A True Innovator

Rodney Backhaus
Westside, Iowa

A Successful Decision

Since 1986, Rodney Backhaus has been a no-till farmer: “Yes, we were actually doing [no-till] already before the Farm Bill came out and said that everybody was supposed to do this stuff.” Rodney graduated from Iowa State University in 1988 with a B.S. in Agriculture Studies, which he completed during four spring semesters from 1985 to 1988 while he also farmed at home. Through his work at Iowa State, he decided that he wanted to no-till the family farm. His family’s initial skepticism about this farming practice did not last long, as Rodney proved to be successful.

Now, Rodney is not the only no-till farmer in the area: “The other thing that is unique about this area is that there are quite a few guys who are doing it continuous like me, continuous no-till…We share ideas and see what’s done different from me this year, last year, something.” These strong social networks help Rodney to reflect on his practices and improve on them for the next year, as well as to help others learn from his past experiences.

“I do”

Rodney has strong ties with his family as well, living within walking distance of his parents. Until recently, Rodney had been a bachelor all of his life. This will all change soon, as he is engaged to be married to Kristin, who he met at the Ethanol plant. The wedding is set for January 8, 2005, and as Rodney pointed out, it is the same day as “Elvis’s birthday, and my best man’s birthday too.” Rodney and Kristin began dating shortly after he was interviewed on CNN, “They were in Iowa for the caucuses and they wanted to do an up-beat story on the farm economy.”

After CNN was directed to Manning Iowa, they were sent by one of the bankers to Rodney’s farm. During the interview, it came out that Rodney was “looking for a wife,” which resulted in a lot of teasing, “they [gave] me a hard time around town…going national looking for a wife.”

The interview may or may not have helped secure a date with Kristin, but no matter what, Rodney is definitely happy about their engagement.

Not a “big guy”

Rodney owns a portion of land, and he also share crops and cash rents land in the area, equaling 2,500 acres of land that he farms. Rodney, along with his father, Dennis, and his brother, Jerry are the main sources of labor on the farms. Dennis has never liked to hire help, so they try to complete the work themselves if it is possible. Jerry is a mechanic in Carroll, and he also feeds cattle, so his ability to work at the farm is limited at times. When it comes to share cropping versus cash renting land, Rodney says one is not really better than the other because it mainly “depends on the landlord.”

In cash-renting, the landlord simply rents the land and the farmer buys the seed and harvests the crop, without any of it going to the landlord. In a crop-share agreement, the landowner and the farmer splits the inputs and outputs fifty-fifty, “We don’t pay them any cash rent for the land, but…[the landowner] pays half of the seed and the fertilizer and chemicals and we pay the other half. Then we do all the work on it, [and] we split the crop down the middle.”

From Rodney’s perspective, sharecropping is a lower risk because “you basically share in the crop whether it is a good or bad crop.” Sometimes, renters and landlords can be dishonest, and “it’s a tough relationship to build up.”

Rodney raises contracted hogs farrow to finish for Farmland and then uses the manure from the hogs to fertilize his crops in fall. His manure is placed on top of corn stalks, which is not a usual practice by many farmers, which he explains, “It is after the corn is harvested that I put it on…My theory is with the no-till that the nitrogen in the manure helps break down the corn stalks [and] the residue that is left over helps…microbial activity.”

Rodney sells his corn to Tall Corn Ethanol, the ethanol plant in Coon Rapids, Iowa, of which Rodney is the Secretary and on the Board of Directors. Rodney also serves on the Board of Directors for the Wallace Foundation, which he finds very helpful in his farming practices, “I think that working with the Wallace Foundation has helped me more in [strategic planning] than anything else…some of those skills carried over into when we went and raised money for the Ethanol plant.”

Rodney, his brother Jerry, and their father invested in the Ethanol plant in Coon Rapids in an attempt to farm smarter and “do better than what we’ve got already because I don’t want to become one of the big guys.”

Rodney has been approached by a few farmland owners who want him to rent and farm their land, which sometimes causes conflict with other farmers in the area who see him as one of the “big guys.” However, as Rodney points out, he “did not go after this ground.” Rodney has taught others in the area about no-till farming. The fact that landowners actually approached him to farm their land is a credit to his history of successful farming practices.

In recent years, Rodney has been part of a pilot project that was put together by Farmland, Smithfield EPA, and USDA that requires completion of a comprehensive nutrient management plan (CNMP) that fits well with his farming practices: “It’s pretty easy for me to complete this CNMP because everything fits for us—the no-till, the hog manure we put on the no-till ground. There’s virtually no water loss, so there’s no erosion or nothing that’s going down the stream.”

The focus of this pilot project is to make sure that farmers monitor their own farming practices to ensure they are not polluting the water, “The public in general is just getting more aware of…nutrients that are being washed off of these fields and getting in to the water ways and water supplies, and you get these hypoxia zones that are killing fish down, places like the Gulf of Mexico…nothing can live in there because there is so much polluted water that can come in there, and they started to point the fingers at the farmers and we are trying to be proactive about this, monitoring ourselves, instead of having the government tell us what we can and can’t do.”

“This is what I always wanted to do”

Rodney’s overall goal, through no-till farming, is to “improve the soil” and he tries to show other farmers around him the benefits of no-till farming. However, one of the obstacles that farmers are up against is the investment they have already made in their farm equipment, and they do not want to lose any money by having to change to new equipment. Rodney also sees a mental barrier for many farmers because “[t]hey have to completely change the way that they are thinking, but, I think, they just don’t know how to think about why it should work.”

For Rodney, no-till as well as an integrated farming system, has paid off, pointing out that the farm that has been continuous no-till since 1986 has optimum soil fertility levels, and Rodney is proud to add, “and I did it all with no-till.” For Rodney no-till farming is economically and environmentally smart, “There [are] just so many benefits to doing it that way…we learn a little bit more every year about why it’s better.”

Farming, for Rodney, can be challenging, as he laments about controlling weeds and rodents. However, he is clearly passionate about his work, “This is what I always wanted to do—farm—and do it well. I guess I just enjoy it.”

North Central Regional Center for Rural Development
Iowa State University
107 Curtiss Hall
Ames, IA 50011-1050
(515) 294-8321, (515) 294-3180 fax

For questions, comments or concerns about the NCRCRD website, contact khetland@iastate.edu.

Last updated September 28, 2005