Building soil health may be about bugs, bacteria, and biology, but justifying farming practices that nurture such a natural process often comes down to a human-generated gauge of success: how much money does it put (or keep) in the bank? On a sunny day in late June, Martin Larsen addresses that question while standing in a 20-acre field planted to oats near the southeastern Minnesota community of Byron. He is hosting an online field day on no-till small grains that’s being sponsored by the Land Stewardship Project and Practical Farmers of Iowa, and one couldn’t have picked a better example of how to add diversity to a corn-soybean rotation. The thigh-high oats are thriving, and Larsen is clearly pleased as he shares aerial drone footage showing acre-after-acre of verdant growth. Over the years, he’s been seeking a viable third crop to diversify his row crop rotation. Larsen has raised a few acres of oats here and there in the past, and the success he’s having this year with this and other fields planted to the crop on a larger scale excites him. These are food-grade oats, meaning there is a good market for the grain. In addition, there is a market for the straw as an erosion-controlling ground cover on construction sites.

Another bonus is that the oats are serving as a nurse crop to a seeding of clover, which will fix nitrogen, further build soil, and serve as a source of forage for livestock.

As his young son, Rudy, plays in the background, Larsen describes the economic benefits of this planting: reduced input costs, multiple markets for the crop, disruption of weed and pest cycles.

“But also remember that the oat crop will give other value,” he adds, going on to make the case for future financials. “Of course, there’s the soil health benefit.”

Over time, small grain rotations diversify the soil biome with their dense root structure, building the kind of organic matter that reduces the need for purchased fertilizer. Indeed, research and on-farm experience is increasingly showing that when small grains like oats or rye are rotated into a row crop system, corn and soybean yields increase.

“So when we look at the financials of oats, look ahead and look at the whole systems approach,” Larsen says. The farmer also encourages the online audience to consider another benefit of building soil health with a rotation that gets more roots in the ground more months of the year. Toward the end of his presentation, he flashes a slide showing how much nitrate-nitrogen was discharged from tile drainage outlets in the area thus far in the 2020 growing season. Nitrogen is a key corn fertilizer, and keeping it from escaping fields and making its way into ground and surface water is a major challenge in places like southeastern Minnesota.

The chart shows that the corn and soybean ground that’s had cover crops integrated into it is consistently producing nitrate-nitrogen runoff well below 10 parts per million, the Environmental Protection Agency’s safe drinking water standard. But a line in the graphic tracking nitrogen loss in a cornfield that’s not had the benefits of cover crops or a small grains rotation rises higher and higher as the growing season progresses, finally peaking at around 12 or 13 parts per million in early June.

“That cover crop was really able to hold that nitrate concentration down,” Larsen says. “This is just a slide about other things I’m passionate about, and reasons I’m doing this.”

As he hints at, Martin Larsen is passionate about a lot of things: agronomy, conservation, geology, hydrology, farming, and, perhaps most interesting of them all, cave exploration; Larsen spends up to 500 hours a year crawling around in Minnesota’s underground wilderness.

But as this recent field day makes clear, the place where all these passions converge is rooted in the soil itself. As a result, during the past few years Larsen has become a point of connection himself. Through his various explorations below and above ground, he’s helping farmers and non-farmers see the positive role agriculture can play in creating a healthier landscape that is economically and ecologically more resilient.

Beneath the Roots

“The science connected to water, and then it connected to farming, and then it connected to caving,” says Larsen of why he got involved with caving around seven years ago. Not coincidentally, it was at about that time he started using no-till and cover cropping techniques on the 700 acres of land he farms.

As Larsen explains these linkages, he’s scrambling around in the dark of southeastern Minnesota’s Spring Valley Caverns, a five-mile-plus labyrinth of claustrophobic passages and crawl spaces, rooms with vaulted ceilings, and pits that drop to dark depths. He trains his headlamp at water dripping from a cave ceiling and explains that just a few days ago this moisture may have been precipitation that had fallen onto a hayfield 45 vertical feet from this spot. It’s a striking reminder of just how dynamic the Swiss cheese-like limestone karst geology that dominates this region is.

Spend any time with the fifth-generation farmer, especially in a cavern, and it becomes clear that caving isn’t just a hobby — it’s a thrilling way to make direct connections between land use on the surface and water quality below. He describes being in caverns so shallow that the rumble of a county road could be heard overhead; other times he has rappelled into pits that have their true depth obscured by water pooled at the bottom. Larsen likes to show a photo at presentations of a well pipe emerging from a cave ceiling—a graphic indication of the intimate connection between the land’s surface and our aquifers. In the age of Google Earth, exploring unmapped regions is increasingly less of an option. But Larsen has found a way to push into the unknown very close to home.

“The thrill of caving is to find an unexplored new passage. When you are the person that is first entering that passage, your light is the very first light, and your eyes are the very first eyes to ever see that passage,” Larsen says excitedly as he makes his way through the narrow passageways of Spring Valley Caverns like some sort of subterranean rock climber. “You’re exposing yourself to a certain level of risk, doing things that we as humans aren’t really meant to do. It’s really an eye opener to a part of Minnesota that truly very few of us have seen.”

Sometimes what one sees and experiences isn’t always pleasant, or safe.

Larsen and other cavers in southeastern Minnesota and northeastern Iowa have had to fight their way through mountains of foam created by liquid manure and other organic pollutants. They have experienced cave floors that resembled, as Larsen calls them, “satanic slip and slides” because of all the eroded, muddy soil covering them.

He has also taken samples of cave drips that show nitrate levels well above drinking water standards. That’s a concern, given that in southeastern Minnesota, the majority of drinking water is drawn from what’s flowing through these caverns and the rest of the karst geology that makes up this hollow land. And climate change has altered the volume and timing of water moving through the system. Larsen and his caving companions have had a few close calls where massive storms filled caverns to the ceiling soon after they had emerged from underground.

Like any adventurer, Larsen has a high tolerance for discomfort, like the time he was rappelling down a pit that had never been explored and ended up in a place where “bodies aren’t supposed to be.” After being stopped by water, he started to ascend, and ended up getting stuck in a crevice.

“It took me one inch at a time to get up and out of that crevice, for over an hour,” recalls Larsen. “There’s nothing normal about it.”

In a way, Larsen says, caving isn’t unlike researching and implementing farming techniques that create economic and environmental resiliency on the surface. There are rewards, as well as risks, involved with regenerative agriculture.

On Larsen’s own farm, cover cropping and no-till have helped build his soil’s health, reducing erosion while breaking up weed and pest cycles, and thus reducing his reliance on chemicals. Water is infiltrating the soil better, an important consideration at a time when climate change is inundating fields with extreme rainfall events.

Larsen’s day jobs on the surface world put him in a position to have a positive impact on the quality and quantity of water making its way through the karst in torrents and trickles. Besides being a farmer, Larsen is a feedlot technician for the Olmsted County Soil and Water Conservation District. He is also a member of the Land Stewardship Project’s Soil Builders’ Network, which is bringing hundreds of farmers from around the region together around building healthier soil in a financially viable way.

Farmers, scientists, environmentalists, and soil health experts say Larsen’s ability to combine his firsthand observations and practical experience with the latest research is a significant resource, and a model that should be replicated throughout the state.

“Every county should have two or three of him,” says Jeff Green, a Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) groundwater hydrologist who works with Larsen. “I don’t know how you describe Martin — a hydraulic Renaissance Man? I’m not quite sure. He does caving, which is exploration, learning more. But he’s also taking that information and getting people to make changes with it.”

Dark Business

Larsen got interested in caving partly as a result of dye tracing work he was doing with Green. This kind of research consists of dropping fluorescent dyes into sinkholes or “blind valleys”—areas where perennial streams drop out of sight and continue their journey underground—to determine groundwater movement. Green and other hydrologists have used this technique to gather extensive data on karst groundwater, creating, for example, one of the most extensive springshed maps in the country. But from the time that dye enters the ground to the time it exits in a spring or well — sometimes hours, days, months, or even a year later — there is a mysterious period where a lot is unknown about its movements.

Larsen feels caving can help him fill in some missing puzzle pieces when it comes to the movement of water. He and other cavers in the area have worked with hydrologists at the DNR and the University of Minnesota to help track water movement. They have also worked with Larry Edwards, an internationally known geochemist who has done cutting edge work on using water-formed cave formations to gauge changes in the climate over the millennia.

Larsen has a business degree from Winona State University and admits to not paying much attention in geology class. But he has a natural scientific curiosity and a drive to learn more about the relationship between the natural environment and farming, as well as other land uses. There are times when his thrill-seeking, ability to put up with physical discomfort, and scientific curiosity intersect, like the time he and some companions spent 16 hours in Tyson Creek Cave crawling on their stomachs through water in a passageway that was never more that 24 inches high. After two-thirds of a mile, they came to a spot where the water was flowing in two directions.

“This is the first time to my knowledge that we have ever discovered this in the state of Minnesota, where we actually encountered a place in a cave where you physically can look at the water choosing two different paths, and likely, two different springsheds,” says Larsen.

A Messenger to the Surface World

When it comes to karst and groundwater quality, Larsen, and others, have some bad news. As more land has been converted from perennial systems like hay and pasture to annual row crops like corn and soybeans, nitrate levels in groundwater have gone up. The Environmental Working Group has released an analysis of public records showing that one in eight Minnesotans are drinking nitrate-tainted tap water. Hastings, Minn., had to spend $5 million on a reverse osmosis system that can take nitrates out of the water, and other communities have had to abandon wells that were polluted by fertilizer runoff.

Not only is a crop like corn reliant on nitrogen fertilizer, but annual row crops like corn and soybeans only cover the land around a third of the year, leaving bare soil vulnerable to leaking nutrients and other contaminants into groundwater. Couple that with a changing climate that is producing extreme rainfalls more often, and it’s a recipe for disaster.

“That’s showing up in more than one location—that we’re getting an increase in volume of water and concentration of pollutants,” says Larsen. “So it’s pumping the room full of gas, and now with climate change, you’re igniting it.”

Research at the Olmsted County Soil and Water Conservation District Soil Health Farm shows that as precipitation amounts increased 42 percent from 2017 to 2019, nitrate concentrations in the water beneath the root zone of the crops growing in the plots increased 44 percent.

To top it off, water can infiltrate karst rock in some surprising ways, making its way through pores too small to see with the naked eye. In Spring Valley Caverns, Larsen shines his headlamp on the ceiling of a low, narrow passage. The rock appears to be an impenetrable mass, but it’s weeping water like a rung-out sponge.

Larsen says what troubles him the most is that widely accepted “best managed practices,” also known as BMPS, don’t seem to be addressing the problem adequately.

“We know now that even with the right rate, the right amount, and the right timing, we’re not getting water that’s drinkable below our row crops,” he says of BMPs such as highly calibrated applications of fertilizer and precision planting. “And as a farmer, that really speaks to me. We need to do something better than status quo.”

The good news is Larsen is part of a growing group of farmers in the region who are going beyond the status quo and building the soil’s ability to hang on to nitrates and other nutrients before they make it into cracks, crevices, joints, and eventually, our aquifers. One soil building method that is showing particular promise is integrating covers crops like small grains and brassicas into corn and soybean systems. Studies across the country show that cover cropping not only dramatically reduces erosion and surface runoff, but builds the soil’s ability to better manage water and nutrients by increasing organic matter. Having living roots in the soil year-round is a key to creating fields that are more resilient, particularly under extreme weather conditions.

Larsen is certainly proving that on the land he farms. He’s also excited about research he and others recently conducted at the Olmsted County Soil Health Farm showing the positive impacts of cover cropping. Plots grown without cover crops had nitrate concentrations in the water escaping the root zone of 13.14 parts per million. Cover cropping reduced those levels to 8.84 parts per million.

The DNR’s Green says it’s key that people like Larsen can offer farmers a comprehensive look at ways they can protect groundwater. Sinkholes may be the most evident, and dramatic, threat to aquifers in karst country. Manure, pesticides, bacteria, and even pharmaceuticals can make their way through these gaping holes, especially during intense rain events.

But day-in and day-out, the biggest threat to karst groundwater is nitrate runoff from farm fields. And it often takes a more indirect, hard-to-control route—down through the soil profile. In fact, groundwater research at Big Spring in northeastern Iowa shows that the vast majority of the nitrate contamination is coming from water carrying it through the soil column and into the bedrock.

When Ron Pagel was growing up on his family’s farm near Eyota in southeastern Minnesota, he was always mindful of the threat direct runoff posed to water in the area. There was a spring that was some 300 feet away from an area near the barn where they wintered cattle. Not only did runoff from the feedlot threaten to make it into the spring, but also a stream that runs through the farm and eventually empties into the Root River.

“It was no secret where heavy rains were going from that feedlot,” says Pagel. Today, the farmer — he has a small dairy and a cow-calf beef herd, along with 434 acres of crops — has a manure storage unit in place to not only keep that waste out of the water, but to create a situation where he can collect the manure and use it as a source of soil-building fertility. Pagel credits Larsen for helping him through the process.

As a feedlot technician, Larsen helped with the engineering, as well with getting state, county, and federal cost-share funds to help with construction. That’s important, particularly when prices for commodities like milk are in the dumps.

But just as importantly, Larsen has helped farmers like Pagel control the indirect runoff that trickles down through the karst. Pagel’s family has been planting cover crops for the past half-dozen-years. Not only do the covers contribute to soil health, but they serve as a cheap source of grazing forage for his cattle.

“All my land has either hay on it or cover crops this year,” says Pagel proudly. “Especially when you look at the forecast or watch the rain gauge fill up, like it seems to a lot these days, it’s nice to know you have the land covered, soaking it up.”

Pagel and other farmers who work with Larsen say it’s key that he not only knows how water behaves beneath the surface, but also speaks the language of economics. Larsen formerly worked in agronomy sales, and knows that farmers, especially these days, are constantly having to mind their bottom line. He also knows the power of communicating clearly and in an engaging manner about the agronomic benefits of building soil health.

For example, Larsen likes to tell the story of Bear Spring, which flows out of the ground not too far from where he farms. During a 24-hour period in June 2018, 1,520 pounds of nitrogen was discharged from the spring, according to water monitoring. Larsen calculates $35 worth of nitrogen fertilizer was being flushed out of that spring per hour. Now, multiply that by the thousands of springs that are present in southeastern Minnesota alone.

“Money is coming out of that spring,” he says. “And it’s a lot because it doesn’t stop.”

All of a sudden, the $30 per-acre investment a farmer might make when planting cover crops looks pretty good.

Having someone who can communicate about the big-picture, long-term benefits of building soil health is key to expanding practices like cover cropping and managed rotational grazing in the region, says Shona Snater, who co-directs LSP’s Soil Builders’ Network. People like Larsen are a critical link in helping farmers transition from trying a new practice to actually making it a routine part of their operations. That’s especially important when a farmer enters the second or third year of a new practice, and runs into problems.

“They can come to an event and learn how to get started, but if they don’t have a support group or technical support, someone who they can turn to when problems come up, then they aren’t going to be able to maintain that practice in the long-term,” Snater says.

Larsen’s twin messages about the vulnerability of our groundwater and proactive steps we can take to protect it can resonate beyond the farming community. Deirdre Flesche once saw the farmer give a presentation on karst geology and soil health during an LSP event at Niagara Cave, a commercial cavern near Harmony, Minn. She came away alarmed and energized.

“I was shocked that he could smell manure in the caves,” says Flesche, who serves on the Lake City Environmental Commission, which advises officials in that community on issues like energy conservation.

After seeing Larsen’s presentation, Flesche began working to get the Commission to address water quality concerns as well. She feels farmers as well as non-farmers must be more aware of how quickly and dramatically their land use decisions on everything from fields to lawns can impact the groundwater.

“If we’re going to be able to protect the water supply, we need to be aware of how this water moves through the karst,” she says. “I don’t think people have a clue how vulnerable our water is.”

Larsen is working hard to provide some of those clues, and to show that he and other farmers can offer a viable alternative.

Pushing Beyond the Unknown

Part of the allure of caving is to constantly push further. What’s beyond that hole full of soil and rubble? Is that air whistling through a crack a harbinger of a huge gallery bristling with stalactites and stalagmites?

Innovative farming involves pushing for more as well. Larsen, an obsessive tinkerer, has built a planter that will allow him to better interseed cover crops in his corn before harvest, giving them a jump-start before winter. He posted pictures of the tricked-out seeder on his Facebook page and was flooded with questions and comments from other farmers who are working to find creative ways to build healthier, more resilient soil.

Whoever he’s talking to, Larsen is willing to admit that when he started changing the way he farmed, he was nervous and made (and is still making) mistakes. But his passion for groping around in the dark and seeing firsthand how land use above impacts water quality below gave him an extra incentive to get past that initial trial-and-error stage. To him, the stakes are too high to do otherwise.

“The scarring of the farming landscape really troubles me, so it’s pushed me to change the way that I farm. That’s our mentality, as humans and as farmers, to adapt, to learn the new way to do it that works better,” he says. “We can talk about what happens in the cave. We can talk about what happens in the water. But we have to get back to accountability to our farms and to our soils, and to keeping them viable.”

“You have over one million creative farmer minds out there in the country. If you tell them the environmental results that you want and give them
financial incentive to achieve them, they will find a way to deliver.” – Dave Serfling, testifying before the U.S. Senate Ag Committee, July 31, 2001

 

It was the summer of 2005, and Dave Serfling was ecstatic. The 350 acres he and his wife Diane were raising crops and livestock on in southeastern Minnesota had just enrolled in a new USDA conservation program that paid farmers for producing environmental benefits on working farmland. I had called Dave to talk about the implementation of what was then called the “Conservation Security Program,” and he informed me that a 2,000-acre crop operation in his watershed was also enrolled in CSP but didn’t qualify for as much money through the program.

Why? It turns out the program was going to reward Dave and Diane not based on how many acres of corn they raised, but on how much of a positive impact they were having on the landscape. Over the years, they had established diverse crop rotations, rotational grazing, and perennial systems like hay and pasture, and they had plans for putting in more of what today would be called “regenerative” practices. In a region where rain can send soil flying off steep hillsides and karst geology makes groundwater vulnerable to contamination, the Serflings felt this was the only way to farm. And now, for the first time, government policy, and indirectly, society itself, was recognizing that fact as well.

“This never happened in the commodity program, where I actually was paid more than the big cropping operations,” Dave told me.

But he wasn’t bragging about a financial windfall at the expense of a fellow farmer. Dave was simply expressing amazement that for once his diverse production techniques were not being penalized by policy. And CSP wasn’t prescribing how to farm. Rather, it was providing goals — cleaner water, less erosion, more wildlife habitat, for example — and then leaving it up to the farmers to creativity reach them. That’s exactly what Dave had in mind when, a few years before, he walked into a meeting of the Land Stewardship Project’s Federal Farm Policy Committee with an 11-page proposal to revamp federal farm conservation policy. His fellow farmers on the committee went over the proposal, and with the assistance of then-LSP policy director Mark Schultz, hammered out an initiative that, rather than promote the production of more monocrops, would reward results-oriented whole-farm conservation practices on working land. This was groundbreaking — federal farm conservation programs have traditionally relied on retiring acres via initiatives such as the Conservation Reserve Program and funding the establishment of piecemeal projects such as terraces that don’t always produce the results intended.

“Dave’s idea was that policy ought to reward farming practices that create public goods,” recalls Schultz, who recently retired as the executive director of LSP.

A working lands conservation program that took a whole-farm approach resonated with Tom Harkin, who was then a U.S. Senator from Iowa and chair of the Senate Ag Committee. After meeting with Serfling and other members of the LSP committee, Harkin made CSP part of the 2002 Farm Bill.

What is now called the Conservation Stewardship Program is, by farm acreage covered, the largest federal conservation program in the country — at least 70 million acres of crop, forest, pasture, and rangeland are enrolled in the program. I’ve been on dozens of CSP farms that are using an array of innovative practices to save soil, protect water, build carbon, and provide wildlife habitat.

Unfortunately, Dave never had the opportunity to see his vision fully realized. Less than a year after he signed that CSP contract, he was killed in an auto accident. He was only 46 at the time, and it’s astounding the impact he had on regenerative agriculture, policy, and his local community in such a short time.

Besides being a key player in the development of one of the most innovative farm conservation programs in history, Dave was deeply involved in on-farm research and farmer-to-farmer education. The Serfling farm was frequently featured in local and national media, and Dave himself was an eloquent and effective communicator. His presentations, essays, and fact sheets blended the farmer’s razor-sharp analysis of numbers with his own family’s experience as land stewards. Dave had a knack for expressing to non-farmers the joys of making a living on the land. “As you can probably tell, I love farming,” he wrote in one newspaper commentary that described in loving detail the life he and Diane, along with their children, Hannah and Ethan, had on those 350 acres.

Perhaps Dave was his most animated when he talked about working with livestock. He loved figuring out how to balance care of the land with profitable production of hogs, cattle, sheep, and chickens, and he saw animals as playing an integral role in creating a diverse, sustainable operation with a tight nutrient cycle.

It’s fitting that Dave is closely associated with an innovative piece of policy like CSP. Its foundation was built on the ideal that when given a chance, farming can have a positive impact on the land, people, and community. Dave Serfling lived that ideal every day.

Agricultural economist Richard Levins makes one thing clear: there is not room for all sizes of dairy farms. The math simply doesn’t work out. If one or two mega-dairies add 20,000 cows to the market, people are not going to consume all that extra milk.

“If I’m going to bring 20,000 cows into a market, 20,000 other cows gotta go, and that’s in the form of 200, 100-cow dairies,” says Levins. “We’re playing musical chairs on a fixed market.”
Indeed, in Wisconsin approximately 800 dairy farms — mostly small, family-run operations — went out of business in 2019; Minnesota lost 250 dairies that same year.

Levins, who is a professor emeritus in the department of applied economics at the University of Minnesota as well as a dairy policy adviser to National Farmers, spoke at a pair of recent Land Stewardship Project farm crisis forums: Following are a few insights Levins shared:

No Cows on Main Street

One argument for allowing dairies to expand without limits is that more cows in a community automatically equals more local economic activity. But research done by Levins and others has shown that, in fact, it’s the number of farmers that create a vibrant community. Levins had a graduate student who did an analysis of what happened to the Minnesota community of Green Isle when the number of farms serving a local creamery plummeted. Retail sales dropped by 81% in a 10-year period and Main Street businesses closed permanently.

“When we were doing a survey in Green Isle for the study, the hardware guy says, ‘You know, I haven’t had many cows come in here lately,’ ” said Levins.

The Home Depot Effect

Levins said that another prevalent myth is that massive dairy farms that have 10,000 cows or more are just the result of natural expansion — a smaller dairy wanting to get a little bit larger. But there’s a big difference between an 80-cow dairy expanding to 200 cows and a factory operation adding thousands more animals.
That’s why Levins prefers to call mega-operations “Big Box Dairies,” rather than farms. It’s to the benefit of agribusiness to be associated with the word “farm,” given the positive connotation, but it’s not accurate.

“It’s like saying the local small-town hardware store needs to become the next Home Depot,” said Levins. “That’s not possible. They both might sell a hammer, but they’re not the same thing.”

Bad Managers Created the Dairy Crisis

Levins started his career in the 1970s crunching numbers for farmers looking to improve their financial acumen. He said for years economists made the argument that as long as a farmer was a “top 10%” manager efficiency-wise, they would be successful. The problem is, as small and medium-size farmers chase efficiency through expansion, the goal posts keep getting moved — what is considered an “efficient size” just increases with no end in sight. Now, 5% of the largest farmers produce over half the milk.

Levins said the efficiency argument is “a way to make people who are struggling feel horrible. If you’re making a dairy work even a little bit, you’re an exceptional manager. But I know what a struggle that hardware store has when Home Depot comes in.”

Lions & Lambs

Because of the myth that what’s good for the Big Box Dairy is good for its smaller, family-sized counterpart, public agricultural policy is often of the one-size-fits-all variety.
“Too much policy is ‘Well, we have a lion and a lamb here, let’s give them equal amounts of feed,’ ” said Levins. “Maybe the lion and the lamb can stay in the same cage, but mostly you’re only going to get one coming out.”

That’s why Levins likes proposals that are based on a kind of “reverse volume premium” that provides an incentive to remain smaller.
“We need to figure out what we can do to treat the lion and the lamb differently.”

Publicly funded agricultural research can sometimes take decades to show clear-cut, practical results, the kind that are evident to the naked eye. But on a hot July afternoon in western Minnesota, Carmen Fernholz was able to vouch for a significant return on investment in a relatively short amount of time when it comes to breeding a more farm-friendly form of perennial grain.

“When I planted that seed the first year, I could hardly see it, it was so small,” said Fernholz. “And when I got the seed last fall and took the husk off it, it was double in size. I said, ‘That’s what they did in six or seven years?’ That tells me we’re moving quickly.”

He said this while standing in a field on the more than 350 acres he and his wife Sally farm near Madison in western Minnesota. Growing in that 15-acre field was a lush, thick stand of a variety of wheatgrass with the trademarked name “Kernza.” As the chest-high plants bent to the breeze, they bore a strong resemblance to annual wheat. In fact, intermediate wheatgrass is a perennial grass that is a genetic cousin of common wheat, and in the Fernholz field grain kernels were maturing on the ends of the stalks. Carmen explained that what sets this stand of grain apart is that it won’t have to be replanted next year. In other words, this field represents a key step in developing the world’s first commercially-viable perennial grain.

Gathered around the edges of the field were more than 70 farmers, plant breeders, natural resource agency personnel, and people involved in the food industry. It was fitting that such a wide spectrum of the farm and food system was represented on this particular day. After all, from the time University of Minnesota scientists like Dr. Don Wyse started developing this form of wheatgrass back in 2011, they made it clear that research related to it wouldn’t just focus on improving agronomic characteristics like seed size and harvestability. Through the U of M’s Forever Green Initiative, researchers have also been examining what impacts this deep-rooted plant can have on building soil health and keeping contaminants out of water, as well as how well it lends itself to being milled into flour and utilized for everything from baked goods to beer. They’ve even been studying its use as a source of livestock forage.

The U of M got its first Kernza seeds from the Land Institute in Kansas, which has been working on developing perennial grain for decades. Wyse and other researchers have spent the past eight years developing a line of the wheatgrass that is adapted to a more northern climate. The 15 acres growing on the Fernholz farm represents the first Minnesota variety of the plant. This will be the first of many U of M Kernza varieties, according to Dr. Jake Jungers, a perennial cropping systems ecologist in the university’s department of agronomy and plant genetics. Seven more varieties are in the pipeline, ready to be rolled out in the next several years. Minnesota-born Kernza is now being raised on around a dozen farms— some as far north as the Canadian border and some in the southeastern and southwestern regions of the state.

“This is the honeymoon period for Kernza research,” said Jungers as he examined the stand, which he and wheat breeder Dr. Jim Anderson said was the best they’d seen yet. They were particular impressed by the stand considering that it, along with the rest of the land the Fernholzes farm, is certified organic. “Things are happening fast and furious,” added Jungers.
Over the past five years or so, the U of M’s success in doubling seed size has increased productivity of the grain kernel. Increased size also has a practical benefit for farmers come planting time. “If you’re not used to planting light, fluffy seed, you can lose your religion quite quickly,” quipped Fernholz.

Another critical improvement is Minnesota Kernza stalks are shorter—tall, rangy wheatgrass tends to fall over and lodge when the seed size is increased. Researchers have also been working on improving the grain’s ability to separate from the hull during harvest without sticking. As was made clear during the field day, this “fast and furious” activity is not restricted to seed size and harvestability; results are emerging as to its environmental benefits as well—it can keep nitrates out of groundwater while helping soil better manage runoff in general. The fact that it is a perennial with an extensive root system also means it can build soil organic matter, which, among other things, sequesters greenhouse gases.

In addition, the food company General Mills had samples of a Kernza-based cereal on-hand at the Fernholz farm, while the Birchwood Café and Bang Brewery offered up baked goods and beer, respectively, that were produced with the perennial grain. Finally, feed trials show that it compares well to pasture grass as a source of forage for cattle.

Kernza still faces plenty of roadblocks before it is commercially feasible—yield and harvestability are just two issues scientists and farmers are struggling with. But in just a few short years, intermediate wheatgrass science has shown the sweet spot publicly funded agricultural research can fit nicely into: while providing public goods like environmental sustainability, products can be created that benefit a specific group, in this case the farmers who derive economic value from raising a soil-friendly crop.

A Public Investment

The research on Kernza is being coordinated by the Forever Green Initiative, a U of M program that is working to develop a variety of crops that can provide an alternative to annual plantings of corn and soybeans. Besides Kernza, Forever Green is working with, for example, pennycress and winter camelina, oilseeds which can be grown alongside soybeans as a kind of relay crop.

During the past several years, the Land Stewardship Project has worked with other groups to procure funding from the Minnesota Legislature for Forever Green to the tune of $1.5 million to $2 million for two-year budget cycles.

Kernza and the other plant systems being studied by Forever Green represent a slight change in attitude on the part of policymakers. By helping to fund this research, members of the Minnesota Legislature are acknowledging that the future of agriculture does not need to be completely wedded to ever-increasing corn and soybean production, and that there are advantages to borrowing from a plant’s wild side when creating a viable agricultural crop.

The experience the Fernholzes are having with Kernza offers a glimpse at how publicly-funded innovation can prime the pump for widespread innovation on the land.

A Hoof in the Door

Trials show that after year three, Kernza’s productivity drops off significantly. Carmen Fernholz likes the fact that after planting the wheatgrass, he will have at least three years of continuous living cover on a field, which will build organic matter with its deep roots and biomass, eliminating the need for tillage and other means of weed control. Because he is organic, Fernholz relies on tillage for weed control more than he likes, and a perennial grain like Kernza can help deal with that issue while producing cash flow year-after-year.
“I’ve really become sensitized to tillage,” the farmer said. “With things like Kernza, through a natural system we can suppress our weed seed banks, and then we have a much greater opportunity to eliminate this tillage we are so dependent upon now. Kernza is its own cover crop.”

Since a conventional field must be chemical-free for three years before it can be certified organic, Kernza is the perfect transition crop for farmers looking to go organic, said Fernholz.
And Kernza’s ability to be grazed makes it a multifunctional crop. Jungers laid out a scenario where a grower with cattle could plant Kernza in the fall and then graze it early the following spring—trials show that grazing in the spring typically does not reduce grain yield; in fact, it may improve stand longevity. In mid-August, the grain could be harvested and the straw baled. Later in the fall, it could be grazed again.

“So, there could potentially be four sources of revenue in one season: spring grazing, grain harvest, straw removal, and a fall grazing,” said Jungers.

That potential for utilizing livestock in such a system has Fernholz excited. He and Sally started farming in 1972 and have been certified organic since 1975. Recently, they have been working with a beginning farmer, Luke Peterson, who is interested in carrying on the land’s organic legacy. As part of that plan, Peterson wants to integrate livestock into the operation, something the Fernholzes have not done. Carmen feels Kernza could provide that entry for animals. In fact, this summer the Fernholzes and Peterson signed a contract with the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service that qualifies them for cost-share funds to put in rotational grazing infrastructure.

All of this is exciting stuff for Carmen, a longtime pioneer in organic and regenerative agriculture who has been doing joint, on-farm research with the U of M since the mid-1980s. When he was first approached by Wyse about planting a few acres of intermediate wheatgrass, the farmer agreed to it quickly—mostly, he said, because he already had a good working relationship with U of M researchers and was used to them “tossing things” at him. But it soon became evident that this research could have deeper implications, from an agronomic, environmental, and economic point of view.

“Hey, if we can produce a revenue-generating perennial grain on our farms while improving soil health, let’s do it, let’s move forward,” said Fernholz. “It’s exciting.”

With its pool table topography and coffee-colored soils, southern Minnesota’s Nicollet County perennially ranks as one of the top producers of corn and soybeans in the state, and land prices reflect it — in 2019 the average annual non-irrigated cropland rental rate in the county was $208 per acre, according to the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service. That’s $45 above the state average. It’s a great place for an established row crop farmer. But if you’re a beginner looking to step out of the mainstream commodity system, launching an operation in these parts is daunting.

“It’s pretty competitive around here,” says Dan Coffman on a fall day while taking a break from harvest work. He and his wife, Alysha, along with their four young children, live near the town of Nicollet. “We’ve got a lot of well-established farmers and with the very productive land, that makes it extra competitive. Probably a double whammy for me is being a beginning farmer. It would be one thing if an established farmer tried something that didn’t work out very good, but I just don’t have the financial stability yet to do that.”

So the 34-year-old is looking for any competitive advantage he can dig up. For example, he’s pursuing diverse enterprises, value added production, and niche markets. But at the core of all that is a strategic edge that goes even deeper, literally into the dark organic matter of southern Minnesota.

“We farm using soil health practices,” says Dan. “When we started farming, we just decided that’s how we’re going to do it, and there’s not going to be any other way.”

The Coffmans feel that building healthy soil utilizing no-till, cover cropping, and rotational grazing gives their farm a leg-up when it comes to resiliency in the face of challenges such as extreme weather. But it’s also allowed them to gain an advantage in accessing land in the first place, a critical issue for beginning farmers.

Two years ago, a landowner with a 280-acre parcel actually approached the Coffmans about renting it. Dan had been doing some no-till and strip-till crop production with his father-in-law, and the landowner liked how those systems protect the soil; he also wanted to see organic matter built up utilizing methods like cover cropping.

Dan is excited that the landlord reached out to them specifically based on what kind of farming they practice. That kind of attitude can give a beginning farmer a chance to compete for land in an area dominated by big row crop operations.

The landowner gave the Coffmans a break on the rental rate, but that’s not the only benefit that’s resulted from this lease. Dan’s relationship with the landlord led the young crop and livestock producer to take the Land Stewardship Project’s Farm Beginnings class, which, he says, gave him one more edge in the farming game: a deep background in business planning and innovative marketing skills.

Beginning Farmer Tax Break

Dan didn’t grow up on a working farm, but was introduced to soil conservation at an early age by his father, Tom, who recently retired from the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. Dan studied ag systems management at North Dakota State University and, after graduating in 2009, worked as an agronomist for co-ops in that state. In 2015, he and Alysha returned to Nicollet County, where her family farms. Dan works as a truck driver and helps his in-laws on their cropping operation. He always knew he wanted to farm fulltime, but wasn’t interested in the large-scale, input-intensive systems he worked with in North Dakota.

And when he read Dirt to Soil, the book by regenerative farming rock star Gabe Brown, the young farmer was even more convinced that building a system based on healthy soil and a diverse system that integrates crops, pasture, and livestock was the way to go ecologically and economically.

As it happens, the Coffmans’ search for rental land coincided with the launching of a new state program that eases land access for people like them. By renting to a beginning farmer, the owner of that 280-acre parcel qualified for a tax break through the Minnesota Beginning Farmer Tax Credit, which was championed by LSP for over 10 years before it was passed by the Minnesota Legislature in 2017. This law provides an incentive to sell or rent land or other agricultural assets—machinery, buildings, facilities, livestock, etc.—to a beginning farmer. In order for the landowner to qualify for the credit, the beginning farmer must enroll in a financial management program approved by the Rural Finance Authority. Dan chose Farm Beginnings as his qualifying course. The 12-month class helps participants clarify their goals and strengths, establish a strong enterprise plan, and start building their operation.

Dan liked the course’s emphasis on goal setting, financial management, and marketing via direct sales and niche products. But he also liked that the farmers who lead class sessions emphasize healthy soil and diversity in their production systems. He saw Farm Beginnings as offering ideas for not only farming in a way that was good for the soil, but making it pay. So, every few weeks during the winter of 2019-2020, Dan made the five-hour round-trip drive to Menomonie, Wis., for the class sessions.

Although Dan has an ag-related college degree and some farming experience, he felt that he needed more grounding in the financial aspects of running a business. One of the requirements of the class is to develop a business plan for a student’s potential farming enterprise, something Dan feels helped him think deeply about the reality of making farming a fulltime career. His business plan was centered around utilizing diversity and niche markets as much as possible.

Fortunately, his enrollment in Farm Beginnings led Dan to connect with a mentor who has spent decades building up an operation based on diversity and creative marketing: Carmen Fernholz. Fernholz, a pioneering organic farmer in southwestern Minnesota (see the No. 1, 2020, Land Stewardship Letter), showed Coffman that growing for specialty markets could be lucrative and practical. He also encouraged the young farmer to enroll in Farm Business Management, a statewide educational program where instructors work one-on-one with farmers to help them with the details of managing their books.

“The financial piece in farming is really important, and without it you could be stuck real fast,” says Dan.

Kernza Connection

Fernholz’s promotion of creative innovation based on diversity and good old-fashioned financial and marketing savvy struck home for Dan when he attended a field day the older farmer hosted in 2019. The event featured Fernholz’s work with Kernza, an intermediate wheatgrass that can produce grain, livestock forage, and straw for at least three years in a row without having to be replanted. Farmers like Carmen have been working with the University of Minnesota’s Forever Green initiative to propagate a line of Kernza that will do well in the Upper Midwest. At the same time, businesses such as General Mills have been working to show there is a viable consumer market for food and beverage products made from the grain.

One thing that impressed Dan when he was working in North Dakota was the amount of small grains many farmers produced. He immediately saw Kernza’s potential for making small grains a viable part of his southern Minnesota farming operation. And since it can be used as a forage, it fits with his plans to introduce livestock into the mix as well.

Within a month of attending the field day, the young farmer had planted 10 acres of Kernza with seed obtained from the U of M. On a recent October morning, he walks into his garage and opens one of the totes that holds the results of that planting. He scoops out a double handful of the small elongated grain, which is being sold to a specialty miller. In addition, Dan was able to produce dozens of large bales of forage from those acres. Coffman planted 20 more acres of Kernza this fall, and is looking forward to grazing some in the future.

Because Kernza can be grown for at least three years without replanting, this makes it an ideal crop for making the three-year transition into certified organic; the Coffmans want to eventually raise all their crops for the organic market.

“It’s not just what Kernza does for the budget on paper, but also what it does for the ecosystem,” says Dan. “There are fewer tillage passes, living roots in the soil 365-days-a-year, sinking carbon into the ground. It’s tough to put a price on those benefits.”

Diversity, Distance & Downsides

However, it’s clear there are challenges to stepping out of the monocultural mainstream. On the 450 acres the Coffmans rented in 2020, along with the Kernza, they raised heritage winter wheat, rye, oats, alfalfa, corn, and non-GMO soybeans. They like the flexibility having such diversity offers, but Dan concedes it got to be a bit much grappling with different harvest systems and schedules. Dan’s truck-driving job is fulltime, and the closest rented acres are 10 miles away; plus, he and Alysha have a new baby. “Next year, we’re going to simplify things a bit,” he says.

They have also been reminded that come harvest time, the transportation, storage, and marketing infrastructure in southern Minnesota is set up for two main crops — corn and soybeans — to the exclusion of almost everything else. For example, in 2019 they had an arrangement to sell their food-grade rye to a company just a dozen miles away. At harvest, Dan called the mill and was chagrined to learn, yes, they could take the grain, but not at their Minnesota location. He ended up driving two hours one-way to a mill in Iowa to dump his harvest.

It was yet one more reminder that when you step off the corn-soybean treadmill, there’s a price to pay. But as a beginning farmer, Dan sees accessing specialty organic markets as a critical way to make a go of it in the long term. Fortunately, he has the support of his landlords, who have provided five-year leases. Long-term rental arrangements are critical when one puts time and effort into building soil and getting certified organic.

The Coffmans are also committed to making livestock a key part of their operation, despite the logistical challenges. Cattle can add value to cover crops while building soil health, as well as make use of the few remaining odd pastures in the region that haven’t been lost to corn and soybeans. Again, this makes the young farmers oddities in a region where livestock such as hogs and dairy cattle have been taken off the land and concentrated into large CAFOs.

ImageIn 2020 the Coffmans were able to rotationally graze five cow-calf pairs on an odd-sized rented pasture that had escaped the plow. It was a challenge — it has no water or good fencing infrastructure, and is 10 miles from their home. Dan made do by retrofitting an old silage wagon as a moveable grazing-mobile. It has a 1,500-gallon water tank, along with storage for hay and extra fencing supplies.

“I don’t have to say, ‘Oh shoot, I forgot pliers, and I’m 10 miles away.’ It’s all there when I need it,” he says.

Such improvising will no doubt become familiar to the Coffmans as they figure out more ways to give their farming enterprise a competitive edge in monoculture country. Plans include adding more cattle to the herd, getting certified organic, and finding consistent markets for their production.

“In his book, I think Gabe Brown’s quote at the end says, ‘Do something,’ ” says Dan. “So, okay, it’s time.”