Spring Planning 0428

Burras:

Glaciers

nurtured life and built soil

By DARCY DOUGHERTY MAULSBY

Ever wondered why?

It goes much deeper than the prairies that once covered the state.

“Iowa’s soils start with glaciers that moved across this region thousands of years ago,” noted Dr. C. Lee Burras, a

1010 Main Street • Hull, IA Phone (712) 439-1722 or 800-462-6604

professor of agronomy at Iowa State University. “Glaciers are huge masses of flowing ice that have shaped our world.”

Thousands of years ago, Iowa was covered by a series of glaciers. Glaciers are akin to a river with a turbulent current, Burras added. “The bottom of all that moving ice breaks rocks free. Rocks break apart. When the glaciers got far enough south of the North Pole, they started to melt, and all that

sediment dropped out.”

The most recent glacier that pushed into Iowa (roughly 15,000 years ago) created the Des Moines Lobe, which covers all or parts of 22 counties in north-central, northwest, west-central Iowa and central Iowa. The level to gently rolling land in the Des Moines Lobe is intensively cropped.

THE MOST RECENT glacier that pushed into Iowa (roughly 15,000 years ago) created the fertile Des Moines Lobe and left about 600 billion tons of loess in Iowa. The farm shown here is located in the Loess Hills of western Iowa. See SOIL, Page 5D

-Farm News photo by Darcy Dougherty Maulsby

Wergin Good Farm Neighbor

By DOUG CLOUGH

Farm News writer

HOLSTEIN — Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig presented the Wergin Good Farm Neighbor Award to the Volkert family during a recognition event at Cobblestone Inn on April 13.

The Volkerts are the 170th farm family to receive the award, which is named in memory of Gary Wergin, a long-time WHO Radio farm broadcaster who helped to create the award.

Owned and operated by brothers Lane and the late Larry “Louie” Volkert and their families, the Volkert brothers started farming in 1970 upon Lane and Louie’s return from the Vietnam War.

Naig praised the Volkerts for their farm’s contribution to the well-being of Holstein and the surrounding communities. “We are celebrating a farm family ... a farm operation,” said Naig, “but look who’s in the room. There are bankers, input suppliers, service providers, and insurance agents. All kinds of folks who are connected to just one farm. Think of all the spokes of the wheel, the tractors, the trucking, and the feed. That’s the impact of a family farm and agriculture in our state.”

The Volkerts have been longtime members of the Ida County Cattlemen, Iowa Cattlemen's Association, and the Iowa Corn Growers Association. They have belonged to St. Paul Lutheran Church in Holstein where they have served in various positions on the church council and committees. The brothers both belonged to the American Legion Post 225. Lane served on the Galva-Holstein School Board

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for six years, the Ida County Farm Bureau Board, and the Ida County Planning and Zoning Commission.

Prior to his passing, Louie served on the Holstein Cooperative Elevator Board for six years and was a trustee in the Battle Township for many years.

Lane and Louie were named Outstanding Young Farmers in 1980 by the Jaycees. In 1990, they were named the winners of the Ida County Conservation Award in the Quad States Conservation Awards Program.

“The Volkerts have not only been good to the community,” said Naig. “They have also been good stewards of their land and livestock. They have

Volkerts farm family becomes 170th family to receive award

demonstrated a high level of care for their animals and take pride in ensuring consumers have good protein at their dinner table. They utilize cornstalk bales for bedding and have put in place modern working facilities with tubs, hydraulic chutes, and animal-friendly loading facilities. Iowa is blessed to have great farm families like the Volkerts, and I am pleased to present them with the Wergin Good Farm Neighbor Award.”

The Volkert brothers grew up on the family farm, which has been in the family for 117 years, with their farm receiving its Century Farm recognition in 2006. The Volkerts raise corn, soybeans, and hay while also

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feeding their cattle and hogs. They incorporate conservation into all aspects of their operation by utilizing terraces, no-till, minimum till, grassed waterways, and headlands. They have built retaining walls into cattle yards, which work in coordination with a catch basin and a filter strip.

Naig said that it was important to gain perspective concerning how America’s farmers affect life in our country.

“Agriculture is so essential and so foundational to America’s way of life,” said Naig. “We spend the least amount of income as a percentage of any country in the world. We have the safest, most abundant food supply in the world. If you’re spending 40% of

your income versus 11%, what can’t you do? You can’t invest. You certainly can’t think about sending a child to college or starting a business, buying a car, or going on vacation — or giving to charity. We need to be thinking about how this is said today and how it can be communicated well into the future. This is what we are celebrating today.”

Nearly 100 friends and family attended the event honoring the Volkerts. The award, which recognizes Iowa livestock farmers who take pride in caring for the environment and their livestock, is made possible by the Coalition to Support Iowa Farmers (CSIF) and The Big Show on WHO Radio.

-Farm News photo by Doug Clough

THE VOLKERTS OF HOLSTEIN IN IDA COUNTY were awarded the Wergin Good Farm Neighbor Award on April 13. Lane and the late Larry Louie Volkert began farming in 1970 after returning from service in the Vietnam War; the farm has been in the Volkert family for 117 years, earning Century Farm status in 2006. Above, from left to right, are Anne Zobel, Jann Murphy, Juli Johnson, Lori Volkert, Lane Volkert, Secretary Mike Naig, Janet Volkert, Audra O'Neil, and Ashley Trost.

ISU's Alpha Gamma Rho

By DOUG CLOUGH

Farm News writer

AMES — Bob Butcher of Holstein, by any standard, has led a purposeful, meaningful, and successful life in agriculture.

Bob’s parents, Robert and Betty, raised hogs, chickens, cattle and dairy cows on their Ida County farm where Butcher first drove a John Deere G model two-cylinder tractor in 1958. He has been a cattleman all his adult life — active in and supportive of 4-H — and is now transitioning his care for livestock to sons Andrew and Ben. Butcher has also been in the ag lending industry since 1974 — the same year he graduated from ISU with an animal science degree — advancing to CEO and president of Community Bank in Holstein, and then managing the transition to Availa Bank where he is the Holstein market president. During his banking tenure, Butcher has enjoyed helping at the hog shows at the Ida County Fair and is a strong supporter of the Ida County 4-H livestock auction. He's also an Iowa Cattlemen's Association member, and past president of both the 4-H Foundation and ISU Ag Endowment Board.

At the top of a long list of life’s blessings, Butcher cites his decision to be a member of the Alpha Gamma Rho (AGR) fraternity.

“When I went to ISU, I knew I wanted to go to Ames and earn an ag degree,” said Butcher. “I knew it would be something to do with the livestock industry. I went down there and was introduced to some guys from AGR, which I didn’t know too much about at the time. I ended up joining, and it was one of the best decisions I ever made.”

AGR is a professional and social fraternity where all members have related agricultural career interests. Specifically, their website notes, AGR is for young men pursuing any career related to agriculture, food or fiber industries.

The site also is clear that there is no pledging at AGR; everyone joins as an equal member. AGR also touts that their fraternity fosters leadership, recognizing the need to develop those skills and to take part in fraternity and university activities, including campus clubs, organizations, or student government.

“The fraternity house holds over 80 guys, and we all had to have an ag major to join,” said Butcher, whose two sons are also AGR alumni. “After class or lunch, we always had somebody to talk to because we had something in common. I’ve made lifelong friends

whose weddings I’ve attended, and who I see at alumni functions. Of course, I’ve become a lifelong ISU football and basketball fan. AGR also gave me the opportunity to be on the Livestock Judging Team and business manager for the annual VEISHEA celebration.

“What I’m most proud of is that my experience was so good, that as each Galva-Holstein — now Ridge View — class would graduate, I would learn that one or two kids were going to Ames — kids that I had known through 4-H

See ALPHA, Page 7D

-Submitted photos BECAUSE OF HIS GOOD EXPERIENCE with Alpha Gamma Rho, Bob Butcher has gone on to encourage other students going into agriculture to consider joining the fraternity, which is specifically for young men pursuing any career related to agriculture, food or fiber industries. Tate Phillips, pictured above, is one of three former Ridge View students currently attending Iowa State University who is an Alpha Gamma Rho member.

Bob Butcher

In the world of glaciers, the one that formed the Des Moines Lobe was a tiny bit of ice.

“From a human perspective, however, it was huge,” said Burras, who discussed the history of Iowa’s soils during an Iowa Learning Farms webinar earlier this year. “The Des Moines Lobe covers about 12,000 to 14,000 square miles. In certain places, it’s well over 100 feet thick. That tiny bit of ice left us more than 800 billion tons of ground-up sediment that help make our soils so productive in parts of Iowa.”

Nurturing life, building soil

As glaciers moved into the region that would become Iowa, they kept bringing new material that could nurture life and build soil. The glaciers stopped in Iowa thousands of years ago, because this is the “midway” point between the North Pole and the equator, Burras said.

“Iowa is where glaciers fall apart.”

What occurred “off glacier” is also key to understanding Iowa’s soils, Burras added. Every time a glacier pushed into Iowa, it would ablate (meaning a lot of melting occurred), so there was a huge discharge every summer.

“Think of a nearby stream you can hop across,” Burras said. “Back when a glacier was feeding it, that stream was the size of the Mississippi River.”

That water carried boulders, rocks and other minerals. This flow froze in the winter. Sand and gravel would fill the valleys on the landscape. As intense winds blew across Iowa, this whipped that material in the valleys upward and deposited loess on the upland. In western Iowa, soils like Galva, Primghar and Sac were formed from loess blowing northeast.

“The most recent glacier, which created the Des Moines Lobe, left about 600 billion tons of loess in Iowa,” Burras said. “If you go over to Sioux City, there’s well over 100 feet of loess in that area.”

Why isn’t New England part of the Corn Belt?

The glacial boundary (the region representing the farthest advance of a glacier that has retreated) corresponds with America’s Corn Belt. Glaciers also covered New England, Burras said, so why isn’t that area part of the Corn Belt?

Those glaciers pushed over a different type of bedrock in

New England. “They didn’t pick up the minerals that are essential for crop production,” Burras explained. “Our glaciers overrode a lot of limestone and feldspars (groups of minerals that contain calcium, magnesium or potassium). Those rocks the glaciers ‘stole’ from Canada had exactly the right materials to turn into great soils in Iowa.”

From a soil classification perspective, Iowa has six soil orders, 10 major soil regions and 507 soil series (including locally named soils like Fayette or Tama). Yet it all comes down to two major groupings of soils — mollisols, which correspond

to areas that were prairie ecosystems for thousands of years, and alfisols, which occur where there were major forest areas for thousands of years, usually near river valleys.

“Both mollisols and alfisols are incredibly productive soils naturally,” Burras said. “They are inherently fertile throughout the soil profile. It all goes back to the geology of the parent materials of those soils.”

Parent material can include glacial till in the Des Moines Lobe (where Clarion, Nicollet and Webster soils are common), deep loess (in the Loess Hills) and alluvium (in the Missouri River Valley).

“The glaciers gave us our fundamental landscapes and the fundamental rooting material that plants grow in,” Burras said. “As that rooting material weathers, it releases nutrients naturally. Any time you expose fresh sediment, living organisms capitalize on the landscape.”

Those living organisms range from soil microbes to plants. As these organisms grow and die, this adds organic matter and influences the plants that can grow in the soil.

Those plants have changed through the centuries. Once the glaciers receded and loess stopped being deposited, four major climate-ecosystem “waves” progressively moved across the region that would become Iowa, including tundra/ conifer forest to deciduous forest to prairie to deciduous

See SOIL, Page 7D

-Farm News photo by Darcy Dougherty Maulsby

DURING HIS CAREER, Dr. C. Lee Burras, a professor of agronomy at Iowa State University, has presented a number of programs about Iowa's amazing soils. He is shown here visiting with audience members at a Practical Farmers of Iowa meeting in Ames about five years ago.

“The most recent glacier, which created the Des Moines Lobe, left about 600 billion tons of loess in Iowa. If you go over to Sioux City, there’s well over 100 feet of loess in that area.”

DR. C. LEE BURRAS Professor of agronomy at Iowa State University

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Soil

Continued from Page 5D

forests, Burras said.

“The world never stays the same,” he said. “The landscape and soils evolve due to the weather, the vegetation, and the way the weather and vegetation interact with the geology.”

“We see what we know”

It’s easy to forget this history, however, and overlook these changes, since “we see what we know,” Burras said. He cites the example of an aerial photo taken northwest of Jewell in Hamilton County.

He points out that there’s a big blob in the middle of the picture that looks quite different from the surrounding landscape. That large blob was Lake Cairo, which was drained years ago. The former 1,300-acre former lake is now farmland that grows corn and soybeans, according to Prairie Rivers of Iowa. Lake Cairo is one example of countless drainage projects that shifted the ecology of Iowa, setting into motion changes that would affect the state’s communities, economy and the environment for decades to come.

“We often think something doesn’t matter if we can’t see it,” Burras said. “When I take people out to where Lake Cairo used to be, for example, they only see

crop fields.”

Burras acknowledges that land in Iowa is farmed intensely, and the goal is to farm it even more intensively in the future.

“I always have to ask myself, ‘How important is natural pedology [soil science focused on the formation, nature, ecology, and classification of soil], when most people in Iowa see soils as economic features that are to be intensely managed?’”

Most people who have questions about soil in Iowa ask Burras about the Corn Suitability Rating index (CSR2), which provides valuable insights into soil’s potential productivity.

“People want to know how good or bad a soil is for growing corn or other crops,” Burras said. “They also want to know how can they manage that soil to keep yields going up.”

To increase yields, farmers change the soil, said Burras, citing tons of manure, nutrients and other amendments that farmers have added to the soil through the decades. “We’ve been intensely modifying our soils in Iowa for 190 years, and we’re going to keep modifying the soil. Iowa has incredible soils that continue to change.”

DR. C. LEE BURRAS, a professor of agronomy at Iowa State University, discussed the history of Iowa’s soils during the Iowa Learning Farms webinar called "How Did We Get Such Great Land?" earlier this year.

Alpha Continued from Page 4D

— and I would encourage them to look at AGR. Since 1970, we’ve had about 30 rural Ida County kids who wanted to stay in agriculture, go on to Iowa State and became AGRs. Right now, there are three students in AGR, and I have my eye on a couple more for next year.”

Tate Phillips is one of those three students attending ISU who is an AGR member. His father Curt Phillips is a crop and livestock farmer, and his mother Kristal Phillips is a District Associate Judge in Judicial District 3.

“Honestly, I don’t know if I’d be in college still if it wasn’t for being in AGR,” said Phillips. “Right away, I had 90 friends on campus who would do anything for me. I’ve gained better study practices with AGR. Most of us have farm backgrounds and the rest have been in 4-H or just want to get started in agriculture. Having been active on my parents’ farm, I came to ISU with quite a bit of practical farming experience.

“Classes like ‘Forages’ and ‘Nutrition’ have been beneficial since I was mostly interested in the livestock aspect of our operation. AGR, however, has provided me with many real-world applications to farming through involvement in Collegiate Cattlemen, Iowa Corn Growers, and Farm Operations Club. I was able to meet and talk with other farming professionals as well as with Ag Secretary Mike Naig through these experiences.”

Phillips will graduate with a degree in animal science in the spring of 2024. Butcher would like to see him pursue another opportunity in addition to farming.

“I try to visit with Tate, and the other young men I’ve encouraged to be part of AGR, as often as I can,” said Butcher.

“I’ve talked to him about the opportunities in our

“Honestly, I don’t know if I’d be in college still if it wasn’t for being in AGR. Right away, I had 90 friends on campus who would do anything for me. I’ve gained better study practices with AGR. Most of us have farm backgrounds and the rest have been in 4-H or just want to get started in agriculture.

town to become a lawyer. There is a strong need for rural ag people in the legal profession. He may or may not pursue that avenue; it’s up to him, but he's aware of the opportunity.”

Phillips, who is eager to get back to the family’s cattle operation, is considering taking the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) this summer but won’t commit to any prospect beyond his desire to farm.

“AGR has opened a lot of doors for me,” said Phillips. “Being part of this tradition has taught me to look at all opportunities with an open mind, so I’m not ruling out anything.”

-Farm News photos by Darcy Dougherty Maulsby

IOWA’S RICH SOILS formed after glaciers moved across this region thousands of years ago.

“The world never stays the same. The landscape and soils evolve due to the weather, the vegetation, and the way the weather and vegetation interact with the geology.”

DR. C. LEE BURRAS Professor of agronomy at Iowa State University

TATE PHILLIPS ISU student and Alpha Gamma Rho member