Cover Story
Not all farmers are wilting as they age.
Agriculture, Sustainability, Education
Soil health drives management of crops and livestock.
It’s a far too hot and steamy July morning to be standing out in a barley field, but that doesn’t deter Darwin Kells’ agronomy customers from attending his annual crop tour. They know the grizzled, sixty-year-old Elfros, Saskatchewan farmer and agronomist will always have something new and interesting to show them. It doesn’t hurt that he’s a natural showman and his presentation brings life to the driest technical material.
Most Canadians retire at age 62 but Kells won’t be one of them. He loves farming and working as an independent agronomist. Since he’s in good health; has no children waiting in the wings to take over; and has the support of his partner Elma Fischer, he feels no urgency to retire.
“I strongly believe that I have work to do yet to make the land better,” Kells says. “It’s challenging to push the limiting factors to move yields to the next level. I’ve also developed strong relations with my customers. This pushes me to seek out things that I think they may not have been exposed to and bring them forward. It keeps us from becoming stagnant or myopic.”
Canada and the United States are aging rapidly. Partially this is because we’re living longer, but it’s mainly due to having fewer children. American women now have 1.77 children in their lifetime while Canadian women have 1.5; the replacement birthrate is 2.1. There are now more people 65 and over in Canada than 15 and under.
Regenerative farmers are learning that healthy soil is a gift that just keeps on giving. Lower input costs, increased water infiltration, less soil erosion and cheaper livestock feed top those benefits—and now the nation’s leading supplier of Angus bulls has found that improving soil health also improves animal health.
Little is left to chance at Jorgensen Land and Cattle in Ideal, South Dakota. Partners Bryan, Greg, Cody and Nick Jorgensen know the real value their soil health-oriented system of no-till, cover cropping and crop rotation provides because they’ve measured it. They also know the nearly 4,000 bulls they sell or lease are healthier in that system because they’ve measured that as well.
“Most of our bulls are leased, and as they come back to us in the fall we either put them in the feedlot or out to graze, primarily on winter wheat fields planted to cover crops,” explains Nick. “In 2019, we compared the semen test results for 24-month old bulls in both situations and found the cull rate was 4% lower for those grazing covers. There were 1,356 bulls involved, so in a whole herd scenario we’d cull 56 fewer bulls and have that many more available for our market.”
Cody explains that the major reason bulls are culled is because of injury. “We’ve noticed that they’re less competitive—they fight less—when grazing the covers and there’s also fewer foot and leg problems.”
Lower feed cost. The Jorgensens also have the numbers on how their soil health-based system reduces feeding costs. In 2017, two studies were conducted that compared bulls in the feedlot to those grazing a combination of multi-species cover crops along with lesser amounts of alfalfa, winter wheat and native grass.
Wagyu aren’t your average range cow. Why settle for average? Jeanie Alderson and Terry Punt are convinced they may actually be the ideal range breed. Not that they knew that when they brought their first 21 Wagyu cows home to Birney, Mont., in 2005.
They opted for Wagyu when Jeanie’s family allowed them to run their own bunch of cows as part of their wages. Instead of simply adding to the 250-head Hereford-Angus herd and following the status quo, their research took them in another direction.
“We were frustrated we lost control of the calves we produced. We knew we raised a nice product, but there was never any feedback, no connection to who ate our beef,” Terry says.
To forge that connection and wrest control from the traditional commodity market, they opted to produce grass-fed beef marketed direct to consumers.
“There are more cattle than people in Montana. There’s a lot of beef available. If we were going to be successful, we needed something different,” he says.
They settled on the then little known Wagyu breed and opted to be one of the first and still few producers of grass-fed Wagyu.
Agriculture
Goats clear the path for better forage, soils and ranching opportunities.
Agriculture
Renewable markets are driving a gas boom.
Sustainability
Take a boost from renewable energy projects.
Specialty/Niche
Northern Minnesota farmers turn to producing snow in the winter.
Agriculture, Specialty/Niche, Sustainability
The island of Trinidad glows with color: brightly painted houses, a robin’s-egg sky, and a thousand shades of green in the fields and forests that are crammed with plant life exploding into lush growth. That energy also pervades the island’s young farmers, an almost explosive entrepreneurial spirit.
I was in Trinidad—the easternmost island in the Caribbean, just seven miles off the coast of Venezuela—as an officer of the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists, participating in a workshop for fellow reporters. I stayed a couple of extra days to visit some farms, and left with a deep admiration for the passion driving Trinidad’s young farmers.
Daryl Knutt raises goats, cattle, forage, and a wide range of local fruits and vegetables on 10 acres in southern Trinidad. He’s putting his two master’s degrees in agriculture and sustainability to work as he carves a diversified, integrated operation from what was a thicket of head-high bullgrass. He and his peers are also grappling with world-class bureaucracy, warding off thieves, and struggling to access capital.
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Specialty/Niche
Commitment to quality pays dividends when the world’s upended.
The Furrow was first established by John Deere Company in 1895 as “A Journal for the American Farmer”. The goal of the magazine remains the same - to tell stories that people enjoy reading and provide them with knowledge that they can apply in their operations.
