HELPING PEOPLE HELP THE LAND:
How the Natural Resources Conservation Service works with farmers
BRUSH AND WOODY PLANTS CONTROL:
Learning ways to address the unwanted additions in pastures
The cattle market starting to demand more stock from farmers
By Christopher Braunschweig Central Iowa Ag Mag
Farming is not a straight forward profession. The day-to-day chores ensure some level of monotony, and farmers might have some idea how their crops will turn out come harvest, but it is truly a job full of unpredictable factors. Challenges are plentiful, and sooner or later they might have to turn to someone else for help.
Which may explain why the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) lives by a straight forward motto: Helping people help the land.
When NRCS sees a problem, they work with landowners to fix it. Help can be as simple as providing general advice or as complex as working with NRCS’s engineering staff to survey a site and then design a structure that can fix the problem. Financial programs can also be utilized when appropriate.
In Jasper County, NRCS shares office space with representatives from the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship (IDALS) and the local Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD). So if there is a program or service that is a better fit to a specific farmer’s needs, they’re close by to respond.
Aaron Sande, a district conservationist for NRCS, said in addition to finding solutions to soil erosion — which is the main issue his department encounters on a regular basis — the agency also works with farmers on improving water quality and increasing wildlife habitat through conservation efforts. Financial assistance toward land conservation projects is
another service NRCS can provide farmers. Some programs provide funding for total acres.
Other farmers have issues that go beyond a dollar-amountper-acre solution. For instance, Sande said if a farmer has a horrible gully cutting through their field, then NRCS may work with that individual to reshape the eroded area, make a smooth grass waterway, seed it down and install some sort of structure.
“So (in that example) when it exits the field it’s not then becoming a problem for the neighbor. We offer cost share for those, but generally they’re about 50 percent of the cost — so we pay half, they pay half,” Sande said. “Some of them pay a little bit more, but at least they’re generally that 50 percent margin.”
Jasper County SWCD and NRCS have similar environmental goals. NRCS works alongside the district by administering some of their pro -
grams, and Sande attends every meeting and works as a point man with the district to spread awareness of their programs and increase participation in programs.
Working with Iowa farmers, Sande said, is important in conserving natural habitat and wildlife. Farmers need quality top soil for quality crops. By implementing conservation efforts to preserve their land, they can effectively reduce the negative impacts on the environment.
“Extensive cultivation and rain events and wind events — that top soil just keeps on shrinking,” Sande said. “We need to do our best to hold on to what we have so that 100 years down the road we can still keep growing crops … Some areas of the Middle East were incredibly fertile. Now, they’re dominated by desert.”
Stripping land of its nutrients proved devastating to that region’s fertility. Iowa certainly
does not want to move in that direction.
More than three-quarters of the state was once covered in prairie. Nowadays, nearly all of the natural prairie has disappeared due to developments and agriculture. As a result, a lot of the natural wildlife habitat is no longer here. Sande said conservation efforts from farmers actually help bring that back.
Pheasants have made a historic return in the state in recent years. Concerted efforts from all sorts of groups have made that possible.
Of course, conserving wildlife is not the only thing NRCS wants to help farmers with. Improving water quality is another goal the agency works toward regularly. While many people get their drinking water from underground wells, some get their water from rivers and watersheds.
Continued to page 8
By Jamee A. Pierson Central Iowa Ag Mag
Every farm season is different, not just for the industry but for each individual farmer. Whether it be good yields for crops but a rough year with livestock, or having to deal with wet or dry spells, working the fields is not for the weak and presents unique challenges each year.
“The 2024 season was one for the record books,” area farmer Eric Siebrecht said.
“The yields across the farm were the best that I have ever seen for both corn and soybeans.”
As harvest was approaching, Siebrecht was feeling confident in the corn yields but was questioning how the soybeans would turn out due to a dry August. Once he was out in the fields, soybeans showed to be right up with where the corn was measuring.
It wasn’t all smooth sailing, though, and even with great returns,
weather impacted the corn crop last year.
“A problem we ran into was the corn moisture dried down fast and got drier than we would have liked, which reduced the final yield some,” Siebrecht said. “We had a hail storm go through the area in July and had some fields get damaged and a couple roofs that needed to be replaced, which was the biggest weather challenge I faced this year.”
Area farmer Jeremy Terpstra also had a great 2024 in the
fields. It started off a little rough with a wet spring delaying planting and less than ideal conditions when he finally got into the field, but a hot, dry summer helped lead to favorable yields.
“Grain prices were not great for 2024, especially considering how input prices to raise a crop continue to rise,” Terpstra said. “Yields helped make up for some of that loss of grain price but it’s still very difficult at current prices. We have
rebounded a little the past couple months if a guy had bins and didn’t have to sell to payoff loans and have cash flow.”
While there is never truly an off season, when the harvest is in farmers can turn to other needs for the operation. Whether it is repairing equipment or starting on the next year’s plan, the work doesn’t stop.
“In agriculture, I’m not really sure if there
By Martha Blum Central Iowa Ag Mag
Cattlemen have several options to control brush or woody plants in pastures.
“When we have infested pastures, we get large reductions in forage biomass,” said Mark Renz, professor and Extension specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “We can easily get 50% less forage in an invaded pasture versus a non-invaded pasture.”
“Data from a moderately invaded pasture with 10% to 20% brush cover shows if we mowed or sprayed we would double the forage that is available,” said Renz during a presentation at the Driftless Region Beef Conference, hosted by the University of Illinois Extension, Iowa State University Extension and Outreach and University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension.
“As a rule of thumb, your pasture should have less than 5% woody plants,” he said. “If you take 100 steps in your pasture, five of the steps or less should be near a shrub and ideally it’s best to have no shrubs at all.”
Cattlemen have several options for managing shrubs in pastures, including removing the entire plant, removing some or all of the above-ground tissue or using herbicides.
“All of these can work if utilized correctly,” Renz said.
“Removing the entire plant can be very effective with weed wrenches that attach to the bottom of the shrub and pull it out of the ground,” he said. “It works on buckthorn or honeysuckle when they are small.”
Removing the entire plant is effective on species with simple
root crowns.
“But if you have a creeping perennial root system like black locust, it is not going to work because you can’t remove all the below-ground tissue,” Renz said.
Mowing can control shrubs in pasture and if there is a large infestation, cattlemen can rent a forestry mower.
“They’re great, but rental rates can be from $100 to $150 per hour,” Renz said. “The biggest negative is the shrubs will regrow, so you’re going to need to do additional management like using herbicides.”
Goats will feed on the leaves and strip the bark off of shrubs.
“We’ve been doing work where we’re trying to introduce silvopasture into a forest, so we’ve been renting goats and grazing 35 to 40 goats per acre,” the university professor said. “That costs from $900 to $1,500 per acre, but if you own your own goats, that cost would be much less.”
Goats remove vegetation, but they don’t kill the shrubs, Renz said, unless the goats graze the pasture for several years.
“We think it’s somewhere between three to six years depending on the shrubs,” he said.
Prescribed burning is a technique that will suppress shrubs.
“The big negative is you have the hazard of containing the fire to make sure it doesn’t move offsite,” Renz said.
“The shrubs will resprout, so you have to get the fire hot enough to burn the shrub, and depending on when you burn, you might lose some early season biomass.”
Herbicides are often the first tool cattlemen use for controlling shrubs because they can provide really good control with one application.
“But we need to get training on how to use herbicides correctly because a lot of bad things can happen if we miss apply them,” Renz said.
Foliar applications of herbicides are the most common.
“Spread the herbicide on the leaves to the point of runoff,” Renz said. “The biggest mistake is people apply too much, because if it’s dripping off the leaves, you’re wasting herbicide and money.”
It is important to apply the herbicide around the entire shrub.
“If you don’t, the herbicide won’t be shared across the whole plant and it might just kill half the shrub,” Renz said. “Make the application when the plant is actively growing in the spring to fall and when it is fully leafed out.”
A cut surface application can be done anytime of the year.
“Cut the stem and then apply the herbicide to the cut surface,” Renz said. “If it’s a small stem, treat the whole cut surface, and if it’s a large stem, only treat the outside edge.”
Depending on the herbicide, it can be mixed in water or basal bark oil.
“If you’re using glyphosate, you have to mix it with water because it does not mix in oil,” Renz said. “Do not do this on woody plants that have a creeping root system because the cutting promotes resprouting.”
Basal bark application can also be applied anytime of the year.
“The only real difference
is we’re not cutting down the plant,” Renz said. “We’re applying a concentrated solution in a band 12 to 18 inches around the entire circumference of the stem.”
This technique works best on smaller diameter shrubs.
“Read the label for rates and restrictions,” Renz said. “Don’t apply when you have excessive snow because you’ll get some herbicide on the snow, and when the snow melts, the herbicide will move off site.”
For larger trees, the hackand-squirt method works really well.
“You use a hatchet to put a cut in the tree at a 45-degree angle and then spray a concentrated solution into the cut,” Renz said.
“The key is the number of hacks you do is dependent on the diameter of the woody plant and this is probably not a good option for multiflora rose.”
All these approaches work, the Extension specialist said.
“It’s about figuring out which ones fit best in your system and your pasture management,” Renz said.
“We recommend getting some help from an expert on picking herbicides and make sure you are selecting a herbicide registered for use in pastures,” he said.
“They will have specific restrictions for grazing that can vary dramatically and many of these products have manure restrictions.”
Renz advises cattlemen to read the fine details to understand the restrictions.
“It can get confusing really quick, so if you have questions, ask for help,” he said.
By Martha Blum Central Iowa Ag Mag
Cattle numbers are down in the United States and the cattle market is focused on providing incentives to cattlemen for herd rebuilding.
“A year ago, the cattle inventory was the lowest since 1951, the beef cow inventory was the lowest since 1961 and the U.S. calf crop for 2024 I think will be a little over 33 million head, which is the lowest total calf crop since 1941,” said Derrell Peel, Breedlove professor of agribusiness and Extension livestock marketing specialist at Oklahoma State University.
“The calf crop peaked in 2018 and the cow inventory peaked in January 2019,” said Peel during a presentation at the Driftless Region Beef Conference, hosted by the University of Illinois Extension, Iowa State University Extension and Outreach and University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension.
The calf crop has been declining for the last six years.
“Calf prices ended last year very strong, and feeder cattle is the same story, prices moved higher the last two years and we’re starting off remarkably strong so far this year,” the university professor said.
“Fed cattle passed the $2 per pound mark for the first time and all of these classes of cattle have set new record prices already in January,” Peel said.
“We had drought and the cattle numbers got pushed down lower than we intended to be,” he said.
For some parts of the country, mostly in the inter-mountain west, the drought started in 2020.
“In 2021, the Northern Plains were badly impacted, including the Dakotas, Montana and Wyoming,” Peel said. “In 2022, it moved further south to the Central and Southern Plains and that continued in 2023.”
Now, there are not huge areas of extreme drought, but there are some dry areas in the Northern Plains and Southwest.
“Part of the problem is there are still a lot of concerns and threats going forward for this year because we’re in La Niñalike conditions, which tend to set up challenges in the major cattle production areas,” Peel said. “We’ve been in drought and we’re not sure if we’re recovered enough to move beyond it.”
During the worst of the drought, cattlemen experienced high hay prices.
“The average hay prices were at record level in 2022 and now we’ve come down from that,” the livestock specialist said. “With the record corn crop of 2023 and another big crop last year, we’re operating in this $4.50 range for corn, which is providing a little relief.”
Feedlots have been able to maintain profitability over the last year and part of the reason is the market trend stayed ahead of the rising costs, Peel said.
“But there’s going to be lots of challenges going forward because there’s less cattle in the country,” he said. “Finding cattle to put into feedlots is going to get harder and harder
and they’re going to be ridiculously expensive when you do find them.”
Feedlots have managed to hold monthly inventories unchanged year over year.
“That’s pretty impressive because there’s less cattle in the country,” Peel said.
“One of the biggest reasons is we have continued to feed heifers rather than use them for breeding,” he said.
In addition, the number of days on feed has been increasing.
“The last year or so, the average days on feed has accelerated significantly,” Peel said. “The average days on feed for steers was over 190 days for the last six or seven months.”
As a result of feeding cattle longer, carcass weights started going up at the end of 2023 and that continued through 2024.
“Instead of seeing the normal seasonal decline in
the first half of the year for carcass weights, they went sideways,” Peel said.
“So, at the end of the year, steer carcasses averaged about 23 pounds heavier than a year ago and heifer carcasses were up about 20 pounds.”
Peel does not expect carcass weights to continue to increase as much in 2025 as they did last year.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if they are up a little bit, but I don’t think they will be up near as dramatically this year as last year,” he said.
Increasing carcass weights are a result of both a long-term trend and short-term market conditions.
“Five years ago for the first time, the average steer carcass weight was heavier than the average bull carcass weight,” Peel said.
“Steers have averaged about 4.5 pounds a year for the last 60-plus years for increasing carcass
weights and heifers are a little bit over 5 pounds average long-term increase.”
The industry is now producing about 86 percent Choice and better cattle.
“That is a big increase from 25 years ago,” the university professor said. “And it’s a big part of the reason why beef demand has been really strong and continues to be strong even with high prices.”
Peel has been watching for problems with beef demand for the past three years.
“Beef demand remains extremely strong and I think a lot of that is due to the fact we’re putting out an increasingly better-quality product and consumers are willing to pay for it,” he said.
During 2022 and 2023, 51 percent of all the cattle slaughtered in the United States were female.
Continued to page 8
High levels of nitrate in rivers pose a big challenge and make the water unsafe to drink, and it can also be harmful to the environment.
Which is why farmer’s voluntary conservation efforts are crucial. Sande said it comes down to reducing soil erosion, improving water quality and enhancing wildlife habitat. A lot of what the local SWCD does is holding outreach events and increasing participation from farmers.
“We do that through field days, workshops, educational days,” Sande said, noting a field day in August 2024 alone discussed the benefits of no-till farming and planting cover crops, and better ways to get more consistent and positive results from cover crops. About 25 producers attended the field day.
SWCD also had an individual share how they apply cover crops using drones. The district is all about educating farmers and producers, and, in turn, changing their thought processes. Sande said it is not easy for farmers to make these changes overnight. It takes time to yield the desired results.
Farmers know this all too well.
“A lot of times we might just plant that little seed in their head, and maybe a couple of years later they come back and it’s maybe grown a little bit,” Sande said. “Then maybe they’ll try something on a few acres and see how that does. Then maybe they expand it to a whole field.”
“That has not happened since the mid-1980s,” Peel said. “It did start to drop in 2024 to just a tick below the 50% mark and that’s all due to the reduced cow slaughter.”
For herd rebuilding, there needs to be heifer retention and cow culling levels at very low levels.
“Cow culling levels are coming down, but I don’t think we’re actually herd rebuilding yet,” Peel said.
“We’re not going to do much in 2025 because we don’t have enough heifers to work with to put together any kind of regrowth,” he said. “The best we can hope for in 2025 is to start saving some heifer calves so that we set the stage for limited growth in 2026.”
Ten years ago, which was the last time there was a herd expansion, cattlemen had the ability to expand much faster.
“We’re in a bigger hole with female numbers, so now we have to build up a supply of heifers before we can rebuild the herd,” Peel said.
Herd expansion tends to be driven by cow-calf returns.
“We’re going to have more time to enjoy some very strong returns, but there will be a backside someday,” Peel said. “We will eventually produce our way back to lower prices because that’s the nature of how markets work.”
Somewhere there will be a peak for cattle prices.
“I think it’s going to be more of a plateau of elevated prices for the next two to four years,” the livestock specialist said.
“During the last two cattle cycles, from the low to the peak, there was about a 9 percent increase in the cow herd,” Peel said. “If we see that, it would be between 30.5 and 31 million head, but we don’t even have a low yet.”
“I’m probably as bullish as I’ve ever been on cattle markets in my career,” he said. “But the higher the markets are the more vulnerable you are to shortterm shocks.”
Peel advises all cattlemen to prepare for price shocks.
“You need to figure out what your marketing windows are and do what you need to protect those,” he said. “At the same time, take advantage of the fact we’ve got strong markets.”
By Jeannine Otto Central Iowa Ag Mag
Jaime Castaneda, executive vice president of policy development and strategy for the National Milk Producers Federation, looks at the issue of immigration reform through the eyes of an immigrant.
He sees the challenge of immigration reform also as someone who has worked on the issue, including helping to craft different federal proposals, for much of his 25 years at NMPF.
“It is something that — when somebody asks you, what is it that you haven’t accomplished — and to me, that is the only thing I have not accomplished, that once and for all we have a clear system that allows foreign workers to come and fill jobs that are not being filled by Americans,” Castaneda said.
With President Donald Trump in office for a second term, his promises about mass deportations of undocumented immigrants have taken the center of the national political stage.
For the U.S. dairy industry, the renewed talk about immi-
gration has brought concerns for foreign-born dairy industry workers, along with hope that Congress might finally take up and accomplish immigration reform.
Castaneda said he hopes Trump and members of Congress will take a practical approach.
“I do believe that the majority of Congress sees two things very clearly. We need to actually do something at the border. There is no doubt about it,” he said.
“I am myself an immigrant. You have to have a system of the rule of law that folks can actually come in to do the work that most Americans don’t want to do.”
Castaneda said he believes that Congress can address the issues that have been presented over immigration and deportations in a way that addresses specific concerns without punishing those who have followed the law.
“I think you can address the border and address illegal immigration and address the concerns with criminals and ev-
erything that President Trump has noted, as well as actually providing a safe opportunity for foreign workers to provide food for America, because that is the reality,” he said.
According to the NMPF, “immigrant labor accounts for 51 percent of all dairy labor, and dairies that employ immigrant labor produce 79 percent of the U.S. milk supply.”
Furthermore, the NMPF says “if the U.S. dairy industry lost its foreign-born workforce, it would nearly double retail milk prices and cost the total U.S. economy more than $32 billion.”
Pointing out that many dairy farms offer higher wages plus benefits like housing, Castaneda challenged the idea that foreign-born U.S. dairy workers are taking jobs away from native-born Americans.
“The reality is that not a lot of Americans want to do that type of work. It is hard and very, very challenging to work with animals, with the hours, we all know how difficult it is,” he said.
Another part of the U.S. dairy farm story that isn’t being told is that foreign-born
workers are not only vital to the industry, but many also are an integral part of the farm family.
“There are farmworkers in the dairy industry who have been with the same employer for 20 years — they are part of the family,” Castaneda said.
He said this is not the first time that the industry has faced challenges over immigration.
“This is not new for our industry. During previous administrations, we have had audits and even raids. During the Obama administration, we had very serious raids in certain farms and also in the poultry sector,” he said.
His message to farmers and farmworkers who are worried about the Trump administration’s actions on immigration is twofold.
“What we are saying to farmers and to farmworkers also is you need to make sure you have the proper documentation for your farmworkers. We are going to continue to work with the Trump administration to ensure that there is no disruption in the production of milk and dairy products here in the United States,” Castaneda said.
Continued from page 5
is an ‘off season,’ especially with livestock, but during winter months when no fieldwork can be done I haul majority of my crop to fill contracts I’ve got and help pay for incoming expenses for the 2025 crop,” Terpstra said. “I also do lots of maintenance in the shop getting planters ready to go with replacing worn out parts and also getting tractors and other implements in for their routine maintenance to help prevent breakdowns. Breakdowns are inevitable, but a good maintenance plan helps keep those to a minimum.”
Siebrecht also spends time making repairs and getting his equipment ready for the spring season. He can also be found getting inputs bought and attending meetings for crop production to prepare for
the next year.
Both farmers look to maintain their crop rotation in 2025, but favorable corn numbers could come into play as planting gets closer.
“I know some people are making changes since corn looks more profitable than soybeans at the current price levels,” Siebrecht said. “It works better for me to keep my rotation about the same, so I maintain the acres I need for hog manure applications every fall.”
Terpstra is also keeping tabs on expenses that go into farm work and how grain prices are impacting how he runs his operation.
“Grain prices have not been great this past year and gas made things more difficult to cash flow,” Terpstra said. “Input prices as far as fertilizer, seed, land prices and especial-
ly machinery continue to rise, making things difficult; which means you’ve got to keep crunching numbers and be very precise with your farming practices.”
While some industries keep people constantly looking at what is coming next, neither farmer looks more than a couple weeks out when forecasting their business.
“For me, I don’t follow long term forecasts because I find them too unreliable,” Siebrecht said. “The longest forecast I look at is two weeks out.”
Another factor that can affect how a farming season can go is the government. Whether it be tariffs, regulations or other legislation, what happens at the state capitol and in Washington, D.C. can greatly impact how a year goes.
“I believe farmers are
watching what moves the new administration makes,” Siebrecht said. “There has been talk of tariffs which could directly affect the prices we receive for agricultural products and also make products we buy more expensive.”
Terpstra keeps an eye on the USDA reports to stay up to date on what supply and demand is looking like. That metric can often mirror what the markets will do.
While the ground may be frozen, the farmers are looking forward to getting into the fields. It isn’t always a smooth road but they are preparing now to weather any hurdles that may come their way.
“I always look forward to a new season,” Terpstra said. “Every season brings its struggles and successes but regardless of the outcome we just keep pushing through.”
Longer, more diverse rotations of crops fertilized with livestock manure have many environmental benefits, but carbon sequestration isn’t one of them, according to a new study led by Iowa State University researchers.
The findings, published in Nature Sustainability, counter longstanding assumptions and could have implications for various carbon-market initiatives designed to help mitigate climate change, said Wenjuan Huang, assistant professor of ecology, evolution and organismal biology.
“In a diversified cropping system, there’s more carbon input. So, we have figured there would be more carbon stored in the soil. But, actually, carbon levels in the soil didn’t change over 20 years, though these regenerative management practices are still valuable in other ways,” said Huang, one of the study’s lead coauthors.
The study is based on data collected from the ongo -
ing field trial at Iowa State’s Marsden Farm just east of Boone, which since 2001 has compared a traditional twoyear corn-soybean rotation to three- and four-year systems that mix in a year or two of alfalfa, clover or oats and replace most of the synthetic nitrogen fertilizer for corn with cattle manure.
A greater variety of roots and the addition of manure increase carbon input in the three- and four-year rotations.
But putting more organic matter in the soil also stimulates microbial activity, which boosts decomposition and causes an uptick in carbon dioxide emissions that can counteract the increased carbon input.
Samples of both topsoil and cores a little more than 3 feet deep had similar soil organic carbon levels in all three types of test plots, while the soil cores from diversified cropping systems produced more carbon dioxide when incubated in the lab for a little more than a year.
By analyzing stable carbon
isotopes in the soil core emissions, researchers found the intensified decay in longer rotations wasn’t just using up the additional carbon inputs.
All samples gave off similar levels of carbon dioxide from corn-plant residue, even though corn was grown more frequently in the standard two-year rotation.
That shows the amped-up decomposition in diversified cropping systems feeds in part on older organic matter from previous corn plants, Huang said.
The novel carbon-chasing method used in the study, which was funded in part by a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, could help researchers — and carbon markets — improve their models for predicting carbon change in soil.
“Isotopes improve our understanding of how long carbon can remain in soil. In a sense, we can ask the soil microbes what they had for dinner,” said study coauthor Steven Hall, now an assistant professor at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison, who initiated and led the study during his previous position at Iowa State.
Even without sequestering more carbon, diversified cropping systems can have a positive climate impact.
Soil organic matter breaking down faster also produces more of the type of nitrogen crops need to thrive, especially corn.
Organic nitrogen converted into plant-feeding inorganic nitrogen at a rate about 70 percent higher in the longer-rotation soil samples, researchers found.
Heightened nitrogen availability in the diversified cropping systems helped manure supplant enough synthetic fertilizer to reduce emissions of nitrous oxide, a potent heat-trapping gas, by an estimated carbon dioxide equivalent of 60-70 percent. That also could be a relevant factor for carbon markets to consider, Huang said.
“The trade-off between carbon accrual and nitrogen supply is important,” Huang said.
