Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture

Guest Column: Looking at resilience from the farm level

Back to Leopold Letter Winter 2010

By JOHN GILBERT, Guest columnist

EDITOR’S NOTE: In our ongoing discussion about resilience, the Leopold Center asked Practical Farmers of Iowa for a snapshot view at the farm level. PFI member John Gilbert, who is part of a three-generation farm in Hardin County, provided these comments.

At Gibralter Farms, resiliency is an objective, strategy, mindset and part of our farm’s effort to be sustainable. The problem is that you cannot tell if a farm is resilient until after something happens. Being resilient is part preparation, part biology, part economic, part psychological and part luck.

Beverly and I farm with my brother Greg and his wife Barb and our father William. In a major development for the farm, our son John and his wife Sarah joined our operation in April (a neighbor, Wendell Bahr, also works with us). Gibralter Farms includes just over 800 deeded acres between Iowa Falls and Hubbard in north central Iowa. Our centerpiece is a 90-head Brown Swiss herd; we milk 35 to 40 cows year-round and sell milk to Swiss Valley Farms dairy cooperative.

We also pasture-farrow spring and fall, raising 250 to 300 pigs without antibiotics for sale to Niman Ranch and through a local locker. About 650 acres are classified as tillable. The land my son and I farm mainly feeds the livestock and includes corn, food-grade soybeans, alfalfa-grass hay, oats and a variety of annuals for forage. Areas most prone to flooding and erosion have been converted to rotationally grazed pastures.

The farm features about one mile of Southfork, a tributary of the Iowa River, also free-flowing wells, two fens and an undeveloped marsh with prairie wildflowers. The farm is home to deer, raccoons, possum, groundhogs, fox, coyote, red-tail hawks, herons, bald eagles (in winter), turkey vultures, great horned owls, wild turkeys, snapping and box turtles, leopard frogs and a variety of song birds. More than a mile of grass headlands, 13 terraces, and extensive grass waterways and stream buffers combine with ridge planting and minimum-till systems to protect the soil and water.

Strategies that promote resiliency include working with nature to time when calves and pigs and born; selecting livestock and crop varieties that are hardy with minimal inputs; choosing breeding stock with calm dispositions for easier handling; relying first on on-farm resources and skills; being financially cautious, using proper accounting procedures and managing risks with insurance whenever possible.

Our farm is very traditional in its structure. We try to be sensitive to what consumers want and are open to opportunities that offer premium prices. When we try something new, we do it on a small scale so the mistakes also are small.

Adding another generation is a major step toward sustaining the farm. The challenges involved are a small price to pay for what adding a son and daughter-in-law means long term. The Gilbert family has farmed in Hardin County since coming from Delaware County in the 1870s. The home place is a century farm.

Challenges to the farm in recent years have come from the weather (severe flooding in 2008 and moderate flooding in 2007, 2009 and late July of 2010), hail on the south farm in August 2009 (we were lucky; the most severe storm in decades wiped out many of our neighbors’ crops), low milk prices in 2009 and escalating input costs. Keeping debt levels manageable and having cows that can turn less-than-ideal crops into high value milk helps our farm weather adversity.

Diversity in seeds and breeds is a priority for our family, which is why I participate with Practical Farmers of Iowa in a trial to test and increase the varieties of corn seed available. I used to be able to buy a high-protein, high-yielding corn in the marketplace. That option is no longer available because genetic modification of seed has led to rapid corporate consolidation in the seed industry, and specialty seed varieties are no longer important to the corporations.

Gibraltar Farms works to keep decision-making as local as possible, so that our family can build community and respond quickly to changing economic conditions. One example: We own our own livestock. Farmer-owned livestock is much more likely to be a positive for local economies and environments. Livestock makes more limited acreages economically viable, creates a need for soil-conserving forages, provides income and work for a family on the farm, builds stronger local communities and is the time-honored way for new generations to enter farming.

Finally, at Gibraltar Farms we hope to be more resilient by keeping an open mind, staying inquisitive, and keeping up on trends. We are farmers who connect to communities that can inform and support us as we make changes, including Practical Farmers of Iowa.

Back to Leopold Letter Winter 2010