Our organic mentors

According to Craig Chase from the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University, you can net $1 million a year from 80 acres of certified organic land. Yet to many organic producers, money is not the goal. The light is the way of life, the experience of labor to produce good food, being good to the earth, and having an occupation you feel good about when work doesn’t feel like work…..it’s living a good life.

On our journey to learn and begin to practice organic agriculture, we have been lucky enough to team up with the Frantzen family as our mentors. The Frantzen’s farm 385 acres of row crop and small grains for forage as well as pasture graze a cow and calf herd and raise outdoor hogs. Their system is fully sustainable, utilizing the fertilizer from the animals to spread on the land to grow bountiful crops to then feed their animals, and the cycle continues. They make their profits by selling hogs and calves through a price contract with Organic Prairie, as well as selling any extra organic soybeans, corn, or small grains they do not need to feed their animals.

This year as mentees, it is necessary that we visit their farm every month to see the changes with our own eyes. We are learning about their 4-7 crop rotation method, raising organic livestock, the labor needs to weed and feed their crops, and their lifestyle and economics as organic producers.

We are very blessed to have one organic producer nearby. We are not near any large metropolitan areas where organic products are cherished, but we do see a slight upward movement in 30,000 population towns such as Mason City, where consumers are becoming more and more aware of what their food contains, how it is grown and an increase in organic produce consumption. I like to use the verbiage micro vs. macro, micro representing the small farmers who produce little but high quality food, macro representing the large farmers who produce a lot of food but need a lot of inputs to control weeds and pests. What they grow goes toward a larger scale of production for bagged and boxed foods and over processed meats, and there is still a desire for these products, but a shift in weight is happening.

To many in denial, the U.S is moving toward the micro food system and it’s coming toward a small town near you!

I will provide updates on my blog each month from each Frantzen visit so you can see the changes for yourself. The April’s visit entailed a farm tour, what they have planted or are going to plant on each field as part of their rotation, manure management, an explanation of their farm equipment, and their livestock care and management.

April 2012

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Finished hogs in open air hoop buildings

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Weaned piglets in an open air hoop building. They harvest corn on the ear, shuck it on site and keep their cobs for an excellent bedding alternative.

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A Temple Grandin designed livestock separating shoot for a more humane experience when hogs are loaded onto a truck for transport.

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Machinery row. Flame weeders, row cultivators, crushers, hay elevators, grain drills and more!

Cover crop field day

I recently attended a field day based on Iowa State Research farms data on cover crops for Northeast Iowa. I am very interested in integrating cover crops into our row crop operation for many reasons, but the most important in my mind is that cover crops help make the soil healthier by increasing the organic matter. Conventional farming is slowly stripping away vital micronutrients, compacting the soils so it cannot breathe and disturbing the amount of organic matter that lay in the soil.

As one cover crop practicing farmer put it, “Cover crops are a no brainer. It is something that every responsible farmer should add to their management system as a task to do in the fall and spring”.

Cover crops are not a money maker, but they will help yields and the health of the soil in the long run. This fact does not usually sit well with most capitalist farmers, but if they want their land to produce for many generations to come, it is something that we all will need to do.

Organic farmers have to have cover crops. They don’t have the option of using herbicides, fungicides, pesticides, UAN, anhydrous ammonia, and other spray on or granular fertilizers. They require the naturally occurring necessities of worms, roots from the cover crops, manure, nutrients from the cover crops, a good 4-7 crop rotation, weeding, and the sun and the rain for a successful crop year.

In our area, small grains such as oats, cereal eye and wheat are good options. They are cold tolerant and are the easiest to fit in a corn/soybean rotation. In a soybean field in late August, oats or rye can be overseeded by aerial seeding or by a tractor and a broadcast spreader. Another option is to drill wheat or rye after the harvest of corn and soybeans.

The return on investment could be huge, but difficult to determine. Cover crops decrease erosion by 50%, increases the soil structure and organic matter, creates a slow release of Nitrogen over the years, and with these long-term improvements, can get a farmer its 300 bushel/ acre corn yield. Now that’s something a capitalist farmer will want to hear!

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Winter rye on corn

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Winter rye on soybeans