My first question was, do you own a fishing boat?
And then the quick answer is yes.
And then I said, well, you're going to have to sell it.
Meaning, you know, you're going to work all summer.
And it's not easy money at all.
I don't know any organic farmer that
cashes a grain check or livestock check
and says, boy, that was easy money.
People earn it.
Welcome to the 355th installment of Ear to the Ground,
the Land Stewardship Project's podcast
on family farming, regenerative agriculture,
community food systems, and local democracy.
I'm Brian DeVore, editor of the Land Stewardship Letter.
During a recent field day on his farm,
Matthew Fitzgerald made what he calls the big reveal.
That consisted of the young farmer spinning
around a giant whiteboard located in his machine shed
to reveal a color-coded, detailed schedule for field work
during the 2024 growing season.
This is what being an organic farm looks like, Matthew quipped.
He calls the chart his farm flow,
and it's proven to be an invaluable tool for successfully
growing crops without chemicals in central Minnesota.
Matthew, along with his father, Joe,
were hosting the August field day for other farmers,
as well as lenders and folks involved with the marketing
end of organic farming.
There was also a presentation on how to utilize and modify
the various field implements needed to get through
an organic growing season.
In short, the field day, which was sponsored by Organic
Agronomy Training Service, Grain Millers,
the University of Minnesota's Forever Green Initiative,
and the Minnesota Office for Soil Health,
was focused on providing a comprehensive view
of the opportunities and challenges associated
with organic crop production.
The Fitzgerald farm was a fitting venue
for such a field day.
Joe's been raising organic crops since 1994,
and after graduating from college
and working off the farm for a few years,
Matthew, who's 33, joined the operation.
The Fitzgerald family raises around 2,700 acres
of certified organic corn, soybeans, wheat, peas,
and edible bean crops.
They farm the flat, fertile fields near Glinko
in Minnesota's McLeod County.
After a panel of farmers shared their experiences
with marketing, and a mini tour of the various specialty
weed control implements used by the Fitzgeralds was given,
it was clear that, indeed, organic producers
earn every cent of that premium they get.
In addition, a field-side discussion about the Balancing Act
Organic Crop Farmers Must Strike between controlling weeds
with tillage and maintaining soil health
drove home why Matthew requires a detailed scheduler
to get through the long days of spring and summer
and attain a successful harvest.
After the field day, the father-son team,
which refers to their operation as a 1.5 generation farm,
sat down to talk to me about what first drew them to organic
and how, rather than silver bullet solutions,
they rely on silver buckshot to overcome pests,
climate change, and marketing challenges.
It's clear the Fitzgeralds are committed
to organic production, despite the fact
that spending time on the lake is not
an option during the summer.
Matthew started our conversation describing
how his Farm Flow Scheduler provides a visual guide
to what work needs to be done when.
It can also help remind the farmers
why they feel pretty tired by the end of the growing season.
What we use is a visual tool to lay out our work.
And what it is is sort of a, it's
stolen from the project management world.
So it's called a Kanban board, would be the,
if you were like a really corporate process person,
that would make sense.
But for all of us lay people, basically it's
just a chart of everything that happens on the farm,
laid out with little colorized dots.
Each dot represents a day and a thing
that we're doing on the farm.
And so that was a tool that we started developing two years
ago to kind of help us start our mornings and go, OK,
what's happening in the chaos?
Because in June, it's chaos.
And so that really became what we're calling farm flow,
sort of the concept.
And it's really worked.
And basically, the whole team uses it.
We stand up, talk about what's happening, challenges,
what's going well, what's not.
Maybe a piece of equipment's broken that we can't use.
Maybe it's about to rain and we need to prioritize something.
So it's really a visual way to represent the work
that we're doing on a day-to-day basis.
Stepping back after having gone through a weeding season,
it's like, oh, wow, that's why I'm tired,
because it looks like scattershot of colors
of all the work that we've done.
And it's hard to see that in the middle of it.
So the big reveal today was sort of this dramatic zoomed back
retrospective look.
But when we're in the actual growing season,
we're just filling it in one day at a time.
And what are the different colors represent?
So each color represents kind of a weed control activity.
So we've got a color for tine weeding,
a color for rotary hoeing, flame weeding, weed zapping.
So each kind of activity that we do.
And so there's probably about eight or nine different icons
that we use.
And they repeat over each field and across different crops.
And then do you kind of note somehow what the weather was
like, like that it was rainy certain days, that kind of thing?
Let's not overstate how complicated this thing is.
It's a whiteboard.
I took the picture out.
It's a whiteboard with the dry erase marker.
So we just write how much it rained that day.
So we're working on actually turning it into a digital tool.
So we're working, I have a grant from the Schmidt Foundation
and Mad Agriculture to turn it into a tool.
Because this all started with a, I have a friend
who's a data scientist.
So we crunch numbers on our farm with the core question
of like what gives us the best yields on our farm?
So we looked at every variable we could think of,
like rainfall, crop rotation, variety, previous crop,
fertility, soil suitability rating.
The number one indicator for yield was the frequency
of passes.
Said differently, the more often that you're weeding your garden,
the better your tomatoes are.
Not a rocket science conclusion, but what we found is
that we weren't executing well on our farm.
We weren't getting those passes done.
Maybe a piece of equipment broke down or it rained
or whatever deviation occurred.
So if we could visualize the work we were doing,
it would help us execute better.
And so that was the core concept.
Now we're turning it into a tool to do that with a team,
have standard operating procedures behind it,
track the weather digitally so we don't have to transcribe it.
And then hopefully generate reports
to make an organic certification easier.
So we're doing that with open source code.
So for those techie farmers that want to do it themselves,
that'll be available.
Very cool.
That's a great idea.
And like you said, it also helps you put in context what
the season was like a little bit, to stand back
and look at that, I would think.
It's been a tough year.
And so when we've been like, why do I feel so tired?
And why does this field look so bad?
Being able to look back and say, oh, it's the rainiest April,
May, June record.
And here's what it looks like on our farm.
It's a reminder why.
And you were talking about the team.
Is it two employees?
So we're kind of a team of six during the season.
So two owners, Matthew and Joe.
We have a full time young guy, Evan, American.
We've got four H2As.
So it's a foreign visa worker program.
Got a great group of guys from South Africa that work for us.
And then we have a couple of retired part time farmers
that also help out seasonally.
Joe, is that something you would have found useful when
you were getting started in transitioning into organics?
Yes, I've been farming organically since 94.
And what the farm flow chart gives us is a visual of gaps.
And I might want to hit everything perfectly.
But when I can look at the graph every morning,
I realize, oh, there's a space.
And it's a space of number of days
in between a particular practice on a particular field.
And I can very quickly realize I need
to do something at that field today.
For anybody that's visual, and I think many or most people are,
it's a helpful reminder to get things done in a timely fashion
and to keep track of it.
That leads me to my other question, which
was we looked at your equipment.
And we also looked at one of your soybean fields.
And Dr. Anna Cates, who's a soil health expert from the U of M,
talked a little bit about soil health.
But one of the things that struck me was,
for an organic operation like this,
it is so key for you to be able to track what worked, what didn't,
and kind of look at that big picture.
Because one thing I think you were talking about
was you're not using the same equipment in the same fields
every year the same way.
And so you have to sometimes plan your rotation based on,
well, what kind of equipment am I going
to be using in that field the next?
Because, for example, with the tying weeder here,
I think you were talking about, well,
if this is going to be corn in that field,
it's basically a dump loader because it's
going to be collecting.
But can you talk a little bit about how important that
is a little bit?
Yeah, so I think the tools that we use on our farm
are pretty specialized.
And so they're sequins.
And so specific to the tying weeder, it's a dense harrow.
And so basically, it's going to be really effective at uprooting
weeds.
It's also going to be really effective at collecting debris.
And so if we're coming off of a corn crop,
we'll have a lot of debris from that corn crop
in the previous year.
So we may be unable to use that tying weeder
if we've got too much debris.
And so we have to think about our tillage
that preceding year.
If we're going to plan to use a tying weeder,
we need to be either more aggressive with our tillage
or be mindful if we're going to use a cover crop that we're
managing the residue from that cover crop.
Three-dimensioned truss.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, that's a good way to put it.
So speaking of soil health, one of the things
we were talking about out there, which
is kind of that age-old, as Dr. Cates put,
push-pull of balancing.
If you're going to be using, if you're going to be conventional
and you're using chemicals, you're
kind of doing a biological disturbance of that soil.
If you're doing organics, you're building your biology
and you're not disturbing it biologically,
but you are disturbing it a fair amount structurally.
It's a trade-off that we know that undisturbed soil has
a certain vitality.
And when we disturb it out of necessity for weed control,
there's a certain cost to that.
I think some of the crop rotation,
the utilization of manure, cover crops, those systems
in organic, especially organic, but conventional people
can do that too, that helps offset some
of the negatives of tillage.
But I would say we're always trying
to figure out improvements.
And so can we till differently?
Can we till better?
Can we change our rotation so that our net gain in soil health
is positive?
Yeah, I think that's a good point.
And Tom Connor talks about this a lot.
I've been to his field days too, where in the short term,
he may be doing some harm, quote unquote,
but he looks at it multiple years down the road.
Is he building that soil resiliency
kind of in the long term?
It's also like, I think it's easy to think
of life in binaries, good, bad, black, white.
And most things are gray.
And agriculture really is gray.
And fundamentally, it's an extractive endeavor.
And so good, bad, I'm part of a group called the climate land
leaders, which are a group of landowners, more so
than farmers, that are thinking about stewardship
in a long term framework for climate change.
So one of the tensions that I find in that group is a lot of them
are inclined to do a no-till management system.
But they're heavily relying on atrazine and synthetic inputs
that are actually a much more significant carbon
impact on the environment.
All these things are trade-offs all the time.
And in our context, our conventional neighbors
are tilling the same as we are in terms
of aggressive tillage in the fall.
And so it's not as though our neighbors, at least
in our central Minnesota context,
I can't think of a single no-till farmer in our county.
So it's not as though they're doing better than we are.
So I think I'm careful to think it all exists on a spectrum.
Speaking of climate change, I'm glad you brought that up.
I mean, we've seen the two extremes.
It must make it much more difficult.
The past years, we've really seen that struggle.
And I think you had talked about, Matthew,
this idea that for organic farmers,
it's even more because timing is so key.
You can't just come in with maybe, well, let's talk about it.
I like this kind of the way you describe it.
The conventional farmer has a couple big hammers they can use.
You have a lot of little hammers.
But those little hammers rely on really good timing.
Right.
We're really on the front lines of climate change
as organic farmers.
We're much more vulnerable to those swings.
We don't have the same cover-up tools.
Talk about this hammer.
I like this idea of the little hammers and several little
hammers.
And then the commission will have more access
to a couple big hammers that they can kind of come in.
Right.
I think that's an idea we should credit Sam Oswald for that.
Yeah, I think we think about our weed management as a system.
These little tools that we're applying sequentially
and in sort of an art form approach
to get the results that a single herbicide pass would do.
And we looked at the soybean field.
And the way you described it was,
I thought it looked pretty good.
A little bit of weed issues, but you said,
well, this is an example of in a wet year like this,
there was just a lot of little hammers
we didn't have access to in a situation like that.
Yeah, it's certainly not our prettiest field.
But I think that's probably the most honest field
that you can have.
I think it was really good that we looked at equipment.
Because one of the things I think
where you're trying to strike that balance of maybe
reducing cultivation or using soil disturbance
and keeping that soil intact is you're
using techniques like flame weeding and the weed zapper
with the electrical system.
Those seem like it's a good example of we
are seeing more of these innovations that can maybe
help strike that balance.
I know some people have worked with roller crimping.
That's another way.
Not get swept up on the latest thing.
And it just is a hot trend that isn't really working.
But you really have to pay attention
to how is this going to fit into my system a little bit.
Yeah, as a weed zapper, as an example,
we had a neighbor weed zap for us for a couple of years.
We had some custom hiring done for a few years.
So we're cautious to jump into anything too quickly ourselves.
And I think no silver bullet, maybe silver buckshot,
it's just going to be little pieces.
I would say the technology available to us,
the innovations, it doesn't even have to be technology.
Clever tools that are available are
a result of American innovation, a lot of European components
based on their experience.
I'd have to say the tools that we have available to us
and other organic farmers is more diverse, more sophisticated,
more effective now than it certainly was 30 years ago
when I began.
Give me an idea of what is your general rotation
that you're using right now.
Starting out in transition, we would probably
be first year dry yellow peas.
Harvest those peas, seed a winter wheat.
That would overwinter.
Harvest that winter wheat, apply a cover crop,
cover crop plus some manure, cover crop over winters,
roll into corn, corn soybeans, then maybe another corn crop,
then maybe a small grain crop or an edible bean crop
or something.
Like you said, that diversity really does over time,
helps really build that.
We had a nice panel discussion of marketing.
And that organics has, there's many more options
than there used to be.
And I heard some, I was sitting at lunch
with some folks who were talking about the old days
when they sent a truck off and they didn't know
if they were ever gonna see their check again,
things like that.
But it's gotten a lot better.
But one of the points, really good point you made was
that it is still a little difficult
in that there's not really a futures market
where you can do price discovery and all that.
Can you talk a little bit about some of the challenges
that kind of still remain in organics right now?
Yeah, I think a new organic farmer would struggle
because so much of it is relationships still
that they wouldn't necessarily know
who are the good buyers and bad buyers.
Because there still are good buyers and bad buyers.
There are still people that won't pay
or have some shady practices.
And unless you have that experience,
you're not gonna know.
And that also translates to the contracting terms.
Are they pricing you or not?
And generally there's gonna be a little bit of a premium
within a premium if you have a relationship.
Meaning like you've sold to this buyer many times,
there's a relationship there.
They feel like you're gonna be able to produce what you say.
You're gonna be able to produce the qualities
of what you're gonna say you're gonna be able to do.
And that goes two ways
because we've also had relationships
where the buyer's gonna maybe be a little bit more lenient.
Your moisture instead of 15% is 16%.
Instead of rejecting it,
they're gonna accept that slightly higher moisture.
You know, and that only happens through this sort of
back and forth type of relationship.
And that's difficult if you're starting from zero.
Yeah, so that relationship, that really came through.
Folks were talking about how important that relationship is,
even more so than where you can just take it
to the elevator for conventional, that kind of thing.
I think Matthew's description of the relationships
being important in marketing is also a hallmark of organics
that it's a friendly network.
It's not necessarily competitive.
That there's a great deal of information sharing,
including what are you getting paid for your crop?
How do you market it?
Which would be counter-cultural for much of agriculture.
The organic farmers aren't necessarily more virtuous,
but it's just a friendly network
where there's a lot of cooperation.
I guess this is a question about advice for other folks.
And you had a great thing where you said
people will call you sometimes.
Could you tell me when people call you for say,
yeah, I'm thinking about going organic.
And the first thing you ask them a very important question.
And I think that is a good question.
So can you tell us what you ask them?
This is a question asked in the land of 10,000 lakes.
So let's give it some context too for our listeners in Iowa
that are not so blessed.
My first question is, do you own a fishing boat?
And then the quick answer is yes.
And then I say, well, you're going to have to sell it.
Meaning you're going to work all summer.
I think that's, and this is prime example,
and you're constantly plant like that flow chart,
not flow chart, what'd you call it?
Farm flow.
Farm flow, I like that.
You're going to trade that, Mark, that area.
Yeah, the farm flow shows that you really are going to have to,
and I think you said you're better off
buying an ice house to go ice fishing.
But do you have any other advice that's maybe
a little more specific?
Is it going to just get them to hang up the phone and go,
oh my gosh, I'm never going to do this again?
Yeah, really, the counter to the friendly part about organics
is I would say the mentorship is critical.
And to point to organizations like Marble Seed and the USDA
program and LSP and others that are doing that,
that you're not going to be able to learn everything
from a single field day or a single conference attendance
that each year is so different, that it takes years
to learn the process.
And so having a mentor that's in your context,
either the same cropping, the same geographic,
the same soil type, that is going
to be critical for anybody's success.
And that's been part of our success
is we've had mentors, we've had friends,
we've had people that have helped us.
I certainly saw that today.
I think the lunch is sometimes the most important part
of these field days because folks are getting together
and sharing information.
Some people knew each other, but some had never
heard of each other.
And so yeah, it was really good to see that farmer
to farmer networking.
One of the things I wanted to ask you about, Joe,
is that you said you've been doing organic since 1994.
So that's pretty early in the movement.
It was before we had a national standard and all of that.
I guess I'd like to ask you more about what
you saw in organics.
So you're probably like me a little bit
of someone who came through the farm crisis,
saw the results of that.
What was it about organics specifically
that really you saw that that was maybe the future?
And you've been able to prove it here.
We're several years down the road here now.
Well, part of my background is studying theology
in graduate school.
And people come to their faith story
through all sorts of ways.
The religious community, Catholic, Protestant,
the institutions, the congregations, the individuals
were very much involved in the farm crisis in the 80s,
helping to call out the problem, helping
to support people that were really struggling
through those very difficult years,
and also calling for solutions to preserve the family farm
to heal the environment.
Out of that time, there was a renewed interest
in environmentally friendly farming.
There were private and government programs
that took on women's names.
There was LISA, Low Input, Sustainable Agriculture.
There was CERA, Sustainable Agriculture Research,
Association for Education.
So sort of the society was wrestling with what's
the future look like.
And organic agriculture has been around for a long time.
Europe, of course, has had a richer history than the US.
But there's a lot of experience there.
And out of that time, organics really
started to get a foothold here in the US.
People approached it for philosophical reasons, faith
reasons, economic reasons.
And the economic premium was not as great in the early days
as it is now.
And it's not easy money at all.
I don't know any organic farmer that
cashes a grain check or livestock check
and says, boy, that was easy money.
People earn it.
But it's more of a developed network, a developed economy
now.
So for ourselves, we say we're in organics
for philosophical and economic reasons.
Looking down the road now 30 years,
it must be pretty satisfying to see a son of yours kind
of transitioning into this.
We began this farm out of my wife's and my love of farming
and rural and agriculture and the environment.
We don't have a multi-generation farm
that we have to find somebody within the family to continue.
No, our kids grew up in the farm.
They learned all the wonderful responsibilities and lessons
within farming.
But we had no expectation that our son or daughter would
necessarily go into agriculture.
That was our gig.
And it's been a good life.
So it's wonderful to see people of all ages,
but especially young people, to get involved and offer
important leadership for agriculture,
and in this case, organic agriculture.
It is that whole thing of, is this
going to be a one-off thing?
But like you said, you got this thing started.
You weren't super tied into, since it wasn't something
you had inherited from family, you
didn't feel that responsibility maybe to continue it.
But now it is, like Matthew said,
it's kind of 1.5 generation kind of thing, generational farming.
It is, yeah, you've been able to kind of,
it seems like you're working well together
and you've got this team going.
And there were some young farmers here today
who don't have a whole lot of, there was people
who have a lot of experience.
Some that don't have much experience
and are just looking into it.
And I think that's a sign that they see a future maybe
for something like this.
It's kind of exciting, I think.
It's very exciting.
It's hope for the future.
And I'm delighted for the industry of clean food,
healthy food, organic food.
People are interested in what they're eating
and what their food system is looking like.
For more on organic crop production, see the podcast
page for Ear to the Ground episode 355
at LandStewardshipProject.org.
If you have comments or suggestions about this podcast,
contact Brian DeVore at bdevor at LandStewardshipProject.org
or you can call 612-816-9342.
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Thanks to Laura Borgendal, Western Minnesota musician,
for Ear to the Ground's theme music.
And a special thank you to all of Land Stewardship Project's
members who make initiatives such as this podcast possible.
If you're not a member, visit LandStewardshipProject.org
to learn how you can support LSP.
Speaking of the value of LSP membership,
Joe Fitzgerald shares a long history
with the Land Stewardship Project.
At the end of our interview, he wanted to share these thoughts
as LSP wraps up its 42nd year of working to keep
the land and people together.
I'm grateful for the really over four decades worth
of Land Stewardship Project's leadership here
in the upper Midwest and in Minnesota in particular.
And my own roots with LSP go back many decades.
The organization that I headed up many years ago
was a fiscal agent for LSP when it began.
I served on the board for a number of years.
I've been delighted and proud of what
LSP has done for Minnesota and the upper Midwest,
and really on many national issues as well.
It continues to exert leadership and creativity
for improving communities.
We appreciate those kind words, Joe.
LSP couldn't do it without committed members
such as yourself.
And to all of you out there, thanks for listening.
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