Growing Outside the Box
Bold Practices Deliver Big Results.
Adopting sustainable agricultural practices has required Ed Hegland to get comfortable with the uncomfortable. His practices raise eyebrows at times, and he isn’t always certain of the outcome. But a willingness to experiment, and financial support from conservation programs, have led to continual improvements to his production, costs and soil health.
“I tested strip-till for three years in a row before I bought a strip-till machine,” Hegland says. “Then I tested no-till for three or four years before I got rid of my strip-till machine. I’m not a real risk taker, but I am very flexible to change.”
Initially, economics drove his decisions to adopt more sustainable practices. That hasn’t changed. After earning an agronomy degree from the University of Minnesota, Hegland joined his father on their family farm in Lac qui Parle County in 1992. His father began his career as a county conservationist, so regenerative practices, such as tree lines for erosion control, wildlife habitat and terraces on farm slopes, were well established in the operation.
"...it is becoming more and more important to me to see the environmental benefits of these practices."
At the farm’s helm, Hegland started no-tilling soybeans and evaluating all his production practices. In 2005, a neighbor invested in a strip-till machine and Hegland leased it from him to try it on about 80 acres.
“In 2008 I bought a strip-till machine through the Environmental Quality Incentive Program,” he recalls. “I really liked what I was seeing with less fuel usage, less intensive tillage and less equipment needed.”
At one point, his fuel supplier stopped to ask if he had been replaced by another provider. “No,” Hegland responded. “I started strip-tilling.” The supplier didn’t know what strip-tilling was, so Hegland showed him his strip-tilling machine, explaining that it reduced his need for fuel.
Soon, Hegland started unloading his tillage equipment; he wasn’t using it, and selling it kept him from returning to former, more-intensive tillage practices. In 2013, he upgraded his strip-tillage machine to one that would let him apply variable-rate fertilizer.
That funding came through a five-year contract with the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP).
"That was a really big step for me to take to know that I’m putting the right fertility where it needs to be."
In 2014, Hegland faced an extremely wet spring. He couldn’t plant about 280 acres. His local contact at the National Resources Conservation Services office suggested planting cover crops on those acres.
While new to the practice, Hegland thought he might as well try it. He planted a combination of radishes, annual rye grass and oats. That fall, he strip-tilled into a thick mass of cover crops.
“By the next spring, all of that had died, and I could see the strips perfectly,” he says. “These were not my best fields. But I grew my best corn, by far, that year after those cover crops. A light bulb went off for me.”
Hegland planted cover crops on more of his acres. He signed up for another CSP program and reintroduced wheat to his rotation. He was putting wheat and cover crops on some of his low-productivity ground, and the results were equal to or better than yields on his high-productivity ground.
At that point, Hegland’s CSP contract expired and wasn’t renewed. But he knew the conservation practices paid, even without USDA’s financial assistance. He started planting cereal rye as a cover crop across all his 1,800 acres. He also transitioned to no-till, allowing him to sell his trusted strip-till machine.
“My fields look awful until after the Fourth of July,” Hegland says. “But then I see other people’s fields start to taper off in August and mine are just starting to take off. People aren’t comfortable with that. I’ve had people tell me if their fields looked like mine, their landlords would take them away because they’d be embarrassed. Well, luckily, mine haven’t done that.”
Some of his comfort comes from understanding the benefits of his practices. “I have one person who works part-time for me. To be able to farm the acres I farm with just one and a half people says a lot about the labor savings.”
Hegland is always on the lookout for conservation programs that will aid him in his sustainability journey. Last year, he expected to enroll in a program with Farmers for Soil Health. For that program, he simply had to verify he had planted 1,000 acres of cover crops.
“It was an easy verification process, and they would pay $25 an acre for those 1,000 acres,” he says. “For the next year, if I continued, it would be $15 an acre, and then the third year, it’s $10 an acre. It was a great program, and the only thing I had to change was increase my seeding rate of cover crops, which I wanted to do anyway.”
In the meantime, Hegland was accepted to a new, five-year CSP contract that requires him to make a few agronomic changes and provides up to $40,000 in payments per year.
“Farmers for Soil Health is a good program, but this CSP program is a longer-term program with more funding,” he says. “I will surely accept and look for other programs that meet my goals.”
Producers like Hegland who have used conservation practices for many years face an additional challenge. Some programs and companies pay only for new practices or acres. This is common among companies offering producers carbon credit contracts; these typically apply to only “additive” practices. This can feel like a penalty to early adopters, and programs like Farmers for Soil Health have begun taking steps to address this concern in the agricultural industry.
"I now have less equipment, use much less fuel and need less labor."
But in the end, Hegland says, “I’m doing this for my own reasons and for economic benefits. These practices work, and they have allowed me time to go see my kids at track meets and baseball games in the spring and football games in the fall because of that reduced labor requirement. That is irreplaceable time.”
“And it is great to see less erosion and all the turkeys, pheasants, deer and birds in my fields because of the cover crops and other changes I’ve made. Farmers oftentimes get painted with a broad brush of mining the land. But I think all of us are trying to do the right thing. Many of us are really exploring different ways to do that.”
For more on how we and our customer-owners support a more sustainable agriculture industry, read our 2024 Sustainability Report.
