Southern Minnesota farm applies engineering mindset with economic sensibility to improve new technology adoption decisions. ---------- Ideal weather—aside from a six-inch October snow—helped deliver record yields and more improved data during 2020 for southern Minnesota farmer Todd Golly. We caught up with Golly on November 5th as he and his brother Tim were piloting their two Case IH combines across their last field of 2020. “We had best-ever yields in corn and soybeans, with cornfields ranging from 240 to 260 bushels per acre and soybeans exceeding 60 bushels.” Aside from losing about five harvest days and some subsequent higher grain moisture due to the early blizzard, fall harvest weather was warm and cooperative. On top of that, the market came through with higher...

The Berger Doyle family farm launch cover crop research to showcase values for soybean and rice farmers. Unlike cover crop growth in more receptive Midwest soils, northeast Arkansas farmers Brad Doyle and Joyce Berger Doyle face a challenge to find species that can thrive in their clayey hardpan soils better suited for rice and ducks. Given their agronomy, soil and plant breeding research backgrounds, the Doyles understand the need for more cover crop research in their watershed area and how to conduct accurate tests.

Despite Covid-19 and hot weather, an impressive turnout — more than 150 farmers and other soil-loving attendees — gathered at the Hora family farm in southeast Iowa to experience hands-on soil health demos, cover crop experiments, and creative cropping systems. Continuum Ag founder and soil health consultant Mitchell Hora (shown above in middle of photo, wearing a red polo shirt) showcased the farm’s numerous creative uses of cover crops, relay crops, 60-inch corn, and interseeding demos of cov

“It’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.” This famous weekly lead-in to the news from a fictional rural Minnesota town on the Prairie Home Companion radio show has felt strangely true as Todd Golly recaps his summer on the family farm. “As farmers, we’re used to working alone or with family and a few employees, but this year is unlike any other. The summer has seemed slow—no company sales reps or research techs coming by; no equipment companies bringing new technology to test; almost no grain hauling as ethanol plants are closed or barely open; no kids activities; no summer farm shows or county fairs.” Golly says it’s just not the same when personal visits are replaced by more computer screen time with email and Zoom meetings. “Yet the waterhemp are still hanging around,” he chuckles.

Farmer entrepreneurs are seeing solid business growth as they launch cover crop support businesses in Iowa. While it’s not Silicon Valley, some farmers are doubling their business annually, which provides great diversity to commodity-driven farm businesses. As cover crop acres ramped up in Iowa from 100,000 in 2011 to almost 1 million in 2019, so have the businesses that serve these farmers — from custom applicators and seed sellers to full-service cover crop companies and soil health businesse

Their tech journey began with early yield monitors, which took yield from a basic field level to a map showing unexplained variability within fields. “Once we understood this granularity, it led to changes in soil sampling as we tried to figure out whether variability was caused by soil or topography or other things,” he says. The next phase was early autosteer—basically a straight line—to simply try to get more hours out of equipment. “We were able to plant and do tillage through lunch breaks,

It’s no secret that farmers love regulations about as much as a root canal. Especially when rules seem outdated and lack common sense, or sound science.

Ask Iowa cattleman and farmer Bill Couser about how his conservation journey began. He humbly and proudly mentions the values instilled in him by his conservationist father, Dick Couser. "He got us going down the right path — wanting to do conservation right, or not at all," he says."Then, there was this gentleman, Elmer Paul, who owned the small cattle farm I purchased some 50 years ago. He was an environmentalist, always hosting and teaching Iowa State University (ISU) st

In the rolling hills of east-central Iowa in Cedar County, family farmers Ken Fawcett and his nephew Kent Stuart have long used conservation practices that keep the soil at home and healthy. However, it was their desire to improve water quality that led them to the recent installation of a saturated buffer. These innovators have always sought the best conservation methods for their farm, which was established in 1851 near West Branch. Gully erosion next to a freshwater spring led to a grade st

Brassica carinata, or Ethiopian mustard, derived from the interspecific cross between B. nigra (black mustard) and B. oleracae (wild cabbage), is a non-food oilseed crop that is currently being grown in the U.S. Southeast as a low-input, sustainably certified winter crop. Research is ongoing in the Northern Plains with plans to develop carinata as a spring rotational crop, especially adaptable for semi-arid regions. Carinata offers benefits over other brassica species in terms of seed size, frost and drought tolerance, disease resistance, higher yields, and less seed shattering at maturity and during harvest. It is high in oil content (>40%) with a favorable fatty acid profile that converts easily into aviation biofuel for jets and biodiesel. Once oil is removed, the seed meal is high in protein (43–46%), currently approved for beef cattle rations, with ongoing research to certify the meal for use in poultry, swine, and aquaculture. Carinata is currently being grown in a closed-loop, sustainably-grown contract system between farmers and Agrisoma, and it doesn’t disrupt normal summer cash crops. To date, carinata has been commercially contracted...