As an individual farm that relies largely on the sugarbeet crop, Garner recognizes the need to meet current and future challenges with efficiency, water management and “loosening the reins” to involve the younger generation.

Farming in Rockland, Idaho, was almost an accident for the Kress family from Germany.

“My business philosophy was to start small and grow slow,” Ray says. Today, he has seven small farms with a processing plant and a feed mill. He produces close to 1 million pounds per year of trout, catfish, tilapia, sturgeon and caviar. At their peak production (prior to the pandemic), they produced over 1.5 million pounds per year.

If you’re looking for an alternative crop to wheat, teff might be an option. But production-wise, Idaho growers want to know how it fits into a rotation, what the water and nutrient requirements are, what it looks like at harvest and what the market potential is.

Amid higher input and machinery costs, maximizing profitability means expanding landholdings for some farmers – that’s one way to go. Another way to go is through maximizing yields on current cropland, which is the route R.L. Brown Farms of Jerome, Idaho, has chosen.

At Ladd Wahlen Farms, it begins with roots (small r) and ends with Roots (capital R).

Surrounded by desert on a bluff above the Payette River sits Payette River Ridge LLC, a farm owned and operated by Derek and Chelicy Wanders. It’s hilly country, and that has presented some challenges.

Many of today’s youth are served well through 4-H and FFA programs throughout the state and nation, but those aren’t the only successful youth programs available in agriculture. Several commodity or livestock groups tailor specific programs to encourage youth involvement beyond 4-H or FFA, and Amalgamated Sugar Youth Grower Program is one example of these outstanding programs.

How do we preserve the individual farm legacy while preparing the farm for future generations? It was this question that brought 10 potato farmers together in the late ’70s and early ’80s to attempt to operate a fresh-pack potato shed together.

In seven years, organic matter content in Matthews’ fields has gained a point and a half, and the curve is getting steeper now. “So it’s not taking us decades to make that organic matter change,” he says. “It can happen faster than people think. I mean, we’re farming in a desert, after all … but we’ve changed the soil. And you can change the soil, even in a desert.”