Field Work

This week on Field Work, Zach and Mitchell talk about the future of tractors with New Holland’s Director of Commercial Marketing, Mark Lowery. First up is a look beyond diesel fuel to the methane pow…

Research at The Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, over the past couple of decades has advanced the concept of perennial grain crops to the point of commercially available kernza. Mitchell and Zach ta…

Marc Schober is director of specialized agriculture solutions for Bremer Bank, the nation’s 9th largest farm lender. Zach and Mitchell ask him about how he decides which #fintech and #agtech solution…

Field Work hosts Mitchell Hora and Zach Johnson talk to cotton farmer Adam Chappell about cotton and sharecropping. Chappell nearly lost his farm 10 years ago to a triple whammy of drought, pigweed a…

Farmers from 17 southern states supply more than a third of the world’s cotton and bring in $7 billion a year. But brands and retailers — cotton’s customers — are getting picky about how their cotton…

John and Kara Boyd are equally committed to farming and to farm ownership for people of color.  John heads the National Black Farmers Association, and Kara runs the Association of American Indian Far…

For a few years now, Iowa State University Professor Kevin Kimle has been asking students in his ag entrepreneurship classes to take a personality test. What he’s found so far is that compared to the…

The Nature Conservancy and Purdue University are among a lot of people in the sustainable ag keen to figure out what it takes to scale conservation practices. Does it come down to the availability of…

Young farmers coming back to a family operation often have to tease out a place for themselves with hard work, creativity and an entrepreneurial zeal. For Trent Stout, that meant taking on the family…

The Biden administration has ambitious climate mitigation goals, and agriculture has been called upon to be a strong partner. USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack led the department throughout the Obama years …

Several Washington County families trace their conservation interests back decades. For Rob Stout and Darrell Steele, their dads’ interest in conservation primed them to be open to the idea of no-til…

Paul Reed and Dave Moeller explain to Zach and Mitchell that the modern planter row unit was designed to provide good seed to soil contact in the dry, cloddy seedbed of a conventionally tilled field.…

Mitchell and Zach are trying to understand how Mitchell’s home county in Southeast Iowa developed such a strong conservation culture. Jim Frier, now 88, showed up to the interview with a box full of …

On this episode of Field Work, hosts Mitchell Hora and Zach Johnson talk money with the founders of two startups. Sami Tellatin says FarmRaise will be a one-stop shop to help farmers apply for grants…

President Joe Biden has said he wants to pay farmers to grow cover crops and put land into conservation. How will that work? He also has big plans to reduce and capture carbon emissions, which could …

Samantha Schmidgall, the Agronomy Marketing Manager with Ag View FS in Walnut, IL, is driven by the cooperative foundation of her agricultural retail company. 

“If we're not doing what our farmers and…

There’s a whole world of funding that can help to bring conservation practices onto a farm, but wading through the web of federal, state, and private programs can feel like a full time job of its own…