WEST BEND, Iowa – Simply shy of 800 residents, West Bend is barely a blip on a prairie panorama. However this small northern Iowa city has change into a hub for the nation’s rising natural farming sector, difficult the notion that insecticides and different agricultural chemical substances are required to feed the world.
The city’s towering grain bins are surrounded by round 50,000 acres of corn, soybeans, oats and different crops grown with out the usage of artificial chemical substances. Farmers fertilize the land with rooster litter and hog manure. Weeds are eliminated by hand or with non-chemical instruments, akin to new laser weeders.
In 1998, farmer Barry Fehr started experimenting with elevating chemical-free soybeans on 45 acres. Right now, the West Bend area is essentially the most expansive and worthwhile space of natural grain manufacturing in Iowa and probably america. A lot of the land is farmed by a number of generations of Fehr households that reside near West Bend. One operation, Clear Creek Acres identify, generates practically $40 million a yr in crop gross sales from 25,000 acres. The Fehr household additionally manages about 3,000 natural acres in Colorado.
By the Numbers: Natural farming in West Bend, Iowa
1.3 million metric tons: U.S. natural grain imports in 2023 (4 occasions the 2020 quantity).
800: Inhabitants of West Bend, Iowa.
50,000 acres: Land surrounding West Bend farmed organically.
$40 million: Annual income generated by Clear Creek Acres.
3,000 acres: Natural farmland managed by the Fehr household in Colorado.
2-3x: Value premium for natural crops in comparison with standard.
$8/bushel: Value for natural corn (double the standard fee).
$22/bushel: Value for natural soybeans (double the standard fee).
$30/hour: Wage and bills for H-2A employees employed by Clear Creek.
799: Variety of natural farms in Iowa as of 2021 (up from 467 in 2011).
The agrochemical trade, led by Monsanto-owner Bayer, Syngenta and different international seed and chemical giants, maintains that weed killers, pesticides and different pesticides are important to sturdy meals manufacturing, and {that a} rising international inhabitants requires the usage of chemical substances in agriculture.
However 71-year-old Dan Fehr, who has been farming for greater than 50 years, referred to as that notion “debatable.”
The Fehr household farms are practically matching the yields of crops grown conventionally, maybe seeing solely a few 10% yield decline compared, Fehr mentioned. Their prices are decrease as a result of they’re not shopping for pesticides and the high-priced genetically modified seeds designed for use with sure weed-killing pesticides.
And the costs they reap are larger as a result of natural crops command premiums in a market the place client demand for natural meals is climbing.
“The premium we received from promoting organics is the important thing cause … The demand for natural has positively grown rather a lot. That’s the reason we do it.”
Dan Fehr, iowa farmer
“No one has died of not utilizing pesticides,” Fehr added. “I don’t assume it is going to harm something to not use pesticides.”
Natural supporters hope Clear Creek Acres conjures up standard farmers to contemplate switching practices.
“They’re distinctive in the best way they run their operation,” mentioned Cole Thompson, advertising director of Minnesota-based Albert Lea Seed, the nation’s largest natural seed producer. “Most individuals within the trade assume you may’t farm at this scale organically. However you may. They’re proving it.”
Not everyone seems to be impressed
Nonetheless, not everyone in Kossuth and Palo Alto counties, near the border with Minnesota, is impressed with the Fehr household’s achievements.
Critics right here say the Fehrs don’t buy chemical substances and different provides from native farm sellers, nor do they retailer and ship grain from native elevators. They don’t promote their corn to the native ethanol plant. Their cultivation practices, designed to regulate weeds, hold the floor of 1000’s of acres naked, making prime soil weak to erosion from wind and rain.
Additionally, the $500 per acre payment the Fehrs are keen to pay to lease farmland is twice the widespread fee, and is seen as an obstacle to younger folks attempting to begin farm careers.
“They aren’t doing a lot for this neighborhood, I’ll let you know that,” mentioned Joe Joyce, who farms 2,000 acres right here with chemical substances.
“It’s simply jealousy. That’s all,” countered Linus Solberg, a farmer and Palo Alto County commissioner. “I inform folks anyone can do it. Anyone right here has the chance to lift natural crops in the event that they wish to put within the time. These guys have discovered the way to do it.”
Planting and harvesting crops with out the safety from bugs, weeds and ailments supplied by chemical substances isn’t any simple feat.
Nonetheless, a rising physique of scientific proof has proven that chemical substances come not simply with advantages, but in addition with an array of dangers.
Many kinds of widespread farm pesticides have been scientifically linked to cancers and different ailments, are dangerous to the atmosphere, and are identified to trigger intensive water air pollution. Iowa, specifically, suffers from intensive farm-related water air pollution, and most cancers is prevalent. Certainly, Iowa has the second-highest and fastest-rising most cancers incidence amongst all U.S. states, based on a 2024 report issued by the Iowa Most cancers Registry.
Natural generates extra income
Whereas harvesting soybeans within the cab of a John Deere mix, 28-year-old Jack Fehr defined how his household disregarded the everyday constraints to natural agriculture promoted by standard growers and their allies in academia and trade. They typically declare that changing to natural farming takes too lengthy, prices extra, yields much less, and may’t be performed efficiently besides on small farms.
“I discuss to a variety of farmers,” Fehr mentioned. “Their large query is, nicely, I do not know if I could make it work. Nicely, you may make it work. We do. And we get a premium for our natural crops, two to 3 occasions what standard costs are on common.”
Fehr mentioned Clear Creek patrons pay as much as $8 a bushel for natural corn and $22 a bushel for natural soybeans, twice the standard market worth.
Farming organically is a high-wire act balancing the decrease value of provides in opposition to the upper prices of labor.
On the financial savings facet of the ledger are natural seeds that value much less as a result of they don’t seem to be genetically engineered and never handled with chemical substances to thrust back bugs and ailments. There is no such thing as a value for pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and chemical fertilizers. Clear Creek applies lower-cost hog manure to its fields for vitamins and it makes use of rooster litter that it produces from a giant, non-organic egg-laying chicken-feeding operation that it owns on the farm.
Economies of scale are the final piece of retaining manufacturing prices down for farming operations as large as Clear Creek. The farm and its neighbors have fleets of tractors, combines, trailers and different tools that they share.
However these decrease prices are offset by the expense of overcoming the first obstacle to natural grain manufacturing — controlling weeds, particularly in soybean fields. Most of Clear Creek’s 30 staff spend their summers within the fields cultivating and harrowing to kill weeds. They’re helped by native residents and a 70-member crew of Guatemalan discipline employees, employed beneath a particular agriculture H-2A visa program – for short-term agricultural employees from different nations to assist farmers fill employment gaps – who weed by hand and value a mean of $30 an hour in wages and bills.
“We’ve got much more tools and our man hours, our labor power, are larger than with standard farming,” Fehr mentioned. “A giant turnoff for the farmer trying to transition to natural is the quantity of labor and time it takes. I have been in a tractor, within the discipline, farming since Feb. 15 this yr. I have not had a time off.”
Enthusiasm for the enterprise
The excessive labor prices haven’t discouraged Fehr and his 5 brothers as a result of they see the curiosity in natural agriculture growing. The variety of natural farms in Iowa elevated from 467 to 799 from 2011 to 2021, a mean of 33 yearly. Iowa ranks sixth within the nation for the variety of chemical-free farms, and first in natural corn and soybean manufacturing, based on the U.S. Division of Agriculture.
The Natural Commerce Affiliation, the trade’s principal commerce group, reported that from 2008 to 2016, the quantity of U.S. farmland dedicated to producing natural corn, soybeans, wheat, oats and barley grew by greater than 20%, topping 765,000 acres. Iowa and 4 different northern Midwest and Nice Plains states accounted for 40% of the natural grain commerce, a portion of the $63.8 billion in natural meals gross sales in 2023. That quantities to 50% extra gross sales than in 2015, based on a Federal Reserve examine.
There’s a variety of market house to develop a lot greater. Natural grain has additionally not saved tempo with the growing demand for natural meat, milk and eggs. U.S. imports of natural grain reached 1.3 million metric tons in 2023, 4 occasions greater than in 2020.
Proponents of natural farming additionally say it has environmental advantages, notably for water high quality. Cory Fehr, Jack’s father, mentioned his farm’s four-crop rotation, use of manure and rooster litter, and different cultivation practices enhance the situation of the soil, which retains extra nitrogen and phosphorus from draining into floor and groundwater.
“I’d say we’ve much less runoff,” Cory mentioned. “Once we apply manure and litter, we stir it into the soil straight away. With it being natural, I feel it attaches and doesn’t run off just like the artificial and industrial fertilizers.”
Whereas the Fehrs don’t take water samples, which isn’t required to be licensed natural, a group of researchers from the USDA and Iowa State College have studied runoff from industrial fertilizer fields in comparison with pastures fertilized with manure. They discovered that standard crop manufacturing drained practically twice as a lot nitrate into water because the natural fields. The examine’s authors concluded that natural farming “can enhance water high quality in Midwestern landscapes.”
The curiosity in water sampling is eager within the two counties the place the Fehrs farm. The realm west of Emmetsburg, Palo Alto County’s largest city, has the best variety of waterways impaired by farm-related contaminants of any area of Iowa, based on the state Division of Pure Sources.
Jeremy Thilges, a USDA conservation specialist, mentioned his workplace in Emmetsburg is overseeing a multi-year examine of water high quality in 5 Island Lake and different floor waters to find out the causes and the sources of contamination.
One other aspect of Clear Creek Farms that doesn’t appear to draw a lot discover is how natural crop income ensures that extra generations of Fehrs will nonetheless be farming round West Bend mid-century and past.
As he bounded from one job to the subsequent in his pickup, Cory Fehr defined his objectives for youthful Fehrs this manner: “What we’re attempting to do is present alternative for them and all of the folks we’re in a position to rent,” he mentioned. “If we had been standard farming, we wouldn’t have the ability to help the households that we do.”
A model of this text was printed by The New Lede on Nov. 18, 2024.
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