Farm Management Tour Highlights Innovative Northwest Indiana Farms

farm management tour logo This year’s Purdue Farm Management Tour will include stops at four northwest Indiana farms, focusing on innovative methods to improve soil health and nutrient management with the goal of improving profitability. The tour, sponsored by Purdue Extension and the Center for Commercial Agriculture, will take place June 23-24 in Jasper and Newton counties.

“This is an opportunity for farmers, agribusiness professionals and anyone interested in agriculture and food production to see firsthand how Indiana’s farmers are adopting new technologies and practices to ensure a safe, secure and sustainable food supply while also improving profitability,” said Jim Mintert, director of the Center for Commercial Agriculture and a tour organizer.

Each stop includes an interview session with farm operators.

* June 23, 1 p.m. – Styck Family Farms. The interview will take place at the Farmhouse Restaurant at Fair Oaks Dairy. Participants will learn how the Styck family incorporates cover crops, irrigation and tile drainage to improve profitability on their challenging sandy soils. Operators will discuss their use of a high-clearance sprayer to seed cover crops in addition to the opportunities and challenges they face in growing specialty crop soybeans in northwest Indiana.

* June 23, 2:30 p.m. – Fair Oaks Dairy. This nutrient management interview will also take place at the Farmhouse Restaurant at Fair Oaks Dairy. The environmental manager at Fair Oaks will explain how this large-scale dairy’s approach to dairy cattle manure management has evolved over time with an emphasis on their recently implemented new technology that presses water out of manure to produce a solid fertilizer product with multiple uses. Tour participants will have a chance to see Fair Oaks’ new fertilizer plant in operation.

* June 24, 8 a.m. – Klemp Farms and Kingma Farms. The interview will take place at the Klemp farmstead near Wheatfield. Klemp Farms is a diversified crop and swine producer. Klemp Farms operators will discuss manure management, their emphasis on soil health and the role of no-till on their farm. Kingma Farms produces corn and soybeans. Discussion at this farm will focus on nitrogen management, including Kingma’s use of nitrogen research plots to guide nitrogen applications and the role cover crops play on their farm.

June 24, noon – Remington Farms. The interview will take place at the Remington Farms shop. Remington Farms focuses on seed corn and seed soybean production. Participants will learn about key management strategies to improve their cropping operations. Additionally, tour participants will find out about key design features of the fertilizer and crop protection product storage facilities that Remington Farms incorporated into their new farm shop. The stop includes a luncheon followed by Purdue agricultural economist Chris Hurt‘s annual Agricultural Outlook.

The annual Master Farmer Banquet sponsored by Indiana Prairie Farmer will be at 5:30 p.m. June 23 at the Farmhouse Restaurant. Tickets are $40 and must be ordered by June 13. For more information and to purchase tickets, call 765-494-8593.

The Purdue Farm Management Tour is free, but registration is required by June 17 to attend the lunch and the Agricultural Outlook presentation on June 24. For more information, call 765-494-4310 or go to https://ag.purdue.edu/commercialag/Pages/Programs/Farm-Tour.aspx

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