Keota farmer discusses organic methods

NORTH ENGLISH — Sixth generation Iowa farmer Levi Lyle shared his organic farming process with an audience at the English Valleys History Center Aug. 31.

Lyle grew up on a farm in Keota and moved back about 15 years ago with his wife and children. He’s farmed most of his life and currently teaches high school science in Keota while farming with his dad.

Lyle said he rehearsed his presentation in front of his students at school. “These are topics I’m passionate about,” he said.

When Lyle’s family started organic farming about 10 years ago, he started using a roller crimper, he said. “It’s been an excellent way to transition to organics,”

The roller on the front of the tractor flattens the standing rye in the field, and another implement plants soybeans from the back of the vehicle.

The rye decomposes and replenishes the nutrients in the soil so Lyle doesn’t have to use chemicals, he said. It also eliminates erosion and water runoff, he said.

Roller-crimped rye takes six weeks to die, said Lyle, so the nutrients go into the soil. The process has increased soil organic carbon by more than 1%, he said.

Because he has to make only one pass, Lyle saves on fuel and labor. And production doesn’t suffer. “When we roller crimp we get similar yields,” he said.

Lyle also avoids chemicals to kill weeds. He uses a weed zapper instead. The zapper, attached to the front of a tractor, passes over soybean plants but shoots electricity through weeds standing taller than the crop.

The zapper kills weeds all the way to the root, said Lyle. Diesel fuel and labor are the only costs.

Regenerative agriculture understands that systems are connected, said Lyle. Traditional farming can produce soil erosion and depletion of nutrients.

In the last 100 years, farmers have tried to become more efficient, but some of the more efficient methods can have negative consequences, said Lyle. It impacts the soil, the water and the air.

In the business world, money is the bottom line, said Lyle. He could make money by selling the rye to make whiskey or to use for cow bedding, but by rolling it flat, he puts nutrients back into the soil.

Using those implements and rotation of crops keeps the soil productive. But the battle is never over, said Lyle. New weeds pop up all the time, he said. Wild lettuce showed up in his organic acres one year, “so it’s never a done deal.”

“We can benefit from diversity,” said Lyle. His family produces aronia berries, and sells them to New Pioneer Coop. The berries, a chokecherry, are higher in antioxidants than other fruit, said Lyle.

Lyle’s family started growing aronia berries about 15 years ago, he said. They’ve put aronia in honey, salsa and candles, he said. “The kids help with packaging.”

Aronia berries grow like a lilac bush. It takes about three years to get a crop, he said.

Lyle is trying to get his aronia berries back into Hy-Vee.

Iowa doesn’t have infrastructure to process many diverse crops, said Lyle, so he has to take them to Wisconsin or Illinois, and with the cost of transportation, the crops aren’t profitable.

So Lyle thinks of other crops that can use the same infrastructure. He’s planted an acre of cherries for a few years and is looking for other fruits that use the same harvesters, trucking and packaging.

“The cherries have been fun to promote because people know what cherries are,” Lyle said.

Lyle has produced a small amount of honey berries, but they haven’t been bred for sweetness, and they don’t have a long shelf life. They are more natural, and therefore more nutritious, Lyle said.

Lyle suggested planting crops that can be harvested different times of the year. He could process honey berry in May, crimp and zap his fields in June and July, harvest cherries in August, aronias in September and corn and soybeans in October.

Lyle has 60 acres dedicated to organic farming, but his family has another 500 traditional acres planted in corn and soybeans. His organics are isolated by the road and have a 30 foot buffer on its remaining sides, he said.

People sometimes ask Lyle if he eats only organic food. That would be hard, he said, but he tries to buy organic versions of foods that are known to have a lot of chemicals in them.

Lyle said he sees more birds, eagles and garden spiders in his organic fields and many more insects in the organic fields and fruit crops.

“Those are the real signs that there’s something different,” Lyle said.

Organic farms must have a three-year rotation, said Lyle. His third year is his cover crop — rye. But a farmer could plant alfalfa and allow grazing for a year. Organic farms with their weeds under control often use the ground for pasture for a year of rotation.

Some of the processes can help with traditional farming as well, said Lyle. He roller crimped his traditional soybean field and was able to skip pre-emergent spraying, though he did use chemicals for weeds later in the season, he said.