through attention to spatial availability—the precise spacing of corn plants. The Carstens used that research, plus what they learned from others and on-farm experience, to design their own corn planter. Besides the farm and a fertilizer business called FirstAg, the brothers have been building corn planters as part of another business of theirs, called Twin Diamond Industries LLC. The most recent version of their corn planter is being kept undercover while the patent process proceeds.

The Twin Diamond twin-row, strip-till corn planter will space each corn plant in a precise diamond-shaped pattern. Strip tillage is a relatively new concept seeking to overcome some of the limitations of no-till systems. Farmers, particularly in the West, have adopted no-till practices because the method reduces soil erosion, improves moisture retention and soil quality, and reduces energy use by eliminating several trips through the field. On the downside, leaving large quantities of residue in the field can depress early-season plant emergence and development. The new Twin Diamond planter solves the challenge of managing high crop residues by clearing an eight- to 10-inch path through the waste to plant twin rows of corn spaced eight inches apart with the paired rows spaced 30 or 36 inches apart. "We wanted to be able to use a conventional header to harvest," Gene Carstens explains. The planter clears the seeding zone, allowing for better root development and water penetration while incorporating some organic matter deeper into the soil profile, and allowing better fertilizer placement. One of the weaknesses of the no-till system is that the surface application of nutrients keeps root development in the top two to three inches, he says. Placing the nutrients below the germinating plant encourages deeper root development, plus it requires 30 percent less nitrogen and 25 percent to 40 percent less phosphate. The system can be adapted to use liquid or dry formulations, as well as anhydrous ammonia.

There's much more to the Carstens' vision than just a new planter design. The Carstens advocate a systems approach that combines precise plant and fertilizer placement in the strip-till system with optimal plant populations and proper variety selection. "The majority of people are going in the wrong direction on plant population in my opinion," Gene Carstens says of the dominant trend toward higher plant populations. "It takes so much water and so much fertility to maintain that." To maintain yields with a lower plant population, he recommends using a flex-hybrid. Under lower plant population and good growing conditions, the indeterminate flex-hybrids will set and fill a second ear, which will continue to grow larger as long as conditions are right. Using a common yield estimation system, multiplying a 23,000-plant population (with two cobs on each plant) with 1,200 kernels per cob and dividing that by 90,000 kernels per bushels suggests that a 300-bushel crop is possible. "That's unheard of," Gene Carstens admits, but he acknowledges that farmers working with this systems approach are seeing a 50- to 60-bushel-per-acre improvement in yields on both dryland and irrigated fields. "Plants have to be spaced correctly," he says. "We've learned that it does make a difference."

Producing bigger yields with less water and fertilizer while improving environmental performance is increasingly important, not only for the bottom line but in the public eye. "We need a balance between food demand and ethanol demand," Gene Carstens says. "We'll be dead if we can't do this."