AgGuide Saturday, August 29, 2020
PAGE 2 | AGRICULTURE | SATURDAY, AUGUST 29, 2020
ALMANAC PREDICTS A SNOWY WINTER By Sarah Stultz
sarah.stultz@albertleatribune.com
Minnesota is known for its winters, but will this year’s winter be mild, or will it be one for the record books? The Old Farmer’s Almanac released its forecast for the 2020-21 winter, and for the Upper Midwest it is forecasting above normal snowfall. It says the snowiest period will be in late December, early and late January, late February and early March. Winter temperatures will be warmer than average in the region; however, the coldest periods will come in December, as well as late January and late February, according to the predictions. The Upper Midwest includes Minnesota, Wisconsin, parts of Michigan and parts of North and South Dakota. In the Heartland, which includes Iowa, snowfall is predicted to be below normal in most places. People there can expect a mild winter with winter temperatures above normal on average. Across the country, The Old Farmer’s Almanac predicts that recent warming trends will dominate the eastern and north parts of the United States, with The Old Farmer’s Almanac predicts an above average snowfall this winter for the Upper Midwest. PROVIDED below-normal average temperatures limited to the western part of the nation. Uncommonly chilly temperatures will be limited mostly to the western states and northeastern New England. Regarding precipitation, people should expect “wet” to be a wintertime constant, with rain or average to below-average snowfall to be a standard throughout most of the country. The Old Farmer’s Almanac website
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SATURDAY, AUGUST 29, 2020 | AGRICULTURE | PAGE 3
Providing more mental health resources for all farmers By Colleen Harrison
colleen.harrison@albertleatribune.com
Mental health has become more of a focus nationwide, and the agricultural industry has focused on mental health services over the past decade as well. Matt McDevitt is an ag finance supervisor with the Minnesota Department of Agriculture. While he works a lot with farmers on loans and other financial matters, he said mental health comes with that territory as well. With prices and commodities — their products going for too small a price — being an issue for farmers, added stress has come along with dropping prices. “That’s becoming a big struggle financially,” McDevitt said. He said the drop in prices or lull in other aspects forces farmers to sometimes start using their financial reserves or to borrow more from lenders. When things start to worsen even more financially, then lenders start to put liens on property or other assets in the farmer’s possession. McDevitt said weather was an issue last year, and that it has still had some lingering effects on this year’s markets as well, even with 2020’s weather being generally beneficial for crop yields. Another potential stressor for farmers has been the average age of farmers in Minnesota. McDevitt said its generally on the older side, so more farmers are either struggling with age limitations or are under the stress of transitioning their operations over to either a younger generation in their family or a new operator all together. “Most farmers, that’s what they love to do,” McDevitt said. “They want to do it until the day they die.” In addition to the routine potential stressors of the job, COVID-19 added its own set of problems to the mix for farmers. While affecting market prices, at one point multiple meat packing plants shut down, causing a backlog for farmers with animals that needed to go to slaughter. Some farmers had to slaughter their own animals and essentially throw them out, or were docked in prices when their livestock was able to be processed because the animals were too large, according to farmers advocate Wayne Pike. He said the dairy market was significantly affected by schools being closed, as they’re a major consumer of milk. He said that depression and other mental health issues being talked about more in general has helped farmers be more open to seeking help. When they do, he believes it helps them to realize they’re not alone, and the issues they’re
The Minnesota Farm & Rural Helpline can be reached by phone at 833-600-2670, by texting FARMSTRESS to 898211 or by emailing farmstress@state.mn.us and is available 24/7. PROVIDED struggling with are difficult to many others in the industry. The Minnesota Farm & Rural Helpline has been around for at least 10 to 12 years, McDevitt said. While there have been some minor changes due to the helpline being manned by a different contractor, it is still available and still there to help those in need in the agriculture industry, and has grown considerably in recent years due to increased usage. The confidential helpline can be reached by phone at 833-600-2670, by texting FARMSTRESS to 898211 or by emailing farmstress@state.mn.us and is available 24/7. The growing need for mental health
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services in rural and agriculture communities has led farm advocates around the state of Minnesota to recognize more and more when their clients need to be put in touch with those services, McDevitt said. Advocates are meant to make sure farmers know their rights, help them with mediation if it comes up and help them work through financial or any other issues that come up while working in the industry. Meetings and listening sessions were held in different parts of the state before the pandemic to let farmers and other ag workers know the services that were available and the different resources at their disposal. McDevitt said many of those meetings
maxed out their attendance limits, as everyone from bankers, nurses and pastors to social workers and doctors stopped in to find out how they could assist the farming community. While the industry has never been an easy one, McDevitt said it has become more complicated over the years. Farms have grown in size exponentially, with much more space, equipment and materials for farmers to manage, along with competition from corporate farms. “Farmers by nature tend to be very tough and want to handle everything on their own. It can get very overwhelming,” he said. “People are there to help and want to help.”
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PAGE 4 | AGRICULTURE | SATURDAY, AUGUST 29, 2020
Research plot hopes to pave the way for a sustainable future By Eric Johnson
news@albertleatribune.com
In June of this year, Northern Country Co-op held a ribbon cutting for a new grain bin it was building that would substantially up the Lansing facilities storage capacity. At the same time, it gave them a chance to talk about an innovative project just on the edge of Lansing that will hopefully pave the way for a cleaner future through a unique research plot. The Sustainable Answer Acreage is paving the way for sustainable farming practices by bringing together the worlds of farming, conservation, education and science on eight acres of land. The research plot has 18 different test plots and each plot has three wells to pull water samples. “What we’re trying to do is use different farming techniques to minimize the nitrate leakage into the groundwater,” said Northern Co-op Regional Manager Jeff Irvin on that sunny June day. “We’re trying to figure out ways to minimize our footprint.” What makes this research plot particularly special is the educational component. Agriculture students at Riverland Community College, assigned PhD
Visitors to the Sustainable Answer Acre just west of Lansing in June learn about the goal of the plot of land in order to study soil health as well as working toward conservation. ERIC JOHNSON/ALBERT LEA TRIBUNE students from the University of Minnesota and undergraduate students from the University of Wisconsin-River Falls all have access to the plot. But more than that, they have an active role in taking and analyzing the
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data drawn from the plot. It’s real world experience in a classroom setting. “Having the Sustainable Answer Acre near Lansing provides ag science majors the opportunity to take what they learn in a classroom and apply it to the real
world setting,” said Riverland ag instructor Nick Schiltz. “Having a real life farm to discuss things like soil structure and soil texture allows us to have conversations as students in the industry.” It is a goal of the SAA to accumulate data from a total of 10 years. In particular, the SAA is attempting to find a middle ground on soil health by monitoring the effects of nitrates being used as fertilizer that eventually seep into the groundwater. To that end, The SAA also involves the Mower County Soil & Water Conservation District. Steve Lawler, a research specialist at the SWCD, has worked with Schiltz and the ag students in this capacity as well as the school’s soil labs. He is a major proponent of what the plot of land not only means to farmers and conservationists, but to the students themselves as a hands-on educational process. “It provides basic on-farm experience when it comes to agronomy,” Lawler
SATURDAY. AUGUST 29, 2020 | AGRICULTURE | PAGE 5
Nick Schiltz, Riverland Community College agricultural science instructor and program coordinator, saw the Sustainable Answer Acre as an important resource for Riverland students. ERIC JOHNSON/ALBERT LEA TRIBUNE said. “We have the typical rotations and crop methods and even new soil health measures all in one spot.” By including the SAA directly into the curriculum, students will gain a better understanding of both proper soil health and conservation when they leave school. That further understanding promises to be a lasting one as the opportunities the SAA provide could be a versatile source of education down the line, past the 10year study. This includes everything from soil health practices all the way through resilient erosion. “We can share that with students,” Lawler said. “It’s an on-site opportunity to study those opportunities. We don’t have to worry about a research site. The co-op wants us to do that. It’s like having it in the backyard.” Meanwhile, students will take those
application opportunities back to the classroom not only for a grade, but a better understanding. “Students are beginning to talk about conservation and what it means to them,” Schiltz said. “Before conservation might have been foreign to them. Now they begin to appreciate what conservation really is. We go out and the class learns about different mixes of cover crops and field settings, what that really looks like.” Along with knowledge, Schiltz hopes the students can come away with a couple different things. “First, I hope they understand the intricate nuances of soil sciences, working on the front line and helping farmers with data center research,” he said. The second thing is he hopes they get that they “can be part of this research in Mower County.”
With such a resource like the Sustainable Answer Acre so close, the project is a boon to Riverland Community College ag students.
PAGE 6 | AGRICULTURE | SATURDAY, AUGUST 29, 2020
Family farm brings home-raised meats, locally sourced products to table By Tyler Julson
tyler.julson@albertleatribune.com
After moving back to Bricelyn from South Dakota in 2018, Erika and Brandon Goette also brought along their business of raising home-grown meats and selling them to local residents and businesses. What started as a business dedicated to raising and selling cuts of lamb quickly grew to include beef and many other locally sourced products after the move to Bricelyn. The full list of products now includes many different cuts of lamb, beef, pork and chicken, as well as farm fresh eggs, cheese and gelato. “My husband and I raise all of the lamb and beef on our farm,” Erika Goette said. “Then we work with some other local,
younger producers to source the pork, eggs and chickens, and the cheese, gelato and sorbet all comes from a friend of ours in southwestern Wisconsin.” With the exception of the chickens, Goette Farms has all of its meat processed by Conger Meat Market, meaning that all cuts are USDA inspected. “We try to use local as much as humanly possible because if we don’t, we don’t know if it’s going to be there when we need it,” Erika Goette said. Along with their children — Kora, 2, and Kaleb, 1 — Erika and Brandon Goette moved to Brandon’s grandfather’s hom near Bricelyn in August 2018. Erika Goette said there hadn’t been livestock on the farm in over 25 years and a lot of work had to be done in order to get
Goette Farms sells products ranging from various cuts of beef, lamb, pork and chicken to cheeses, farm fresh eggs and gelato.
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Erika and Brandon Goette moved from South Dakota to Bricelyn in August 2018 along with their Goette Farms business, which aims to provide locally raised and sourced products. PROVIDED
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SATURDAY, AUGUST 29, 2020 | AGRICULTURE | PAGE 7 yards built for the cattle and sheep. On top of the hours it took to get the farm in the right condition and managing schedules with a young family, Erika Goette said it was a challenge trying to sort things out once the pandemic started. First starting to offer cuts of beef in March, right before the major outbreak started, Goette Farms saw the need for beef rise and business grow in that sector. However, they also sell lamb cuts to several restaurants in Minnesota, Iowa, and the Dakotas, where they saw a decrease in demand when restaurants were forced to close due to COVID-19. “We were lucky,” Erika Goette said. “We kind of saw the writing on the wall and were able to get processing dates through the end of the year in a timely manner. We personally are OK on that side of things, but I know there are a lot of other producers who are struggling to find processing dates.” Overall, Erika Goette said business has grown exponentially since they began operations. Customers wanting to purchase any of Goette Farms’ products are encouraged to order from their website at goettefarms. grazecart.com/ and pick up their products from one of their available
“We try to use local as much as humanly possible because if we don’t, we don’t know if it’s going to be there when we need it.”
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— Erika Goette of Goette Farms pickup days. Erika Goette said they are in the CCF Bank parking lot in Albert Lea from 3:30 to 6 p.m. every Tuesday and there is usually someone at the farm on the weekends who is happy to accommodate as long as an appointment is made ahead of time. As for the future, Erika Goette said she hopes to pick up a few more restaurants as well as expand to include more cities and times for pickups. Erika Goette said the family takes pride in the fact that they can provide locally sourced products, and that all of their customers are happy they are able to know exactly where their food is coming from.
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PAGE 8 | AGRICULTURE | SATURDAY, AUGUST 29, 2020