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Liepold named Minnesota Pork Environmental Steward of the Year
The Minnesota Pork Environmental Steward of the Year says his soil health journey began with a desire to do less.
Larry Liepold operates a farrow-to-finish hog farm and grows corn and soybeans in Jackson County.
“The best comment I ever heard basically was that I was trying to be lazy. I didn’t like sitting in front of a chisel plow in the fall and then going back and doing it in the spring. So that’s when we started looking at technologies that at that time were in their infancy, but they made sense.”
Technologies, he says, like strip-till.
“At the time it was the custom operators that did the work, and we hired them. It got to the point where they were leaving but we were still in it, and four years ago it was growing. So that’s when we got into it as a custom operator, that’s when we really hit it hard on the corn and soybean side where we can.”
Liepold’s advice to farmers thinking about adopting soil health practices like strip-till or cover crops is to start with around 20 acres and use a field “that you’ll drive by every day.”
