Bormann Ag, LTD

     Matthew and Nancy Bormann are corn and soybean farmers near Algona, Iowa with their three children. We farm with full emphasis on soil conservation, soil health, good land stewardship, and making farming better. We believe with conservation, good land stewardship and cover crops, we can significantly minimize the risk of soil erosion and improve soil health. Our program is either strip-till, no-till, or vertical-till. We also produce hybrid seed corn and seed soybeans.

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     We have access to land moving equipment to build waterways. Places in farms that always form gullies need to be shaped and seeded to grass, permanently. We use cover crops on some acres where we spread rye with dry fertilizer after the seed corn is harvested. We then incorporate with our vertical till. In the spring time we plant right into the cover crop without doing any extra tillage.

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     During the Summer of 2011, Matt and his brother Joe built our first strip-till bar and bought a Montag fertilizer cart. We also started experimenting with vertical tillage in the fall of 2011 because we wanted to find a way to transition to no-till and dry and smooth out the soil prior to planting soybeans. Since then we have converted our farm over to strip-till for our corn and vertical-till or no-till for our soybeans. Strip-tillage is only tilling a 12" wide area where the row of corn or beans will grow and deep banding fertilizer in this area. Strip tillage allows a farmer to place fertilizer right where the plant needs it, reduces tillage, reduces erosion, and with good soil testing should allow a farmer to cut fertilizer. It also builds soil structure which could be the biggest benefit we have seen from strip-till.

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     Spring of 2016 we enrolled 360 acres of land we farm into the Iowa Soybean Association Nitrogen and Phosphorus Water Monitoring Program. All of the tile water from these acres drain into one outlet. The data collected shows that we are in the low to average category for nutrients leaving our farm. We believe this is the result of less tillage, and implementation of the 4R nutrient stewardship principles of right source, right timing, right placement, and right rate.

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    Many water quality initiatives around the state of Iowa have cost share money available for different practices. We ask you to try one out and let us do some custom strips on your own operation as a tool to help assist you to make the switch. The long term potential to innovate in the area of more efficient fertilizer placement is tremendous considering Iowa's Nutrient Reduction Strategy to reduce nutrients flowing down the Mississippi River.