The evolution continues on Iowa farms as it relates to sustainable tillage practices and improved edge of field practices. One of the longtime leaders on the cutting edge is Kellie Blair, who with husband AJ are fourth generation producers in Central Iowa. She says the transition really was just starting when she was a student at Iowa State and met her future husband.
“Over the years of farming, when I first started farming with AJ, we were pretty well corn on corn, full tillage. We did have hog manure, but to today where we’ve reduced tillage for the most part as much as we can. We do some strip till ahead of corn with mostly no till corn. We no till our soybeans and we utilize cover crops. We have seen the benefits and continue to be interested in continual improvement and conservation.”
She says she appreciates the ongoing support from cooperators like the Iowa Soybean Association.
“By doing some trials with Iowa Soybean Association, we’re able to get real data by using replicated strips and look at see what we’re doing and get some real data as well as being able to learn how to set trials up.”
She says it’s important to sort of take some of the emotion out of the analysis in order to increase on farm ROI, which can also be gleaned from these updates. Now she also adds that it’s really cool to think that her efforts do have real world impacts on everybody downstream, including reducing that hydroxyzine in the Gulf of Mexico.
