Regenerative Practices

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

Many consumers, politicians, and even celebrities are advocating for shifts toward regenerative agriculture. But ask a dozen people what regenerative means and you are likely to get a dozen different answers. The common themes are reducing tillage, utilizing cover crops, and incorporating livestock. Iowa farmer Zack Smith has done each of those things and he has seen some pretty substantial results.

Smith… “I was just interested in strip till, because it looked really efficient. And I was sick of plowing the ground, and I wanted to work with something I could go across the field 40 feet at a time instead of, you know, eight feet at a time. So, you know, I kind of stumbled into it that way. But then when you start to farm differently and you actually see what happens to the ground and that it actually changes, and you can actually infiltrate water and you can start to manage things so that your organic matter levels actually start to accumulate rather than degrade. Then the bells start clicking. And then that was about the time when the soil health piece came in. We had a prevent plant here that exposed us to cover crops in 2013 for the first time. And once I saw that I added that into the system and we've been doing that ever since. And so I've always been interested in this space and that's what I see like the StockCropper representing is kind of that next step and beyond. Because if you're really interested in soil health, you know, integration of livestock is one of the key pillars.”

The StockCropper is a multi-species, solar-powered, electrically-driven, autonomous mobile grazing system to keep animals contained while moving them between rows of crops.