Episode 189: Rory Beyer

This week’s featured farmer: Rory Beyer, Co-Owner of Beyercrest, LLC, Rollingstone, MN. Rory Beyer is a recently married 35 year-old Organic Farmer from Rollingstone, MN. He has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-River Falls in Animal Science (2000). Together with his parents they formed Beyercrest, LLC. in the spring of 2008. Beyercrest is a Dairy and Crop enterprise where they have a partnership between Rory and his parents Richard and Sharon. Beyercrest consists of a 135-cow Organic Dairy. Altogether the land base is 600+ acres of organic land certified since fall of 2009. Beyercrests’ main focus is to farm organically and to be as sustainable as possible – economically as well as ecologically. They have integrated the use of cover cropping for fertilizer and weed management as well as rotational grazing in the dairy enterprise to maximize their efficiency and lower feed costs. Recently the cropping enterprise switched to more efficient means of fertilizing crops by using liquid fertilizer and foliar feeding. They began selling their milk to Organic Valley in the fall of 2009 and sell crops (other than what the dairy uses) to a local feed mill (Premier co-op, Westby, WI). This program was sponsored by S. Wallace Edwards & Sons “80/90% of what you get off of your farm when it comes from production out of the cows is going to come from your management practices and how you actually deal with your animals – it’s only 10% that comes from genetics. To get attached to genetics is a false hope.” [15:00] “You have to show the math works – you have to prove what you’re doing makes sense. It’s not too hard to change somebody’s mind when you [show them numbers].” [13:00] –Rory Beyer on Greenhorns Radio