When Kim and Steve Andersen moved to their farm near Brighton, Iowa, in 2006, they had no intention of farming the land themselves. The land has been in Kim’s family for generations and had been rented out in recent years. The couple knew that transforming it into a profitable farm would be a challenge, and when they couldn’t find anyone who shared their vision of creating a fully organic operation, they decided to do it themselves.
“When we took the farm back, it was just hard, dead dirt,” Kim Andersen recalls.
They helped rescue the dirt by extending crop rotations with small grains. Research and field data show that adding a third crop to the rotation improves soil structure, increases organic matter and helps prevent erosion. Because it keeps the soil covered year-round.
“We grow rye, alfalfa and oats,” she says. “A lot of conventional farms in Iowa are corn on beans or even just corn on corn.” Andersen was determined to chart a different course by adding small grains to the mix.
Adding a rotation of small grains (oats, wheat, rye, barley, or triticale) improves soil structure, increases organic matter and helps prevent erosion. Practical Farmers of Iowa provides financial rewards to farmers for growing a small grain to extend typical corn/soybean rotations. The programs supplement your income to make up for the lower market value of these crops.
“There are groups like Practical Farmers of Iowa that try to get people to grow that third crop, which just does such wonderful things for the soil,” Andersen says. “It’s a longer-term reward and a longer-term system, but you have all these other benefits. You can get another cover crop on early, and it spreads out the workload.”
The Andersen’s now operate a fully organic row-crop farm, an orchard and the only certified organic blueberry farm in Iowa. Having successfully improved the health of the soil, Andersen struggles to understand why some farmers continue to resist adding a small-grain crop to their rotation.
“It makes so much sense, I don’t know why you wouldn’t do it,” she says. “If you’ve seen the changes it can have on your soil, you’d be very interested in doing it.”
Like many farmers who have begun extending rotations with a third, small-grain crop, Andersen believes it’s important to improve the soil for the next generation.
“Being on a century farm, and knowing people in my family had worked on this land, comes with a huge sense of responsibility for me,” says Anderson, who is a two-time cancer survivor. “The legacy I want to leave is that, like my grandma, I wasn’t afraid to do something different.”
Learning By Doing: Find out how cover crops, cost share practices can add value to your farm.
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