Brian Ryberg is not afraid to say he does things a little differently. The Buffalo Lake, Minn. farmer owns Ryberg Farms with his wife, Sandy. And together, they view and do things differently.
“Some might think we’re the odd ball, and others like what we’re doing, and that’s okay,” says Brian.
Brian’s father Howard says his son has always been conservation-minded.
“I think it’s a good idea,” says Howard. “We need to do less tillage.”
That mindset on a farm which produces corn, soybeans and sugar beets has evolved over the last decade. And it didn’t happen without some realization.
“We were just working the heck out of our ground, multiple times in the fall, spending a lot on labor, tractor hours and fuel,” says Brian.
It wasn’t until he noticed something different about corn growing in what was pastureland the year before. The corn was noticeably taller and greener. And that’s when Brian took note of the difference compared to the crop on tilled soil.
Knowing jumping to no-till would be a big leap, he tried strip-till first.
“Right out of the gate, I had people stopping on the yard, friends of mine, that would say,
‘what are you doing? This is never going to work in this country.’”
Since then, Brian has been told he’s one the first growers in Minnesota to strip till sugar beets.
Today, you won’t see a disk ripper, field cultivator or chisel plow in his shop either. 100% of the farm is either strip-tilled or no-tilled in an area where very little has traditionally been done.
“We took a thermometer gun and went out to check the temperatures of our soils in the strips, checked the neighbor’s ground and we were always as warm or warmer than they were,” he adds.
It’s saving the soil and inputs. Brian says fuel consumption per acre has dropped from 7 gallons per acre to four.
“We cut our hours in half,” adds Brian. “We cut our manpower in half and we cut our investments in half.”
Brian believes one reason the majority of the soils in his area are conventionally tilled is because soils here are a heavy, clam loam. The perception is the soil is too cold and wet to successfully grow cover crops or leave a lot of residue on the soil surface without hurting yield, a theory he has debunked.
“It just seems like the less tillage we do, we’re finding out the soybeans respond to that really well for yield.”
Over the last decade, he’s implemented cover crops on 70% of the operation.
“We are not losing our topsoil and you can’t rebuild topsoil very fast,” says Brian.
In the middle of a venture that is constantly teaching lessons, he is still learning.
“If we can continue to feed that soil through cover crops and whatnot and continue to feed that biology, maybe that accumulates for and continues to grow for the next generation to take advantage of,” he adds.
Living in the ‘Land of 10,000 lakes’ Brian tests the soil every three to four years, uses and has installed mandatory buffer strips of at least 16.5 feet on all public waterways. With above average rainfall the last 3 years, he sees the importance of adequate drainage and that continues to be a focus.
“We’ve noticed cleaner water running into our drainage ditches,” says Brian. “We are not taking soil with it, back to the erosion thing. It helps for weed control because we have a mat of residue out there.”
While Brian may do things a little differently, he’s proud of the progress made to conserve the land and the continuous changes to make it even better.
Congratulations to Brian Ryberg and his family, a regional American Soybean Association Conservation Legacy Award Winner. Jason, along with other regional winners, will be honored with the American Soybean Association’s regional Conservation Legacy Award.
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