Producer Features

Gene Gibbs has a smile on his face when he walks through his pastures on the GB Ranch in south-central Iowa, just outside the small town of Promise City.

An aerial-applied wheat and red clover cover crop is helping to suppress weeds, reduce soil erosion, and provide other environmental benefits on 200 acres of certified organic cropland that helps feed a 150-head certified organic dairy operation in Van Buren County near Milton.

The California dairy silage sector has increased its acreage the most dramatically under conservation tillage, says Jeff Mitchell, a cropping systems specialist at the University of California – Davis.

Farmers are making the most of their ag equipment and some have reduced the types of equipment they own. Those are the trends Jan Altendorf is seeing in her North Dakota business, Altendorf Harvesting.

His farm, like most in east-central Minnesota, was carved out of the forest in the late 1940s. Much of the acreage has never been plowed due to too many rocks.

Brothers Isaac, Abe and Luke Lemmenes and their father Roy employ a wealth of skills to custom harvest some 10,000 acres of hay and 4,500 acres of corn every year.