Learning curve for farmers changing management practices

LELAND, Ill. — Incorporating cover crops into their regenerative farming system has been a learning process for the Riskedal family this spring.

“A large majority of our beans were planted into standing rye that will be terminated with a herbicide,” said Stephen Riskedal, who farms together with his dad, Brad, and his grandfather, Steve.

Most of the fields were sprayed with a herbicide to kill the rye after the beans had emerged.

“In the future we’re going to try to use the roller crimper more, but this year we didn’t have a good enough rye stand,” Stephen said. “The rye is falling down after being sprayed and the beans are coming up through it and looking beautiful.”

The goal for the La Salle County farmers in north-central Illinois is to make a single pass of herbicide during the growing season.

“This year it’s going to be a two-pass program, but the rye definitely controls weeds a lot better,” Stephen said.

Moisture is currently adequate on the Riskedal farm.

“The more we do with cover crops and the less tillage we do, there’s significantly more earthworms than we’ve ever seen before,” Stephen said. “We knew there were some out there, but now if I pull up a shovel of dirt and don’t find five to 10 earthworms, it’s shocking.”

Although planting cover crops ahead of soybeans is looking good, the farmers also planted a rye and hairy vetch blend of cover crops in their fields that were planted with corn.

“We learned multiple ways this spring how not to terminate that properly,” Stephen said. “We bought a new roller crimper tool that will roll the cover crop between the rows of standing corn and it’s on today’s agenda to get that set up.”

The corn looks healthy, Stephen said, but it is not getting the sunlight it needs.

“Hairy vetch is a legume so it’s fixing nitrogen for the corn crop, and when it flowers it hits its maximum return on nitrogen and it should be the easiest to kill with a crimper,” Brad explained. “Although it looks ugly right now, it may be worth a significant amount of nitrogen later in the season for the corn.”

The corn development is going to be delayed somewhat because of the shade from the cover crop.

“There’s a lot of things that look wrong by conventional terms, but it may be good — we just don’t know yet,” Brad said.

Depending on rain, the farmers plan to start Y-dropping nitrogen soon.

“We put a little bit of nitrogen on before planting and we come back at V5 to V6 and Y-drop some on,” Stephen said. “We really like the Y-drops and putting nitrogen on right before a rain.”

The goal is three applications of nitrogen.

“We track pounds of nitrogen per bushel and the university standard is 1 to 1.1 pounds of nitrogen per bushel of corn,” Stephen said. “We’re getting to the point where we’re consistently in the 0.6 to 0.65 pounds per bushel of corn and we continue to drive that lower without decreasing yield.”

Later this summer, they will do sap testing of their corn plants to guide their nitrogen application decisions.

“It is similar to tissue testing, but it tests more of what the nutrients are in the plant right now,” Stephen explained.

Conventional weed problems are decreasing on the Riskedal farm.

“With tillage and more nitrogen, you get more weeds,” Brad said.

With the corn, soybean and wheat rotation, some fields don’t have any chemical applications for 20 to 22 months.

“We’ve been successfully growing wheat with no herbicides,” Stephen said.

“That’s got to be good for the soil,” Brad added. “We’re also adding some biologicals to avoid fungicides.”

“We put some biologicals in furrow for the corn to feed the microbes,” Stephen said. “And we sprayed the wheat early this spring with a biological from Elevate Ag, which is a sister company to GreenCover Seed, where we get our cover crop seeds.”

Wheat is typically harvested about the first week of July.

“I will drill in a 10- to 12-way blend of a cover crop as fast behind the combine as I can,” Stephen said. “That’s a special blend for summer grazing that is all annuals.”

The next project will be building fence to graze the cover crops.

“We’re going to do a four- or five-wire high tensile fence and then bring in some feeder calves and graze them from about Sept. 1 to mid-December,” Stephen said.

The cattleman is not sure what size of feeders he will purchase.

“I’ve always had cattle in the feedlot, but I’ve never had cattle on pasture so it’s going to be a learning process,” he said. “It’s part of our plan for soil health, getting the livestock out there for the manure and then next year we will plant corn in that field.”

Candle Business

Along with farming, the Riskedals also operate the Country Lights candle business. Brad’s son, Darren, and his wife, Kendall, make candles, wax melts and fidget sniffers from their home in southern Wisconsin.

“We are still putting a soybean from dad’s farm on the top of every candle, which is a nice tie back to the farm,” said Darren about the soy candle business that was started by his parents about 25 years ago.

“It’s a fun thing at National (FFA) Convention because the kids that aren’t from the Midwest don’t know what a soybean is, so we can also have an ag conversation,” Kendall said.

About 90% of the Country Lights products are sold through fundraisers conducted by FFA chapters, 4-H clubs, church youth groups or cheerleading squads.

“Last year we did about 90 fundraisers to help these groups raise money for things that are important to them,” Darren said.

In the past year, Darren and Kendall have attended four to five events like the Illinois FFA Convention to talk about the opportunity for groups to conduct fundraisers.

“Our two main events are the Illinois FFA Convention and the National FFA Convention, but we’re looking to grow it in other states,” Darren said. “We would love to be at the Wisconsin FFA Convention, but it’s the same week as the Illinois convention, so we have to figure that out.”

Both of the Riskedals graduated from the University of Illinois, Darren with a degree in technical systems management and Kendall’s degree is agricultural communications and marketing.

“The goal is for the candles to be a full-time gig for one of us, but we’re still working through how that will work with two young kids,” Darren said about their children, Owen and Edla.

Washington Trip

Stephen recently returned from a trip to Washington, D.C., to meet with Illinois senators and representatives.

“We talked about a lot of issues including immigration reform, trade, labor, NRCS funding and the response to the MAHA report,” said Stephen, who is the chairman of the Illinois Farm Bureau State Young Leader Committee.

The Illinois senators and representatives, Stephen said, asked questions and were engaged with the six-member Illinois Farm Bureau group that traveled to the nation’s capital.

“I talked about the young farmer FSA Loans that is a great program for young farmers like myself,” he said. “It provides an opportunity to make capital purchases at lower interest rates, but there is no pre-approval process.”

Therefore, a young farmer can’t go to a land auction and confidently bid since the FSA won’t start the pre-approval process until there is a contract for sale.

“That could be six to 12 months to go through the process,” Stephen said. “I brought that up with Senator Duckworth and she looked at her staff member and said that needs to be fixed.”

Lengthy Lawsuit

For over 10 years, Brad has been involved with a class-action lawsuit that involves the ethanol plant Illinois River Energy.

“Floyd Schultz, Stanley Blunier and I are representing about 100 investors that started the ethanol plant and got squeezed out of our investment at a low value and we didn’t think that was right,” Brad said.

“What happened is four managers bought out the local investors at a low price and sold the business to an overseas investor with a different story of profit and future success,” he said. “There are 70,000 pages of documents that created the conspiracy that made it all happen.”

After the local court made its decision, the case went to the appeals court.

“The appeals court does not look at if the decision was right or wrong — it looks at if the process was right or wrong,” Brad explained.

“The appeals court said the process we went through was not appropriate and now we’re going back to court with a different set of guidelines and it will be a jury trial,” he said. “So, we’ll see if we get a different result.”

Many farmers are involved with agricultural cooperatives.

“We hire managers to run them, and if a manager can profit beyond reasonable compensation at the expense of shareholders, that is wrong,” Brad said. “So, if we’re not successful in this court case, there’ll be a lot of farmer-developed, value-added businesses that could have potential management troubles.”

The trial will be conducted in Ogle County.

“All the court documentation is public, so if people want to search through it, it’s available,” Brad said.