1970s Organic Farmer Profiles and Development
From 1972-1975 Roger visited and interviewed Midwestern organic farmers and wrote articles that were published in Organic Gardening and Farming magazine. These papers describe the culture of organic farming, the values these farmers shared, their concerns about chemical farming, and the accomplishments that made them so special.
By Roger Blobaum, exact date unknown – written in the 1970s We think of nutrition as a personal responsibility. Or, perhaps more accurately, as the responsibility of the mothers of the family. We might assume, then, that bad nutrition is simply the result of bad mothering and that it can be corrected by the education of mothers. I want to question this common assumption and to suggest that problems of bad nutrition reflect bad public policy rather than uninformed
Read More...by Roger Blobaum Clarence Van Sant, who farms 135 acres of rolling land in central Iowa, has never put much stock in the advice of economists who insist farmers have to keep getting bigger to make it. Nor has he accepted the suggestions from his land grant university and others that you have to apply a wide range of farm chemicals and use medicated feeds to get good crop yields and produce healthy livestock and poultry. Van San switched to organic farming in the early 1960s, building up his soil by rotating crops and practicing good conservation. The result is a family-type farm that is sufficient, profitable, and ecologically sound. “At the time we moved on this farm, the east side had a red-looking soil,” he recalls. “The topsoil is black and fertile now and, as I look back, I realize it had a very low humus content at that time.” The marketing problems faced by many organic farmers also was overcome two years ago when Van Sant and his wife opened a health food store in nearby Grinnell. Their full line of organic foods includes eggs, whole wheat flour, pork, sweet corn, and edible soybeans produced without chemicals on…
Read More...by Roger Blobaum If you’re wondering whether large family-type farmers can kick the chemical habit and still grow plenty of food profitably, you should see the three organic operations just north of State 33 near Fremont in eastern Nebraska. These up-to-date farms cover more than 1,300 acres of some of the most productive land on the Platte River. They have been farmed without chemicals since the late 1960s by Ralf Rolfs, Del and Van Akerlund, and K.C. Livermore. In addition to producing good crops, they save energy. Less gasoline and diesel fuel are needed to power tractors in fields that work easier and less propane is needed to dry corn artificially. Besides that, there’s the natural gas that isn’t used to manufacture anhydrous ammonia and other agricultural chemicals for these farms. Any doubts these farmers had when they decided to make this abrupt switch (all admit they had some) are forgotten. They are anxious to share their experiences and have the kind of enthusiasm that even a farm chemical salesman would find hard to resist. Important in these operations is a four-year crop rotation that includes two years of corn, one of soybeans, and one of oats with a legume…
Read More...by Roger Blobaum Bennie Unruh of Aulne, Kansas, is an organic farmer who has developed health food market outlets for all his grain and beef and bypasses the traditional marketing system entirely. In additional to producing grain and cattle on a farm that has been in his family since 1872, he has been a registered miller for several years and grinds and packages a wide range of products distributed in Kansas and elsewhere. He operates this year-around business from a new building at his home in Aulne, a small town about 40 miles north of Wichita. It brings a lot of people to town because one of his specialties is milling flour and cereals to order. Anyone who has seen Unruh’s farm, which is a few miles northwest of Aulne, can see it is ideally situated for organic agriculture. It is on a hill, where the water drains off in four different directions, ruling out the possibility of chemical pollution from neighboring fields. The turning point in his operation came during a visit to a health food store in Salina, where he heard the owner tell another customer he was looking for an organic farmer who could provide a reliable…
Read More...by Roger Blobaum Several large family-type organic farmers in the Fremont, Nebraska, area have been producing lots of grain and livestock profitably without agricultural chemicals. In 1974 this eastern Nebraska sector was hit by the worst drought since the Dust Bowl days of the mid-1930s. It was turned into a government-declared disaster area by searing heat, hot winds, and weeks without rain. Only 1.6 inches of rain fell in the Fremont area in June, far short of the normal 5.75 inches, and none fell from June 11 until August 8. Temperatures shot into the 100s for days at a time during the height of the growing season and hot winds punished the crops. The local newspaper ran front-page drought stories almost daily in July and early August, reporting on disaster meetings, “burned-up” corn, nitrate poison warnings for farmers putting damaged corn in the silo, and statewide crop and livestock losses of more than $2 billion. A front-page picture on July 25 showed a devastated field in the neighborhood where the three organic farmers live. “This field,” the caption explained, “shows the stunted growth and withered stocks of the sun-ravaged corn crop.” But the crops did not fail on the 1,300…
Read More...by Roger Blobaum Ray Juhl is one Midwest farmer who sees production of organically grown grain and stone-milled flour as an emerging agricultural industry with strong demand and unusual growth potential. He’s so certain of this that he has built and equipped one of the nation’s largest on-farm milling setups. It is located on the 2,500-acre farm near Middle River, Minnesota, where he and his son Douglas produce thousands of bushels of organically grown wheat, barley, oats, and buckwheat. Main operator of the new mill is Randy Heinbaugh, Juhl’s son-in-law, and initial production is set at two semi loads of flour, corn meal, and rolled oats a week. The output can be doubled with longer days and weekend work. What has convinced Juhl, a careful businessman, that these large orders will materialize? He says he began getting the message right after buying a used 10-inch stone mill to grind some flour for his wife, Helen, to use in making bread. Before long he was turning out small bags of flour under a “Natural Way Mill’ label for health food stores in nearby Bemidji and Thief River Falls and for a church youth group selling it as a fundraising project. The…
Read More...By Roger Blobaum Larry Eggen, like many Midwest organic producers, used to talk about getting state or local marketing setups organized to help farmers sell organically-grown production to buyers in big cities. That was when Eggen had a small vegetable and hog operation near Walnut Grove, Minn., and was active in signing up organic farmers in southwest Minnesota as members of the Minnesota Soil Association. Organic farmers in that area usually feed most of their grain to livestock and sell the rest to local elevators even though they know organically-grown production will bring a premium price from the right buyers. When organic farmers ask Eggen now about getting together to market their own production, however, he is less than enthusiastic. He has found through experience that finding buyers and keeping them happy isn’t much easier than getting a dean of agriculture to say something good about organic farming. “As an organic farmer, I was always led to believe that organic production was a scarce commodity, that all you had to do was tell the buyers you had it, and that they’d beat a path to your door,” he recalls. “What we’ve found the last two years is that there’s a…
Read More...By Roger Blobaum A direct linkup between farmers and consumers at Madison, Wis., the last two years has made plenty of lean organically-grown beef available below supermarket prices to thousands of food co-op members. The meat comes from calves raised by family farmers and fattened without stilbestrol, antibiotics, and other chemicals put in feeding rations in big feedlots where most of the nation’s fed beef is produced. A typical supplier is Gerald Koster of Waunakee, an organic farmer who coordinates livestock bargaining in the area for the National Farmers Organization (NFO). He procures the fed cattle through NFO’s livestock facility at Windsor under an arrangement with Common Market Co-op in Madison. He brings his own Holstein steers up to around 500 pounds on roughage, mostly pasture, plus a little grain. Then they go on full feed to put on the weight that will take them to a grade of high good or low choice. This, he said, provides good lean meat with just enough marbling to be tender and tasty. “These cattle are fed a natural mineral and get soybean oil meal for protein,” he explained. “They also get corn and hay or silage raised right here on the farm.”…
Read More...By Roger Blobaum Gary Schmeichel accepted quite a challenge eight years ago when he started using organic methods to put the top soil back on a hilltop scalped by machinery taking fill for a road-building project. He was assured by local experts, including the county agent, that the 16 acres of heavy yellow clay would never grow much of anything. Few shared his vision of a rural homesite surrounded by fruit trees, berry patches, and a vegetable garden producing more than a family could consume. But Schmeichel followed a soil-building plan that included heavy applications of compost, leaf and wood chip mulches, and granite dust and other commercial organic materials. He also worked sweet clover and other legumes into the soil to provide nitrogen, improve the tilth, and build up the humus level. The soil responded to this combination of hard work and careful management and before long whatever Schmeichel planted did well. As a result he has become known as the organic gardener who turned the land at the Parker highway intersection into one of South Dakota’s most beautiful areas. A rustic sign reading “Organic Experimental Acres” now greets visitors to the area, which looks more like an arboretum…
Read More...By Roger Blobaum The search for more markets for buckwheat and other grains, a continuing challenge to organic farmers in the Midwest, is being met by a group of producers near Winona in southeast Minnesota. They purchased the Stockton roller mill, a water-powered landmark shut down three years ago when the miller retired, and surprised even themselves when they turned it into a thriving business in less than a year. This was accomplished with a milling facility that had its last new equipment installed prior to World War I, draws its power from a slow-moving brook, grinds flour like it was ground in the late 1800s, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Sites. The rustic mill, which has been grinding grain for Stockton area farrers since 1857, is not yet fully restored. But word spread quickly when the wheels started turning last March and the new owners have been overwhelmed with orders for buckwheat pancake mix and other organic products. These include whole grain flours, some corn meal, and the longtime favorite, flour milled from natural dried buckwheat. This product, carrying the colorful “Stockton Brand” label, once again is reaching a national market. The mill also cleans,…
Read More...By Roger Blobaum Setting up some alternative crop management plots at an agricultural field laboratory hardly qualifies as a major research event. But to Midwest organic farmers, accustomed to getting the cold shoulder from agricultural college researchers, it ranks as a significant breakthrough. A report on these new plots by Dr. Warren W. Sahs was warmly received at a recent meeting at Boys Town, Neb. This might seem routine except that Sahs is assistant director of the Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station, most of the producers in the audience were organic farmers, and the occasion was a day-long workshop on biological agriculture. At a time when policymakers in the Department of Agriculture and at most colleges of agriculture still refuse to work with organic farmers in developing betters ways to farm without chemicals, the experiments set up by Sahs and other University of Nebraska scientists stand out. Sahs reported that more than 50 plots, each with 13 different treatments repeated four times, are now in their second year. The series is tilled like an organic farm with manure applications, no chemicals, and a 4-year rotation of oats and clover, corn, soybeans, and corn. The soil was limed and sampled when the…
Read More...By Roger Blobaum A fascinating view of biological agriculture was presented by Dr. Herbert H. Koepf, a soil science professor from Europe, at an Omaha-area workshop for organic farmers and others from the Midwest. Also appearing at the all-day August session was Pierre Ott, a French agronomist now teaching at the University of California at Vera Cruz. The workshop was sponsored by the Center for Rural Affairs in cooperation with Father Flanagan’s Boys Town and the Quality Environmental Council of Omaha. It was coordinated by Bob Steffen, who manages the organic farming operation at Boys Town. Koepf, the featured speaker, pointed out that organic or biological agriculture is the best long-term approach to farming. It also is a complicated process, he said, where questions do not always have easy answers and where much is unknown. “A soil is not just a box where we put something in and take something out,” he said. “There is more going on in the soil than we realize.” Koepf has worked with biodynamic agriculture for more than 40 years and now heads the School of Biodynamic Agriculture at Emerson College in Forest Grove, Sussex, England. He was director of the Biochemical Research Laboratory at…
Read More...By Roger Blobaum Although Southwest Iowa has had two dry summers in a row, the operators of a rolling 720-acre farm near Tabor hardly noticed the drought as they harvested good corn and soybean crops both years. “Our corn last year, despite the drought, made 90 bushels an acre,” Adolph Codr reported. “We have corn this year, including one field with some of the most beautiful ears we’ve seen, that will make more than 100 bushels.” The explanation is that this crop and livestock unit operated by Adolph and Arnold Codr, brothers and partners, has been farmed organically since 1968. It follows a rotation that utilizes legumes, cattle and hog manure, and natural fertilizers to maintain high fertility. As a result the soil has a high level of organic matter, which increases its ability to hold moisture, and has good structure so water can rise from lower levels when dry weather sets in. The Codrs explained that their corn also withstood a severe windstorm in August that blew many fields in the area so flat they were harvested with great difficulty, if at all. What protected their corn from high winds, they point out, is the deep root system that…
Read More...By Roger Blobaum When you see Steve Groeteke pulling his mixer wagon slowly past cattle falling into line at the bunks at one end of a big hillside feedlot, it looks like any of hundreds of similar cattle setups in Northeast Nebraska. But a closer look shows this operation near North Bend is in a class by itself. Groeteke, a university business major who returned to the farm, is one of a growing number of young cattle feeders producing organically-grown beef. In developing his “Nature Brand Farms” beef, Groeteke is building a market for choice farm-to-freezer beef. It is sold to steady customers, many from Lincoln and Omaha, who order it on a regular basis and pick it up after it is processed at a small plant in Dodge, Nebraska. “We are selling about 50 organic cattle a year now even though we haven’t spent much time advertising or pushing it, ”he explains. “With the large number of cattle we feed every year, we aren’t able yet to move them all into organic channels.” Groeteke has no difficulty getting along without chemicals on a commercial-size farm that produces enough hay, pasture, grain and silage for a herd of registered Red…
Read More...By Roger Blobaum A strong belief that caring for the land means farming without chemicals has maintained the high productivity of a South Dakota crop and livestock farm for the family that has operated it since it was homesteaded. Walter Hobbie, who now operates the original farm northwest of Flandreau, has lived on it since his birth in 1907. His twin brother, Oscar, lives on another organic farm less than a mile away. Over the years both have purchased additional land and the two families now farm more than 1,100 acres in the neighborhood. They are helping three sons get started so a third generation of Hobbies can carry on the family farm tradition. The farm where Walter Hobbie lives looks much different than when his father broke the Dakota grassland sod with a team of horses. White buildings are shaded by huge trees, modern machines are parked in the yard, and huge blue silos give it a contemporary touch. Hobbie doesn’t say much about a brief period when some chemicals were used on his land. He said he decided to quit using them about 10 years ago after reading several articles about organic farming. “I had been using chemicals…
Read More...By Roger Blobaum The attitude of big universities that grab all the agricultural research money and insist they should decide what needs to be investigated is stirring up some sharp competition from a group of organic farmers in Minnesota. Six months after setting up the Soil Association of Minnesota, they had landed a research grant from the Minnesota Resources Committee and cemented a working relationship with scientists at Southwest Minnesota State, a college about 120 miles west of Minneapolis at Marshall. The founding members adopted a constitution calling for action to promote natural farming, support research and legislation relating to ecological agriculture, and cultivate a social and fraternal spirit among environmental-minded farmers. Unlike organic groups that emphasize marketing research, the want to document things like the feeding value of grain raised on organic farms and the impact of farm chemicals on soil productivity and water quality. Their plans include asking both foundations and the State Legislature for funding. Heading the group is Lester Frohrip, a grain and livestock producer on 700 acres along the Minnesota River near Morgan. He graduated from the University of Minnesota’s College of Agriculture and sees through the cozy relationship chemical companies have built…
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