What does outstanding sustainability look like?

At the end of last year, we honored Tim Daly of Farley, Iowa, with the Outstanding Sustainability Award at our 2019 Partners in Excellence Summit. Carter Morgan of Cayuga, Indiana, was also honored in the category. For both Tim and Carter, their approach to sustainability is rooted in their values: hard work and a strong connection to their communities.

Nominated by his local ag retailer, Innovative Ag Services, award-winner Tim Daly has been focused on improving sustainability on his farm for decades.

Tim transitioned to minimum till in 1977, was 70 percent no till from 1982 to 2018, and then transitioned to 100 percent no-till last year. In addition to no-till, Tim prioritizes practices like planting cover crops every year, using stabilized nitrogen and split nitrogen applications, and contour farming.
 
An avid advocate for sustainability and agriculture in his community, Tim regularly attends USDA NRCS meetings, has served as a Hewitt Creek Watershed Vice President, and has delivered cover crop presentations for various groups in his community.
 
For the past five years, Tim has been involved with Truterra™ (formerly Land O’Lakes SUSTAIN). He has used the Truterra Insights Engine to measure the ROI of and benchmark the effects of his stewardship efforts since 2018.
 
Honorable mention Carter Morgan was nominated by his ag retailer, Ceres Solutions. His family’s 2,400-acre, 20 miles end-to-end farm is 100 percent no-till and uses cover crops on 80 percent of the land. Other practices Carter uses include filter strips in fields that border rivers and streams, along with side-dressing nitrogen on corn.

Carter says that using cover crops has improved his soil quality so much that he now uses 20 to 30 percent less phosphorus and potassium overall. That can mean savings on input costs for the farm, while improving local water quality and increasing absorption of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

One of the first members of the Land O’Lakes SUSTAIN program at Ceres Solutions, all the partners of Morgan Brothers LLC, including Carter’s father Brian, brother Brent and uncle Darrell, have provided valuable feedback on the Truterra Insights Engine. Because his farm has multiple soil types and landscapes, Carter’s expertise helps Ceres improve sustainability for all its customers. Carter also uses Twitter to share his farm’s story with a broader audience. 
 
Every day, we are honored to work with inspiring farmers like Tim Daly and Carter Morgan, who are passionate about preserving their farms and their communities’ natural resources for future generations and sharing their stewardship stories with others, with a ripple effect across their communities, states, and agriculture at large.