Eastern Iowa Farmer Spring 2017

managing your soil
pursues his passions – grain farming, high
yields, and healthy dirt – on his 2,000-
acre DeWitt farm.
He approaches soil with a reverence
for what he can see above the ground
because he knows that healthy, stable
topsoil means healthy, stable soil and a
thriving ecosystem underneath.
“I treat topsoil like it’s the goose that
laid the golden egg,” he said. “I know that
the better I treat the ground and the better
steward I am to this living organism – the
top soil – the more I receive.”
Farmers in Iowa and the Midwest have
a long history of battling the elements to
keep the dirt in their fields. When Dierickx
started farming, he mulboard plowed
his fields, and the results were a few
“gully washers” that carried soil away
from his land into roadside ditches. Snow
and wind would do the same thing.
“I remember looking at those black
ditches and thinking, ‘There’s got to be a
better way,’” he said.
Instead of thinking about dirt as
something in unlimited supplies out in
the field, he reflected on that college class
and began to look at soil as something he
could nurture and make healthier and better.
One major component of that was to
move to a no-till system that would keep
carbon and other organic material in the
ground rather than being turned up to the
surface to be oxidized away. No-till also
preserved natural soil structure.
“I’ve learned that
you can’t stop
Mother Nature’s
force, but you can
really slow the
process down.”
— joe dierickx
“I’ve learned that you can’t stop Mother
Nature’s force, but you can really slow
the process down,” he said, adding that
he wanted the dirt in each of his fields to
stay in those fields.
His first no-till experience came years
ago when he was working with his dad.
Every fall they mulboard or chisel plowed
the entire crop acres. In the spring they
leveled, sprayed herbicide and leveled
again before they planted. It was a mad
dash to make a timely finish, Dierickx
said. One spring his dad skipped all the
spring tillage of leveling because it was
wet and planting was getting late. His dad
just started planting.
“Everybody laughed at us,” Joe said.
“In the end, we got the same or better
yields as the neighbor,” and an idea started
forming in his brain.
“That experience told me that maybe
we don’t need to do all that tillage. Other
people are doing less and less tillage, why
can’t we?” he said.
He sold the idea to his brother, Paul,
who embraced it as a way to cut back on
labor requirements, but remembers his
dad was still a little skeptical.
“Dad looked at it like, ‘no till equals no
yield,’” Dierickx said, which was the conventional
wisdom for years in farming.
“We decided it was a risk worth taking as
we were running short on labor.”
2017 BIG ACTS
PARTY PIT TICKETS
ON SALE NOw
SATURDAY
JULY 29
9:30 PM
7:30 PM
Visit our website for
full fair week schedule
jacksoncountyiowafair.com
f
LOCASh
JACKSON COUNTY FAIRGROUNDS
1212 East Quarry Street
PO Box 859
Maquoketa, IA 52060
Tel: 563-652-4282
spring 2017 | Eastern Iowa Farmer 65