There’s no fast-forward button in farming to see how your investments pay off. But a recent time lapse playback by Iowa farmer Reid Weiland visually told the year-by-year story of how investing in a field yielded environmental and financial rewards.
“Things happen slow,” he says. “It’s the nature of farming one year to the next, and so it can take a decade for our story to develop.”
In the example above and video below, Weiland and his team identified low yielding areas and addressed fertility; they rebuilt and completed the main waterway in the field and added a second where needed; and they cleared an old building site. Piece by piece, season by season, their investments came to fruition.
Weiland Farms grows millet, corn and non-GMO, food-grade soybeans. Reid Weiland is managing partner/CEO and has been for the past 10 years since his father semi-retired.
The Case To Develop A Field Pedigree
With his leadership, Weiland and the team have developed an approach to manage their farmland (owned and leased) for environmental, productivity, and long-term financial payback. He says the need for this approach escalates as farm land has increased in market value.
“Think about where we’re spending $10,000 to $15,000 an acre today, and you don’t typically know what the fertility is,” he says. “You don’t know what the production history of it is. You don’t know any conservation or regenerative pieces that have gone through it. And we’re spending a million bucks for a tract, and we know very little about it.”
This highlights the opportunity of investing in regenerative practices that build up the land’s quality and performance but also emphasizes the risk of not doing so.
“Imagine because of macro economics, farmland doubled. It’s $30,000 an acre. Well, now we’re spending $2 million. How much more valuable is it to have what I would call a pedigree — a production pedigree, a regenerative pedigree?”
Weiland says such a land pedigree would have 10 years of cropping history with documentation of inputs applied by date and quantity.
“That could easily be worth $1,000 an acre for a $30,000 an acre farm, right?” he says.
| Boost Land Value and Stewardship |
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Weiland Farms has made it a mindset to consider how they are investing back in their land with a two-prong goal: minimize environmental impact while boosting its value. Here are four goals the Iowa farm is focused on:
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What Makes Farmland Different
From an investment management standpoint, Weiland says agriculture has fallen into a decades-long malaise with a culture that doesn’t encourage regularly informed management. Said another way, farmland is a unique asset because it doesn’t depreciate or require hands-on management from the owner if an operator is in place.
“If you were to correlate a farmland investment to an investment in an apartment building, they are similar but very different. An apartment building needs to be managed almost daily, the roof may need to be replaced, etc.,” he says. “Just like an apartment building, farmland is a solid asset base that you’re generating a return on. But you may have a landowner who hasn’t talked to a tenant in a couple of years. Who owns something worth a million dollars and doesn’t receive a regular report on it from the person managing it? It sounds ridiculous but some landowners can get lulled into complacency without realizing it.”
Physical Investments
Weiland says the approach is a combination of agronomic practices and physical improvements. A current tool they are using is controlled drainage structures.
“It’s estimated that 20% to 50% of water leaving the farm is leaving the farm unnecessarily; that means we are shipping 20% to 50% more water down the Mississippi River than we really need to,” he says. “In addition, these systems help us get in the field and plant when we need to. So, we are holding water, which we know contains nitrates, when we can and still are able to manage the soil moisture for field work.”
Weiland Farms’ first controlled drainage structure was installed this past year, and there are more installations in the works.
“It’ll take us multiple years to learn about this management tool and how it pays back, but we see the benefits already,” he says.
With multiple metrics, progress is tracked as it’s realized.
—Kristin Leigh Lore, Manager of Climate-Smart Content, Trust In Food, contributed reporting to this story.
