Closed-Loop Farming Systems

Closed-Loop Farming Systems

Tim Hammerich
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
It’s time for your Farm of the Future Report. I’m Tim Hammerich.

The vast majority of farmland in the United States is dedicated to two crops: corn and soybeans. These commodities are highly productive and require a great deal of inputs. But some farmers are exploring ways to grow grain in more of a closed-loop system by incorporating livestock. Zack Smith is a farmer and the inventor of the StockCropper.

Smith… “It's like what we used to always do is you would produce grain not to burn at an ethanol plant. You produced it to feed your livestock on your farm. You know, we used to walk the value off the farm. And so what this system is designed to do, and the schematic works really well, is to produce just enough of a feed stuff, so the following year we can produce the feed to feed the manogastric, non ruminant animals, like the pigs and the chickens.”

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.

Smith… “So you look at the system now: I grow corn, it goes to an ethanol plant. Okay. They make ethanol, they make DDGs, the DDGs get trucked to a feedlot and you're just moving stuff all over the place. And so when we talk about like low carbon footprint farming systems, you know, everyone's trying to like latch onto these silly trinkets, you know, like carbon solutions in a jug. Like we have to find systems that are truly meaningful in actually reducing carbon footprint.”

Learn more at TheStockCropper.com

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