Fred and Vicki Abels farm about 400 acres just outside Holland, Iowa. Fred started farming in 1981 on his family’s farm in Grundy County. It was a traditional soybean and corn rotation with a cow herd. He became interested in conservation practices after attending Practical Farmers of Iowa field days and switched to no-till soybeans in 1994. In the mid-2000s he started strip-till before corn and immediately sold all tillage equipment. In 2009, he started using cover crops, and in the early days, Fred had them custom flown on but then bought a grain drill as he had better germination rates. He no longer has a cattle herd but used to harvest about 20 acres of cover crops to use as cattle feed.
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