What’s that stuff in soil that’s supposed to provide humans a sense of wellbeing? You know, like a protozoa-based version of Prozac? Emmalyn Kayser is trying to come up with the name on a recent March afternoon as she and Chris Burkhouse squat in a high tunnel and busily weeded spinach seeded the previous fall. It’s 40 degrees outside and snow is piled up on this vegetable farm in Wisconsin’s Saint Croix River Valley, but thanks to the wonders of the greenhouse effect, it’s hovering around 80 degrees above the spinach beds; moisture drips from the hoop house’s plastic, making for a muggy, July-like environment.

“Actinomycetes!” Kayser, who studied soil science in college, says excitedly. She explains that these are a type of bacteria that give freshly turned soil that intoxicating “earthy” smell. Kayser, 32, goes on to hypothesize that it’s the aromatic earth that’s making it possible for Burkhouse to enjoy what many people see as drudgery: weeding.

The 53-year-old Burkhouse responds that, for whatever reason, she in fact does like weeding, especially when she can focus on such a simple task and not have to worry about the other headaches of running a farm: marketing, bookkeeping, employee management. This is the first growing season in decades that she is not working the soil of Foxtail Farm as a co-owner.

“It’s freeing, in a way,” says Burkhouse. “It’s like I get the best of all worlds. I get to be here, I get to help be a part of things and be a part of decision making on the side. But I’m not responsible for everything. I’ve been responsible for enough years.”

In December, Kayser and her husband, Cody Fitzpatrick, officially took ownership of Foxtail Farm, a thriving Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) operation that over three decades has built up an extensive infrastructure and membership base. The story of this farm transition centers around several factors, including clear communication and good planning, with a large dollop of serendipity tossed in. But one of the reasons Foxtail’s former owners were able to pull off this passing of the torch was that by mentoring dozens of farmers over the decades, they had set themselves up to have the right folks on hand when it was time for a change. Just as importantly, the new owners who walked through that door actually had enough experience under their belts that a farm with extensive infrastructure in place was not as intimidating as it could have been for a typical beginning farmer. And one of the things that’s easing the handoff is that Burkhouse is staying on as an employee and adviser for the time being, providing a linkage between the farm’s past and its future.

“We’re getting a jump-start with all of Chris’s experience in a way that we can exercise trial and error in new ways,” says Fitzpatrick. “I think there’s going to be a lot of ‘Hey Chris, what about this?’ situations that we wouldn’t have at our disposal if this was a strict buyer-seller relationship where the former owners go elsewhere.”

Bucket Farming

Chris and Paul Burkhouse started a version of Foxtail in 1989, just across the Saint Croix River in Minnesota. In those years, they sold vegetables from a self-service roadside stand where people dropped money into a Kemps ice cream bucket. They eventually adopted the CSA model and began growing their membership. In 2004, Foxtail was moved to a 62-acre patch of ground near the Wisconsin community of Osceola. The Burkhouses increased their CSA membership to around 320 and establishing four high tunnels, an extensive root cellar storage system, packing facilities, and a commercial kitchen. When cover crops were included, they had over 18 acres under cultivation.

In 2013, Foxtail switched from a traditional CSA model to providing “winter shares.” That involved growing year-round utilizing the four high tunnels, and then storing and preserving the fruits of their labor, making deliveries to members from October through April, with an additional spring share. Chris says the winter model evened out the workload for them and their employees and gave members access to local, fresh vegetables at a time when that kind of food can be hard to find.

Throughout the years, one of the things that Paul and Chris emphasized was that they didn’t want their farm to just raise vegetables — they also wanted it to produce new farmers. They’ve had an estimated 70-80 employees over the years, including several graduates of the Land Stewardship Project’s Farm Beginnings course. Around two-dozen former employees stayed on the operation for a second or third year and, through an incubator arrangement, used Foxtail land and infrastructure to start their own enterprises while working part-time for the Burkhouses. Many of those second/third-year apprentices have since launched their own farms.

The Burkhouses took farmer training seriously, with Paul leading short courses and discussions on everything from the basics of the internal combustion engine to soil management. They did weekly walk-arounds assessing each vegetable plot — what needed to be done and why. They included staff in all aspects of the farm business, not only growing and harvesting produce, but also infrastructure management, marketing, and financing.

Part of the training involved making it clear that farming was not an easy career path. Chris and Paul would write down all the expenses involved, and ask questions like, “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Our approach was to inform folks as much as possible about what they’re getting into,” says Chris. “There’s going to be surprises, but you don’t want the surprises to be overwhelming.”

Northern Exposure

By the time Kayser and Fitzpatrick came to work at Foxtail in 2018, they had experienced their share of farming surprises while raising vegetables in Alaska for 10 years. On the plus side, they had learned that when you raise vegetables in a somewhat remote place with such a short growing season, the local demand is significant. However, anytime you need something as simple as a screw, it can be a three-hour drive to obtain it.

They both grew up in Minneapolis and met in kindergarten. Kayser majored in agronomy and soil science in college, and Fitzpatrick studied music. She was passionate about food and the natural world, making raising vegetables in the interior of Alaska a perfect fit. They enjoyed the experience and learned a lot about using high tunnels and other structures to extend the season. However, Kayser and Fitzpatrick eventually decided they wanted to raise food closer to their home roots. Through the Good Food Jobs website the young couple learned that Foxtail, which is less than an hour’s drive from the Twin Cities, had openings.

The Transition

Kayser and Fitzpatrick concede that when they started at Foxtail in September 2018, they thought it would simply be one more way to gain farming experience while living closer to their families in Minnesota. The Burkhouses, for their part, had always known they would eventually need to think about what would happen to the farm after they retired. They have a conservation easement on the land through the Landmark Conservancy, and felt they owed it to their members, who had been very loyal over the years, to keep it a CSA operation. But talk of transitioning the farm was expedited in the winter of 2018-2019 when Paul made it clear he didn’t want to farm anymore, and his and Chris’s marriage ended.

Fortunately, they had already worked with Kayser and Fitzpatrick enough to know they might be a good fit for taking over the farm. Not only had they survived an extensive interview and application process (see sidebar), but they were competent utilizing season extension methods, got along well with the CSA members, and had ideas for how to expand the farm’s enterprise offerings. Plus, they were young, but not so young that the idea of a farm with lots of infrastructure completely intimidated them.

Ironically, an operation with as much infrastructure as Foxtail’s can be its own worst enemy when it comes to being attractive to a new generation of farmer. For one thing, it’s going to be more expensive to purchase equipment, buildings, and other aspects of a well-established operation. In addition, it may have infrastructure and enterprises that a new farmer doesn’t need.

In the case of Kayser and Fitzpatrick, they had farmed with little infrastructure while in Alaska, and were ready to step into something more established.

“When Cody and I were weighing the pros and cons of this property, it was a benefit that it had all this infrastructure because we were already starting at 10, instead of really having to start from zero and build up to 10,” says Kayser. Or, as Fitzpatrick puts it succinctly, “We want to grow food for people now.”

During 2019, the older and younger farmers began drawing up detailed plans for the transition and meeting formally as much as possible — something that can be difficult when you work together informally every day. Chris and Paul split the farm 50-50 and Kayser and Fitzpatrick obtained a beginning farmer loan through the USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA). Obtaining beginning farmer loans through FSA can be a lengthy process, but they benefited from the fact that they were applying for the loan during the fall, not the winter, when many people are seeking operating loans and the offices are extra busy. The younger farmers also had the advantage that Paul and Chris were able to provide years of financial data showing their CSA model was viable. That’s important, given that FSA offices are more accustomed to loaning money out for conventional crop and livestock operations.

“We had a track record that we were able to document and put forward that this can be done on this property, has been done on this property. It’s generated this income over this many years. And so, with this plan, that’s transferable,” says Chris.

Kayser and Fitzpatrick say that getting numbers from Foxtail on everything from input costs to its average electricity bill also helped them present a solid business plan to the FSA.

When drawing up a purchase agreement, the two couples went through and identified what equipment and other infrastructure was needed on the farm for it to continue as a CSA for Kayser and Fitzpatrick, and therefore what should be included in the overall farm purchase. Chris and Paul held an equipment auction to pay off an operating loan they had, and through the auction the new farm owners purchased any equipment they felt they needed.

In December 2019, Kayser and Fitzpatrick closed the deal on the FSA loan and became the new owners of Foxtail Farm.

On-Farm Mentor

But perhaps the most invaluable piece of “infrastructure” that came with the farm purchase is in human form. Chris has agreed to stay on as a salaried employee and adviser for at least a year. The arrangement is made easier by the fact that the farm has three separate housing units.

The new owners of Foxtail feel this part of the arrangement has been invaluable. Kayser says she and Fitzpatrick’s background in growing during the “shoulder seasons,” combined with Chris’s knowledge of what works best in local conditions, makes them a bit of a “power team.” They have been able to trade information both on the fly while doing field work, as well as in more formal sit-down meetings.

“I can just say, ‘Hey, I’m thinking this.’ And Chris will say, ‘That sounds cool, but this is what you should maybe think about too,’ ” says Kayser.

Maintaining a connection with Chris has also helped in transitioning the relationship between the new Foxtail owners and the farm’s CSA members, many of whom have been associated with the farm for years. Through a letter from Chris and Paul, members were informed of the transition; the response was overwhelmingly positive.

“And I think they were looking forward to seeing what else is going to happen, what’s new?” says Chris.

As it happens, changes are coming. The farm’s business model is being slightly modified from a full-on winter CSA to a more fall/early winter and early spring system. Kayser and Fitzpatrick would also like to look into utilizing the farm for agritourism and educational ventures related to health, wellness, and food. Chris likes that the new owners are thinking outside the box.

“We always thought, ‘There’s a lot of opportunity and potential for a number of different enterprises on this farm,’ ” she says.

It remains to be seen what will happen next year. For her part, Chris feels this period in-between where she is able to work on the farm as a non-owner has been a “win-win” — she’s been able to keep her hands in the soil and practice the basics of food production, which is why she got into farming in the first place. She’s also been able to transition into a new life as someone who, after 31 years, no longer has a business interest in a vegetable enterprise.

Back in the high tunnel on that March day, Kayser jokes that if one of her ideas for the farm — converting to complete no-till — comes to fruition, there will be less exposed ground to expose Chris to all that feel-good soil life. Chris doesn’t seem worried. Exposed soil biome or no, there will be plenty of opportunities to feel good about where the farm is at, and where it’s headed.

“Our lives’ blood, sweat, and tears, both Paul and I’s, are definitely all over this farm,” she says. “And so, I feel especially rooted to this place, and knowing it’s in good hands makes me feel good, and makes me feel like this is the perfect move.

The economic benefits of building soil health are a balancing act between immediate payoff and delayed gratification. In an ideal situation, the source of those quick profits will set the foundation for a longer-term investment that pays dividends.

For example, Dawn and Grant Breitkreutz recently showed a chart full of financial information during a Land Stewardship Project Soil Builders’ Network workshop in the southeastern Minnesota community of Preston. The top of the chart showed the immediate return they got by adding wheat to their corn-soybean rotation. The wheat itself was pretty much a breakeven proposition for their farm, which is in southwestern Minnesota’s Redwood County. But by having a crop in the rotation that is harvested in August, the Breitkreutzes were able to get a multi-species cover crop mix planted early enough that it was well established by fall. That provided excellent grazing for their beef cow herd in November and December. Once the cost of seeding the cover crop was subtracted and the feed value of the grazing was added in (plus money made from selling wheat straw), the farmers estimated their net gain was $87 per acre. Not a bad short term-gain on investment.

“But this is the part about paying it forward that’s hard to consider if you’re just starting into this—that’s the gains that follow,” said Grant.

“It makes farming fun again,” says Dawn.

 

The lower part of the chart tallied “delayed gains/savings” for the following crop year. When they went to plant corn on that same land the following spring, the Breitkreutzes were able to reduce the amount of fertilizer and herbicide they used as a result of the increased soil health benefits grazing cover crops produced a few months before. In addition, they were able to plant hybrids that lacked the expensive “stacked” traits normally needed to fend off pests and disease. Grant and Dawn feel their soil biology is so high that their pest cycles have been broken. The result: the “delayed” savings was $103 per acre.

“So, after wheat, we can show a $190 an acre net gain, after costs,” said Grant. “That’s really hard to explain to a banker, because they just look at January 1 to January 1. It’s not about bushels, it’s about net dollars per acre. That’s key, that really changed our thought process.”

It’s also hard to quantify economically benefits such as the Breitkreutzes’ ability to get in the field under wet conditions when their neighbors’ field equipment is stuck up to the hubs. Or being able to produce a profitable crop and good forage even in a drought year. That’s because they have been able to, in some cases, quadruple organic matter levels over the years, which has greatly increased their soil’s ability to soak up and store water.

Part of the reason farmers like the Breitkreutzes have a hard time explaining their way of making money via a typical profit and loss statement is because the resource that is at the core of their enterprise has a lot of complex, hard-to-understand components.

“The number one resource concern you should be looking at is fixing the soil biology,” said Grant as he flashed another slide showing a neighbor’s crop field swamped with water and full of wheel ruts, despite the fact it had been tiled. “You can fix these things, biologically.”

Doubling Down
The Breitkreutzes admit that soil was not their number one resource concern when they started looking at ways to significantly change the way they farmed back in the early 2000s. Their main goal was to provide enough forage—both grazed and harvested as hay—for their beef cattle. It seemed like their pastures were constantly overgrazed and prone to drought, making them more reliant on stored forages, which can be expensive to produce or buy. They were working harder than ever, and their financial situation and quality of life were suffering. Dawn said they even considered quitting farming. “I didn’t want to go work in town,” she said.

In around 2003, the Breitkreutzes began utilizing managed rotational grazing in a serious way, rotating their cattle to allow the grazing paddocks to recover while spreading manure and urine evenly across the soil. They started with one 47-acre pasture that they broke up into nine paddocks utilizing cost share funds from the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. In the past, this was a pasture that never seemed to be able to grow grass taller than six inches. Through rotational grazing, they were able to double the number of grazing days they got off that pasture, and then double it again, all the while controlling weeds like bull thistles.

The couple modified the system and now utilize mob grazing, which crowds more cattle into paddocks for shorter periods of time before they are moved — often at least once a day. Such a system can leave behind as much as half the forage present in the paddock, which allows it to recover while building soil health.

Dawn showed a slide of a pasture that at one time could only handle 16 to 18 cow-calf pairs during a grazing season.

“Through managed grazing and putting water in strategic places, we now run 55 cows for 180 days on this pasture, and we eliminated fertilizer and herbicide,” she said.

Another crop field on their farm long gave them headaches: it had light soils, which made it prone to drought, and it was full of rocks, creating tillage problems.

“We would collect insurance on it three out of five years,” said Dawn. “We couldn’t get anything to grow on it.”

The soybeans they grew there had cyst nematode problems, so they planted it to alfalfa for hay production to break up the pest cycle. Four years into the alfalfa planting, grasses started coming up, so they decided to stop haying it and grazed it. Dawn showed a slide of the 21-acre field: a variety of grasses and forbs were thriving. “It’s one of our most productive fields on our farm now,” she said.

As the soil has revived, so has the diversity of their grazing areas—one pasture went from three species of grasses to over two dozen-plus. The farmers did not seed those extra species—they say it comes from creating the right environment for a variety of plants to thrive by carefully balancing periods of disturbance and rest. And that diversity pays off in the form of pastures that are more resilient and productive for a longer period throughout the year.

Lessons Applied to Row Crops
Dawn makes it clear that she is no fan of row-cropping. It’s hard on people, equipment, and the land; she’d like to see the whole farm planted to grass. Grant concedes that row-cropping is still a major part of their farm’s enterprise mix because of peer pressure, even though he’s not a fan of the toll it takes on the land either.

“Our current model of farming—it took me awhile to get brave enough to say this, but I say it all the time now—it tells us to kill everything,” he said.

But both farmers feel they have been able to make row-cropping a better fit for their farm economically, agronomically, and environmentally by borrowing ideas from their rotational grazing enterprise—namely, relying on diversity above and below ground 365-days-a-year. That’s why they’ve integrated multi-species cover crop mixes into their no-till corn and soybean system. They utilize mixes of legumes, small grains, and brassicas that include as many as nine different species in a planting; they’ve also experimented with a 12-way mix. Grant said rather than competing with each other, getting the right mix of cover crops seems to create a mutually beneficial soil environment. For one thing, the Breitkreutzes like the variety of root depths they get with various cover crop species. Different depths provide different services for the soil.

“Some can harvest nutrients, some can take care of compaction, some are for erosion control,” said Grant as he showed a photo of a pit that had been dug on their farm. It displayed how several years of cover cropping had enriched a spot where road work had left a gravelly substrate a dozen years before. The farmers encouraged workshop participants to follow the principles of soil health: armor the soil, minimize soil disturbance, utilize a diversity of plants, keep living plants and roots on the land all year-round, and, when possible, integrate livestock.

“We graze every acre we farm, every single year,” said Grant. “There’s something in that cow’s gut as far as biology that helps kick that soil biology in gear.”

As the financial charts they shared during the workshop indicated, using soil health as a pivot point for integrating crops, livestock, and grass is paying off economically. And it’s also given the couple more control over a way of making a living that’s often buffeted by the vagaries of weather, markets, and input prices. That pays dividends in another important way.

“It makes farming fun again,” said Dawn.

It’s called the “windshield effect” — a harsh but effective way to gauge insect populations. The more dead bugs smashed on the front end of your F-150, the more live ones buzzing around in surrounding fields. Scientists, and anyone who drives for that matter, are noticing much cleaner windshields these days. That’s because, says entomologist and South Dakota farmer Jonathan Lundgren, we are experiencing what some call the “insect apocalypse.” The journal Science reported in April that about a quarter of the world’s terrestrial insects have perished in the past three decades. The study found that the Midwest had some of the most dramatic declines, with 4% of its bug population being lost annually.

It’s become clear that chemical-intensive, monocultural agriculture is playing a major role in the decline of insects. The lack of habitat and foraging areas, coupled with insecticides that indiscriminately kill the good bugs along with the bad, is having a devastating impact. But during a series of Land Stewardship Project Soil Builders’ workshops in southeastern Minnesota, Lundgren cautioned against seeing profitable farming as inherently the enemy of insects.

“This isn’t a bee problem, it’s a biodiversity problem,” he said. “Agriculture can be part of the solution.”

In fact, it’s to farmers’ benefit to create agricultural systems that benefit bugs. Some insects can be major pests, but the majority are beneficial. Besides providing pollinator services, insects play critical roles in the workings of the ecosystem, doing everything from forging links in food chains to helping with decomposition and recycling. For example, according to the science writer Brooke Jarvis, dung beetles save U.S. ranchers $380 million annually by helping break down manure.

“For every species of pest, there are 1,700 species of insects we can’t live without,” said Lundgren.

The entomologist, who was a scientist with the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service for 11 years and has an extensive background in researching ecologically-based pest and farm management systems, says the loss of insects is not a farming problem per se. Rather it’s how that farming is carried out. Relying on industrialized systems that leave no room for biodiversity is a disaster not only for bugs, but for humans, he argues.

Lundgren has the proof to back up this contention. In 2016, he started Blue Dasher Farm in eastern South Dakota as a place where he and his team can study regenerative farming practices that promote biodiversity while boosting farmers’ bottom lines. The working farm raises livestock and crops, as well as keeps bees. Through Blue Dasher and the Ecdysis Foundation, Lundgren and his team are looking at ways biodiversity-based farming systems can be scaled up and adapted on a wider basis.

One Blue Dasher project found that farms raising corn without insecticides and using regenerative methods such as multi-species cover cropping, no-till, and integration of livestock via rotational grazing were nearly twice as profitable as their conventional counterparts, even though they yielded as much as 29% less grain. According to the study, which was published in February 2018 in PeerJ—the Journal of Life and Environmental Sciences, these regenerative farms had many more quantities and varieties of insects when compared to their conventional counterparts. As it happens, bio-inventories showed the conventional cornfields had 10 times more insect pests than their regenerative counterparts — an indication that insecticides and lack of diversity are wiping out the beneficial insects that keep the harmful ones under control.

The regenerative farmers were more profitable because they didn’t pay for insecticides and expensive genetically engineered “stacked” seed varieties. And because the biologically rich soil on these farms was generating more of its own fertility, the producers spent less on purchased fertilizers as well. The connection to soil health is key — Lundgren said there was a striking correlation between higher organic matter levels and increased profitability.

“Why on earth do we gives prizes to the farmer who can grow the highest yield in the county? It’s about the profits, right? Organic matter levels are what we need to be giving prizes for, not yields.”

On April 27, meat giant Tyson Foods took out a full-page advertisement in major newspapers that carried an alarming message. “The food supply is breaking,” it said. The ad went on: “We have a responsibility to feed our country…Our plants must remain operational so that we can supply food to our families in America.”

Tyson was arguing that packing plants were “essential” and had to remain open during the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, two days after the ad ran, President Trump signed an order declaring meatpacking plants “essential infrastructure” and requiring them to remain open. Safety experts said the order would prevent health officials from closing plants they determined were pandemic vectors and could also undermine efforts to, for example, put more distance between workers — something meat companies have long resisted. Throughout the pandemic, Big Meat has argued that instituting such safety measures would threaten to starve Americans of protein.

But we were never in danger of running out of meat. It turns out that when that ad ran, there was plenty in storage. An even bigger indicator that Tyson’s Chicken Little proclamation was baseless is that a lot of meat was going overseas earlier this year. In fact, according to the food chain analyst Panjiva and the USDA, in April, Tyson and Smithfield exported 1,289 tons and 9,170 tons of pork, respectively, to China. USDA says overall U.S. pork exports to mainland China in April reached the highest monthly total since the agency began tracking this information two decades ago.

So much for supplying “food to our families in America.” Another myth being circulated by Big Meat is that worker safety is its top priority. According to the Food and Environment Reporting Network, as of Sept. 22, nearly 500 meatpacking plants had confirmed cases of COVID-19 — 42,708 meat workers have tested positive, with 204 dying from the virus.

In July, the HEAL Food Alliance (the Land Stewardship Project is a member-organization of HEAL) and other members of a nationwide coalition filed a civil rights complaint alleging Tyson and JBS have engaged in racial discrimination in the way they have handled COVID-19. The CDC reports that nearly 90% of infected meatpacking workers are people of color.

Corporations that receive federal assistance are required to comply with civil rights laws. The USDA awarded Tyson $275 million from 2019 to 2020 and JBS USA and its subsidiary Pilgrim’s Pride $193 million during the same period. But when JBS and Tyson plants became hotspots for COVID-19, the companies declined to adopt CDC recommendations for keeping workers at least six-feet-apart. Earlier this month, the U.S. Labor Department cited Smithfield Foods and JBS for failing to protect employees from COVID-19. It’s good to know that regulators are paying attention, but given that the government proposed fining Smithfield a paltry $13,494 and JBS $15,615 for the violations, these aren’t exactly the kinds of sanctions that will change behavior. It’s clear that more enforcement of packing plant safety procedures is needed, as well as reforms such as the slowing of line speeds.

What is also needed is public investment in a different model of processing. As mega-packing operations have taken over, local “locker” plants have diminished. These are the independent plants that serve farmers who are direct-marketing to consumers, restaurants, and co-ops.

For the small plants that remain, farmers are reporting waiting times to get animals processed stretching to a year or more. A recent survey of farmers conducted by the Minnesota Department of Agriculture and numerous groups, including LSP, found lack of small-scale processing capacity is hamstringing the local food movement. This is especially frustrating considering that almost 65% of the 111 survey respondents said demand for their product had gone up since the pandemic hit. Over half said they would raise more livestock if more processing was available. More animals integrated into cropping operations is key to creating a widespread sustainable farming system.

As a result of work on the part of the Land Stewardship Project and our allies, the state Legislature recently provided $100,000 for smaller Minnesota meat and poultry processors to expand their capacity. That’s a start, but more is needed, including regulation reform that makes it easier for small processors to upgrade and ship across state lines. Other creative ideas include community-owned meat processing.

Tyson and its Big Meat colleagues are right — the food supply is broken. What they won’t admit is that fixing it requires departing from a system based on putting employees, local farmers, communities, and other “essentials” at risk simply to plump up corporate profits.

To Tom Cotter, the various natural resources his farming operation relies on don’t operate in a vacuum. Rather, they have a relational quality — the role one resource plays in keeping his business viable depends on how it interacts with other resources. For example, rain falling out of the sky is, in itself, a welcome natural phenomenon. But that can change once it hits the ground. Biologically rich soil with plenty of good aggregate structure soaks up that water and stores it for plants to use while growing. But if that soil is too compacted to absorb that moisture, rainfall becomes a source of frustration, or worse, a menace. Cotter, who farms low-lying land near the Cedar River in southern Minnesota, puts it in monetary terms.

“Rich water falls from the sky. Poor water can’t infiltrate, and it makes the soil poorer and your pocketbook poorer,” he says.

The role “poor water” is playing in leaching profits from fields is a lot on the minds of farmers these days, as climate change produces storms of unprecedented capacity across the landscape. It seems just about every community in the Midwest broke rainfall records in 2019, and a lot of that water pooled up and simply ran off into rivers and streams. Minnesota alone saw its wettest year on record. The Mississippi River was at flood stage deep into the summer. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reports that the volume of water leaving states like Minnesota and flowing downriver through Rock Island, Ill., smashed all previous records. In fact, in Rock Island, the last decade saw three times the number of days over flood stage compared to any decade in the previous 130 years, according to the Corps (see chart below).

A recent study by the First Street Foundation found nearly twice as many properties in the U. S. may be more susceptible to flood damage than government experts had previously thought. Interactive maps developed by researchers show many rural Midwestern counties are much more likely to experience devastating 100-year floods these days. In fact, traditional flooding maps often don’t take into account problems caused by intensive rainstorms, which have become increasingly common as the climate changes.

All that water is washing agrichemicals off farm fields at an unprecedented rate. Monitoring of crop plots at the Olmsted County Soil and Water Conservation District’s Soil Health Farm in southeastern Minnesota shows that as precipitation amounts increased 42 percent from 2017 to 2019, groundwater nitrate concentrations jumped 44 percent. Last fall, scientists recorded an oxygen depleted “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico that was over 6,900 square miles in size, the eighth largest area mapped since 1985. Nitrates and other nutrients escaping farm fields and making their way to the Gulf via the Mississippi are a major cause of the dead zone. Excessive water flow contaminated with chemicals is creating problems closer to home, as well.

Nitrate contamination of drinking water supplies is a growing issue in both private and public systems. According to data from the Minnesota Department of Health analyzed by the Environmental Working Group between 1995 and 2018, tests detected elevated levels of nitrates in the tap water supplies of 115 Minnesota community water systems. In that period, nitrate levels rose in almost two-thirds of those systems. Those water systems serve more than 218,000 Minnesotans, mostly in farming areas in the southeastern, southwestern and central parts of the state.

And all that water is wreaking havoc before it even leaves the farm. A record number of acres in the Corn Belt were never planted — called “prevent plant” — to corn or soybeans in 2019 due to muddy fields. The previous prevent plantings record was set in 2011 at a little less than 10 million acres. In 2019, prevent planting acreage was more than double that. In terms of corn, South Dakota led the country in the amount that wasn’t planted at 2.9 million acres, followed by Illinois and Minnesota at more than 1 million acres each. Stuck equipment was spotted in fields across the Midwest well into the summer, exacerbating soil compaction issues even more.

“Just up the road from me, a sprayer was stuck so badly that an excavator had to come and retrieve it,” says southeastern Minnesota crop farmer Martin Larsen. “And the excavator sank to the cab, so a second excavator and a winch dozer had to come out. You hear about those things happening in peat bogs, but not in the ag fields of Olmsted County. In years like that, it’s not just me that’s questioning whether we can keep farming the way we’ve been farming.”

Managing a Liquid Asset

He’s right. Judging by the turnout at soil health workshops the past few years, an increasing number of farmers are questioning whether production systems that leave the soil uncovered and absent living roots for two-thirds of the year makes sense under this new climate reality. Over two days in late January, a pair of Land Stewardship Project soil health workshops attracted a total of over 200 participants from southeastern Minnesota and northeastern Iowa. The farmers who gathered were there to learn about the economic benefits of building soil health — reduced need for inputs, increased livestock carrying capacity, for example — but also how they could use a solid natural resource to manage a liquid one.

At an LSP Soil Builders’ workshop in Elgin, organizer Doug Nopar noted that in 2019 this particular part of southeastern Minnesota had shattered previous precipitation records by over 10 inches, a situation that’s created a lot of hardship for farmers.

“The bright spot has been farmers getting together and building the knowledge base and skill base to manage these difficulties,” he said.

At the core of this bright spot is the fact that building organic matter in soil using cover crops and managed rotational grazing of perennial pastures not only increases the land’s financial resiliency, but it also has a direct impact on how well it can manage runoff and store moisture. Increasing organic matter levels by 1% can help the top six inches of soil store an extra 20,000 gallons of water per acre, according to one estimate by the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. Some soil scientists have questioned that figure, saying it can vary based on soil type, for example. But the fact remains: More soil organic matter equals better aggregate structure and thus increased water infiltration and less erosion and runoff.

At the Elgin workshop, Grant and Dawn Breitkreutz described how during the past two decades they have used multi-species cover cropping, no-till, and managed rotational grazing of beef cattle to increase organic matter levels on their fields and pastures, which are a mix of low-lying land and hilly acres along the Minnesota River in southwestern Minnesota’s Redwood County. As a result, their water infiltration capacity has doubled in some cases, and the creeks running through their farm have flat bottoms with gentle, vegetated banks.

“Our soils have room to hold air, water, nutrients,” said Grant. “Our neighbors’ soils are tight and compacted — every tillage pass makes it worse.”

The Breitkreutzes say perhaps the most striking aspect of how they’ve positively impacted their water cycle is that five different springs have emerged on their hillsides. The farmers feel that by retaining water on the high spots of their operation, the moisture is slowly making its way through the soil profile and percolating out in hillside springs. Before, it would run overland quickly, pooling up in low spots at the bottom of the hill, creating boggy areas that were difficult to even graze.

“Now those swamps and bogs that we never were able to graze are pretty regularly productive pastures,” said Grant. “And the neat thing is where these springs are appearing on hillsides, there’s all these different species of forbs and grasses.”

As a result, they’ve quadrupled the livestock carrying capacity on their home farm while slashing input costs.

By increasing organic matter levels in their crop fields, the Breitkreutzes have been able to plant, as well as harvest, their corn and soybean crops on a consistent basis during the past four years “without sinking a combine.”

Grant says 40% of the crop ground in their area wasn’t planted in 2019. And of the acres that were planted, farmers struggled with mud, even on ground that has been artificially drained.

“Our neighbors, you could lay tile lines in the ruts they leave,” he said.

Downstream Thinking

Despite positive changes made to the water cycle on the Breitkreutz farm, there are harsh reminders that we are all downstream from someone else. On July 3, 2018, a 10-inch rainfall in the Redwood Falls area sent water racing from area fields through the Breitkreutzes’ land. During the Elgin workshop, the farmers showed a slide revealing the ugly results: an eroded gully several feet deep slashing through their property.

“You wonder why people downstream from us in agriculture are a little upset? I’m sure that all ended up in Lake Pepin in the Mississippi River,” said Grant.

That’s one reason that during workshops and field days, farmers like the Breitkreutzes are increasingly emphasizing the importance of networking with other producers and working together to get more soil building practices established on a wider swath of the landscape. After all, climate change and the volumes of water it’s producing does not respect property lines.

“This is one of the key benefits,” Dawn said while flashing a slide of a clean, slow-running creek that flows through their farm. “We want to have clean water. We want the people down in Louisiana not to be angry with us anymore.”