Talent is the floor, but your character is the ceiling’
Three centuries of goodness: Seroogy’s turns 125
November 3, 2022
NORTHEAST WISCONSIN – Ask 10 farmers to define what sustainable farming is, and you’ll likely get 10 different answers, maybe more.
That said, there are some basic concepts most farmers can agree on – sustainable farming is broken down into three categories: creating a healthy environment, maintaining economic profitability and working toward social and economic equity.
How one goes about achieving those things can differ greatly, and if one can accomplish all three, they are described as truly sustainable.?
But it’s difficult to do and there are trade-offs, Eric Cooley, director of the Discovery Farms Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said.
“When you talk about sustainability, people need to remember there is a huge environmental part, a huge economic part and a huge social part,” he said. “If you try to do one, you may not be able to do the other.”
Cooley said all farming practices are sustainable and unsustainable in different ways.
“Every practice is sustainable and none of them are, depending on how you look at and define them,” Cooley said. “There are all kinds of pressures that don’t make one practice sustainable over another. And whatever you do, there are usually trade-offs.”
Cooley said some believe farming organically is also farming sustainably.
And though it is part of sustainable farming, he said it is only one part of the equation and can negate other sustainable practices the farmer may be trying to do.
“From an environmental perspective, there are many benefits to organic farming, because potentially harmful chemicals aren’t being put on the crops,” Cooley said. “But farming organically requires quite a bit of tillage. That has the potential to lose, not only the soil but the associated nutrients that are contained in that soil. In those organic systems, the more tillage you do, your yields are not as high.”
Tillage reduction
Cooley said many farmers understand that and have determined that reducing tillage (which is defined as the preparation of soil for planting and the cultivation of soil after planting) as much as possible is a better way for them to be more sustainable.
Travis Luedke is one such farmer.?
He and his family run a 650-acre farm in Sheboygan County.
Luedke is also a founding member and current treasurer of Sheboygan River Progressive Farmers (SRPF).
On the Luedke Farm, they grow corn, beans and winter wheat and have been no-tilling for about 20 years.
Luedke said about three years ago, they began strip-tilling after hosting an SRPF field day on their farm.
“This is a process of tilling and fertilizing only where the seed is put in,” he said. “It keeps the seed and fertilizer exactly where it needs to be, and by doing this, we can grow a better crop using less fertilizer.”
Nick Guilette of Guilette Farms LLC located in Casco in Kewaunee County, who is also a conservation coordinator at Ebert Enterprises, said he also believes reducing tillage to be more sustainable but understands whatever tilling you do, it should be the right kind of tillage.?
“There are 250 years of agricultural history that says tillage is a way to help make a farm sustainable,” he said. “You don’t want to eliminate tillage completely. Farmers in many parts of Wisconsin will forever remember 2018 and 2019. In fact, 2019 was the wettest on record, and here’s why I say reduce tillage, not eliminate it. In a lot of circumstances, like back then, in order to get the crop off we did a lot of damage to the soil that year. We needed to level the fields; we needed to level the seed beds back out, and do some other things that maybe we didn’t want to do, but were beyond our control.”
Cover crops
Guilette said adding cover crops is another sustainable farming practice – noting there are many scenarios in which cover crops can become established and help protect the land during the winter months.
On the Guilette Farm, he said the farm plants cover crops, such as radishes, barley, crimson and red clover.
He said they also plant winter wheat.?
“Winter wheat is a great cover crop to plant,” he said. “It is usually harvested between the end of July or early August. So, there’s a large part of the growing season left where you can capture a lot of growth with a cover crop and accumulate a lot of biomass that can possibly be harvested back as forage if there’s livestock or animals to feed.”
Guilette said many farmers here and across the U.S. are coming up with unique and out-of-the-box ways to incorporate cover crops into their crop rotation.
“You can even plant them into your corn (if you are growing corn) when it’s only four to eight inches tall,” he said. “That cover crop gets established in the corn and kind of smothers itself for quite a while until that corn crop is harvested in the fall. Then that cover crop is able to capture the full amount of sunshine left in the growing season. Many times you’ll see something that looks really small and spindly, but you hardly even know it’s there at harvest time. But it explodes with growth because it has all the sunshine it was looking for and you’ll have a lush, green field going into winter.”
Diane Mayerfeld, sustainable agriculture coordinator at the UW-Madison Extension Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems (CIAS), said if farmers have a three-crop rotation, there is a great advantage for planting cover crops.
“Say you have corn, soybeans and winter wheat,” she said. “Winter wheat gets harvested in July. Then you can plant all sorts of cover crops because there are lots of things that will grow if they get planted in August. But, after crops are harvested in early fall, unless you do something with that soil, it’s just going to be sitting there with nothing growing on it for the next six months. So, it’s vulnerable to erosion, to run-off and a whole bunch of other things.”
Mayerfeld said the idea of a cover crop is to plant another crop to cover the areas that have been harvested.
“The primary purpose of a cover crop isn’t to grow something to be sold,” she said. “Its primary purpose is conservation.”
Managed grazing
Valerie Dantoin-Adamski of Full Circle Community Farm, who also teaches Sustainable Food and Ag Systems at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College (NWTC), said managed grazing is the primary method of sustainable farming they use.
“If you look around Northeast Wisconsin, you’ll see that probably 90% of the farmland is in corn and soybeans,” she said. “Those are annual crops, which means the land has to be plowed and the crop has to be planted every year. Whenever you plow, there’s a potential to cause damage to your soil health.”
Dantoin-Adamski said the best sustainable practice is to keep the land covered with green, living plantings year-round and that will eventually remove the need for plowing.
“The best way to do that is to go pasture or hay land,” she said. “And whatever we plant, we plant it once and it’s good for five to 10 years. It’s perennial and that’s why it’s so sustainable – it’s things like grasses, clovers and alfalfa. There’s a wide variety of plants that grow in pastures.”
//s3.amazonaws.com/appforest_uf/f1667497380230x104264038202705580/richtext_content.webpValerie Dantoin-Adamski said the best sustainable practice is to keep the land covered with green, living plantings year-round and that will eventually remove the need for plowing. Submitted Photo
Dantoin-Adamski said today, Full Circle Community Farm grazes beef cattle, but it used to be a dairy farm and grazed dairy cattle on nothing but grasses.?
“So, not only did we cover the ground and keep the soil from running off or the nutrients from polluting people’s wells, we kept the rivers clean and kept the Bay of Green Bay cleaner by using grazing,” she said.
Achieving more well-managed grazing on the landscape is something Mayerfeld said NWTC is interested in.
She said if farmers have a well-managed pasture they’re minimizing soil disturbance, the soil is covered year-round, they have a lot of biological diversity and have living roots in the soil year-round.
But, Dantoin-Adamski said, it has to be managed well.?
“If the grazing is done badly – the cows are left there too long or there are too many cows on the pasture – it’s a disaster,” she said. “But if you do it well, it’s an excellent system.”
Dantoin-Adamski said quite a few farmers are doing this kind of rotational grazing.
“There are an increasing number of farmers who, even if they’re managing their cows conventionally in barns, are starting to think they could possibly have their heifers grazing or their dry cows could graze,” she said. “We’re interested in seeing more grass on the landscape.”
Mayerfeld said using this method can cause a little lower milk yields per cow, but then costs per cow are a lot lower.
“So the profitability per cow is actually very good in these systems, even though the amount of milk each cow produces is a little lower,” she said.
Conservation practices
Mayerfeld said there are all sorts of conservation practices farmers can do, including planting pollinator habitats or agroforestry.
Though there aren’t a lot of farmers doing this yet, she said it is an area of rapidly growing interest.?
“The idea of agroforestry is nothing more than integrating trees into our farms,” she said. “This is great for the welfare of the cows, especially when it’s hot weather. The shade is beneficial for them. Agroforestry is also one of the best things agriculture can do for the climate. When you practice agroforestry, carbon is being fixed in the tree trunks.”
Fork Farms, a mission-first, agriculture technology company based at TitletownTech, is providing sustainable farming opportunities to those who may not necessarily be a “farmer.”
The flex farm – a fully self-contained vertical hydroponic system – offers Fork Farm partners and customers the means to grow their own food.
“We believe sustainable farming is using farming practices that use less of the earth’s resources to grow fresh, nutritious food for people,” Lalu Bere, Fork Farms brand vice-president said. “The solution we’ve come up with is the flex farm, which allows for anyone to grow up to 25 pounds or more of fresh food in a four-week period using 98% less water and 98% less soil than traditional farming. We do that through hydroponics – so it’s farming without using soil, but instead using a combination of water and nutrients that are added to the water to enrich that water and then transfer that water to the plants.”
Bere said Fork Farms provides its partners and customers with many resources, including growing supplies, instructions and best practices, in addition to wrap-around and programming resources.?
“That includes offering a full K-12 curriculum, different activities folks can do either with their students or volunteers or others who are growing with our technology,” she said.
Bere said the company also sells the growing supplies that are required to be able to use the technology.
“So, that includes the nutrients, the material to balance the pH in your water, the seeds, things like that,” she said.
Bere said Fork Farms believes anyone can be a farmer.
//s3.amazonaws.com/appforest_uf/f1667497459895x502386137700066400/richtext_content.webpFork Farms’ fully self-contained vertical hydroponic system – Flex Farms – allow partners and customers to grow their own food – including as part of a K-12 curriculum. Submitted Photo
“The technology we create and the way we enable people to grow fresh food is a complement to traditional agriculture,” she said. “Not every crop can grow in a hydroponic unit. You can grow a lot of things though, and we see ourselves as a complement to traditional agriculture. We aim to put the ability to grow fresh food in the hands of any person in any community.”
Bere said Fork Farms’ technology is very modular – only requiring about nine to 10 square ft of space, which is about the size of a refrigerator.
Currently, she said the company has partnerships with schools, hospital systems, corporate cafeterias, food banks and food pantries and nursing homes.
Bere said whether you’re a farmer looking to become more sustainable, or a business, group or single household, everyone has a role to play in helping our environment.
She said even the smallest of efforts can make a huge difference.
