On a misty June morning in northeastern Iowa, Nikki Meyer led half-a-dozen farmers down a field road through a thick stand of oaks and other hardwoods. The going was tough — the road dropped 400 vertical feet in less than half-a-mile, and a half-inch rain earlier had made the footing greasy with mud. Sensing that this was turning into a less-than-pleasant stroll, Meyer reassured the hikers that the trip would be worth it.
“I promise it’s beautiful down here,” she said at one point, gesturing further down the road.
She delivered on that promise — the journey ended in a grass-covered valley split up the middle by a small stream and bordered by more trees. A yellow warbler, a song sparrow, and blue-gray gnatcatcher were singing. As if on cue, an eagle lifted itself from a massive nest on one side of the valley and soared overhead. But Meyer didn’t bring these beef, sheep, dairy, and crop farmers down to this piece of paradise just to admire the view. She’s currently renting the pasture in this valley as part of her adaptive rotational grazing enterprise, which supports a 50-head cow-calf herd. The land is adjacent to the roughly 200 acres she and her husband, Cody, own and raise corn and soybeans on, along with the cattle. She’d like to buy this parcel or at least part of it — it’s 150 acres in total — but the owner is asking over $8,000 per acre for it, and she’s having difficulty figuring out how to justify such an investment.
“I can’t cash flow it, but never say never,” Meyer, who is 32, said to the gathered farmers. “So how do I own this?”
That question sparked an impromptu, and energetic, discussion about various ways to make purchasing a piece of land like this pencil out financially. This kind of in-the-field give-and-take was exactly one of the reasons the Land Stewardship Project facilitated a series of Soil Health Hub meetings on farms across southeastern Minnesota and northeastern Iowa this past summer. These were not open-to-the-public field days. Rather, these were opportunities for livestock and crop producers to take part in the kind of peer-to-peer learning required to step out of the mainstream and build a farming system based on living, biologically rich soil. These meetings involved building a level of trust so that folks are comfortable sharing failures and doubts, as well as successes.
Hence Nikki’s willingness to share her reservations about what role this rented land should play in the future of her family’s farming enterprise.
For soil health practices to be truly sustainable, they must be economically viable, environmentally beneficial, and socially supported. As the first blog in this series illustrates, LSP’s Soil Health Hubs attempt to provide a way for farmers to fortify these three “legs of the stool.” The second blog in this series described how without the social component of the stool solidly in place, the other two legs have little chance of remaining balanced long-term.
But farming is a business and in order for it to be viable, it has to cash flow. That’s why the vast majority of the discussion that took place during this summer’s Soil Health Hub gatherings focused on the economic leg of the stool. This third blog in the series provides a glimpse at how sometimes one needs to step away from the spreadsheets and number crunching and glean a little perspective from other farmers, literally while standing in the field.
Talking Numbers
In the case of Nikki Meyers, the farmers gathered for her Hub meeting responded to her question by throwing out various ideas for making purchased land cash flow. Nikki said that like many farmers this year, they are finding corn and soybeans to be a financial “bust” — it’s costing them more to raise the crops than they receive at the elevator. And she doesn’t like how annual row crops have the potential to leave this rugged Driftless Region land environmentally vulnerable.
“I don’t like erosion,” Nikki said more than once during the meeting.
The pros and cons of leasing land out for hunting, logging some of the timber, and perhaps selling off the cow herd and leasing the pastures out for custom grazing were discussed. Of course, continuing to rent the land is also an option. During a July Hub meeting Eric Klaes hosted in northern Iowa’s Floyd County, the beef producer described the good, long-term relationship he has with a landowner who is thrilled to see cattle grazing on land that was once a monoculture of corn and soybeans along the Wapsipinicon River.
Inevitably, the discussion at all of the Hub meetings LSP facilitated this summer circled back to how to make soil-building practices pay off in the marketplace. Meyer currently raises calves for the conventional feeder cattle market. Due to shrunken herds, prices farmers and ranchers are receiving for their animals have reached record highs recently. However, raising beef cattle on grass takes a significant amount of time and managerial skill, and farmers pursuing this method of production often feel the conventional marketplace doesn’t compensate them fairly for the extra effort. And livestock markets can be infamously fickle and cyclical, especially given the packer consolidation that’s taken over the industry in recent decades.
In fact, one component of LSP’s Soil Health Hub meetings was for participants to go around and share “thorns” and “buds” in their lives at the moment. Invariably, marketing was a thorn in the side of the majority of the participating farmers.
“The missing link we all desire is just being paid on quality,” said northeastern Iowa livestock producer Ross Kurash during a Hub meeting.
One strategy is to capture value by direct-marketing grass-fed livestock to consumers who value regeneratively produced animal products. In fact, some farmers involved in the Hubs are doing that with good success. During a Hub meeting they hosted on their Winona County, Minn., farm in August, crop and cattle producers Mike and Jennifer Rupprecht talked about the directly-marketed beef business they’ve built up via word-of-mouth over the past few decades. Mike conceded that it’s tempting to sell into the red-hot conventional system these days, but it’s inevitable that it will eventually cycle downward and they don’t want to abandon their buyers for short term gain when those eaters have provided so much long-term loyalty.
“Our customers have been so good to us,” he said while standing next to a paddock full of grazing Red Devon cattle.
Nikki, who runs a seed business, said she sees direct-marketing as another fulltime endeavor, something she’s not up for right now. “Is it worth it, guys?” she asked the group gathered in the valley pasture when the topic of direct-marketing came up. “I love raising cattle — I don’t like marketing them.”
“It is a job, and it sounds like you have one,” said Kurash, who markets his cattle straight to eaters as well as via conventional channels. Hub members also discussed the idea of using third-party marketers to handle sales, the difficulty of reaching consumers willing to pay for quality, and whether the current boom in the conventional beef market was peaking.
Eric Heins, a Winona County farmer who both direct markets his own beef cattle and custom grazes other farmers’ animals, said during a field day he hosted later in June that no matter which path is chosen, it’s key to crunch the numbers and make sure one isn’t pouring all that sweat equity into a black hole of constant work and little return on investment.
“We as farmers are horrible at paying ourselves,” said Heins, who was trained as an accountant.
Markets related to livestock weren’t the only topic of discussion during the Soil Hub season. As was described in a previous blog, Reed and Denise Duncan, who farm hilly land outside Zumbro Falls in southeastern Minnesota, used their Hub meeting to gather input on how to make a diversified cropping mix of corn, soybeans, and oats, along with the experimental perennial grain, Kernza, pay, all while integrating livestock into the rotation.
We’re Not Alone
Too many farmers have experienced the limited results of knowledge being handed down from land grant extension educators, input suppliers, and other “experts” representing certain views of how farming should be done. What became clear during the 2025 Soil Health Hub gatherings is that no matter what enterprise or technique is being considered, there is no one silver bullet for making a farm profitable. For example, during the July gathering at Eric Klaes’s farm, a couple of farmers made it clear they were offering their host “thoughts” rather than “advice.” This flexible approach is particularly important when trying to build a balanced three-legged stool.
Maybe selling the herd and grazing someone else’s animals makes sense economically. Or perhaps tearing out the fences and going full-bore into row crop production during a year when corn prices are making bank is the way to go. But inevitably, someone else has been there and done that, or at the least has considered doing what you’re thinking about. A little perspective can be worth a lot.
At the outset of her Hub meeting, Nikki Meyer made it clear that one question was top on her mind, and that’s why she welcomed other farmer’s thoughts. “How do we make this farmland as profitable as possible?” she asked. But issues like quality of life are also important to her and Cody. He recently left a town job as a mechanic so he could spend more time on the farm and with the family (he and Nikki have two small children). “I want to enjoy the family,” said Nikki. “And I want to enjoy my 32nd year.”
As the growing season wound down by mid-October, Meyer was still contemplating that June discussion she hosted at the bottom of that muddy field road.
“Over lunch, I was just rolling it through my brain again whether we could buy all or some of that land,” she said over the telephone, adding that over the summer she connected with other farmers who had had experience with money-making enterprises like leased hunting. She still may not be any closer to making a final decision, but in the end feels a little bit better knowing this isn’t a debate she has to have solely in her own head.
“It was fun to see it was a common struggle for everybody and that I don’t have to think about it alone.”
Brian DeVore is LSP’s managing editor. You can read the first installment in this series here, the second installment here, and the fourth installment here. For more information on the Soil Health Hubs, contact LSP’s Alex Romano, Shea-Lynn Ramthun, or Sarah Wescott. For more on LSP’s Soil Builders’ Network, click here.