This story is the first in a series of diversification case studies showcasing how people in Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana are diversifying their farms, markets, and landscapes.
When Tim Sieren talks about his 350 acres near Keota, Iowa, at farm shows, or even the total of 800 acres he farms with his brothers Scott and Jamie, he doesn’t get a lot of attention. But those figures sound different when people find out he has made a living on that acreage—without a job in town—for decades.
The keys to his success? Minimizing debt and focusing on maximizing return, not maximizing yield.
“We’re more into trying to be as efficient as we can,” Sieren says. “We’ve got all our own labor so we don’t have to hire any outside labor. We farm with older machinery so we don’t have any high-dollar machinery we have to make payments on. That means more time and repairs to keep it going, but our dad always told us to try and get more efficient before you get bigger.”
Sieren’s farm is small on acreage, but all of his farmable acres are home to an extended rotation that includes corn, soybeans, cover crops and cereal rye. He seeds his headlands and waterways with a mix of grasses and forbs, a blend he can cut for hay and allow his herd of 25 cows and their calves to graze before they move to crop residue in the fall. Sieren’s commercial hog finishing barn holds 1,200 head and a small flock of chickens yield eggs for sale to neighbors. Every product and every acre contributes to the success of the operation.
Sieren’s first leap in efficiency was eliminating tillage. All his acreage has been no-tilled since 1989. First motivated by erosion control, then by soil health and the opportunity to use his land more fully, Sieren expanded his corn-soybean rotation by integrating rye, cover crops and hay. He points out that diversification mimics natural systems.
“The prairie was diversified,” Sieren says. “You didn’t have a monocrop out there. You had all your different grasses and legumes and wildflowers and all that. It’s like going into a forest—you don’t usually have just one, single species. If you get a hot summer, the warm-season grasses thrive in the heat. If you get a cool spring or cool summer, then cool-season grasses and legumes and forbs do well.”
The same principle drives Sieren’s management of his cattle.
“The buffalo on the prairie were doing the same thing the cows are doing now,” he notes. “They’re eating the vegetation off and then you get manure from them that returns the fertility back to the soil and in turn gives the microbes something to eat. It’s a continuous cycle.”
Sieren refers to his cattle as his low-input sustainable agriculture venture.
“I hardly spend any money on them, but I’ve got a calf crop to sell every year,” he points out. “All I feed them is waste: waterways and field borders and stuff. Most of the grain farmers around here would just bat-wing all that acreage. But if you spend the extra time to make the hay and turn it into meat, then you have 20 calves to sell in the fall.
“We were always told that you want to try and use everything and take advantage of what you’ve got—and don’t waste anything.”
Standing on a windy hilltop on a spring morning, Sieren sweeps his arm across 20 acres of cereal rye that he will harvest for seed—some for his own cover crops, and some to sell to neighbors. In late winter, he drills medium red clover into the rye so he can get a cutting of good hay after harvesting the rye grain for cover crop seed and straw.
“If we get any kind of moisture in July, that clover will grow up in three weeks,” Sieren says. “I can come in here and mow it or maybe crop hay off it, and you’ve still got the grazing in the fall for the cows. And I get about as much for the rye straw as I do for the seed. We’ve got several local cattle feeders that are always looking for bedding.”
He adds that freshly harvested rye acreage makes a nice, firm spot for spreading manure, freeing up space in the manure pits for storage.
“We’ll harvest this in July and I’ll haul a bunch of manure out here to get my pits down,” he says. “It’s a good place to haul in the summer when it’s dry—you don’t get much compaction in your soil. And it gives that clover a boost. That stuff just takes off and grows like crazy if you get rain on it.”
Sieren hosted insect traps on some of his fields for the Diverse Corn Belt Project. The traps will help researchers understand the impacts of diversification on insect populations. They will combine their entomology data with studies of soil health, groundwater, economics, markets, and more to provide a better idea of how Corn Belt farmers like him can diversify their operations for long-term sustainability.
Diversifying isn’t easy, Sieren admits. He says the biggest challenge isn’t learning how to grow new crops—it’s finding markets for commodities other than corn, soybeans, and hogs.
“If everybody raised 300-bushel corn, it’d only be worth about a dollar a bushel.”
“We’ve got the soil and temperatures to raise all kinds of crops here in Iowa, but unless you’ve got a market for it and it’s sustainable, it’s going to go by the wayside,” he explains. “If it doesn’t pencil out, you’re just beating your head against a wall.”
Sieren says success on the land will be dictated by more than just corn and soybean yield increases.
“If everybody raised 300-bushel corn, it’d only be worth about a dollar a bushel,” he says. “There would be too much of it, so there’s no profitability in that. It’s finding that happy medium to keep everybody in business. That’s the main reason I joined Practical Farmers of Iowa, because they’re promoting this sustainable ag where you grow something and you’re not necessarily looking at a big yield in the end. You’re looking at being sustainable, which means making a profit and keeping your soil in place and improving your soil health. It’s all a big, complicated plan.” Complicated, but not too complicated.
“My attitude is, if I can make a living on 350 acres, why the hell would I need 5,000?” Sieren laughs.