Grant Strom: Becoming a Better Farmer Through Hard Work and Soil Health

Editor’s note: Illinois farmer Grant Strom is one of the recipients of the 2020 PrecisionAg Awards of Excellence. Here he shares his thoughts on technology, soil health, and collaborating with others.

Farmer Award Recipient | 2020 PrecisionAg Awards of Excellence

Grant Strom, Strom Farms, Dahinda, IL

Grant Strom, Strom Farms, Dahinda, IL

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The diversity of Grant Strom’s Dahinda, IL, farm is partly what ignited his desire to understand more about not just soil fertility, but soil health.

Under his 5,000 acres of corn and soybeans, one finds everything from flat black, deep ridge prairie soils to river bottom ground that floods one or two times a year – “you just hope it’s not the wrong time of the year,” he laughs. “We’ve got very thin topsoil, and higher clay-based, timber soil that has a lot of roll to it. We’re not a one-size-fits-all recipe when it comes to farming our land.”

Strom, who took over the farm from his father and grandfather and transitioned it from a livestock to primarily a grain operation, has found a different recipe for every field and experimented heavily on timing of fertilizer application, especially over the last decade. Nitrogen on corn has been more spread out – he does not apply in fall anymore. The biggest change, he says, has been fertilizing based what the crop needs, instead of applying it everywhere and wasting what isn’t needed or used. He correlates soil tests, calculates nutrient removal rates, yield, and topography, and employs prescription seeding for each field.

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“Just because you have high fertility doesn’t mean you have high soil health. We’re finding out that just because a farm has high NPK, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s releasing that organically in terms of mineralization to the crop,” Strom explains.

To optimize his nutrition program, Strom uses as much of the data he collects as he can, although, he admits, “in a lot of ways technology makes your life more difficult, because you know too much. You feel like you’ve got all this information, but what am I going to do with it?”

An important aspect of his operation has been working with an independent agronomist who has around 20 clients, with whom Strom pools data and analysis and cooperates on field trials. “We don’t necessarily know who each other are, but we can feed off each other’s programs – find what’s working and what’s not working, and collectively come up with some ideas.”

“We’re trying to learn and find some more baselines on what our soil is actually giving us vs. what we need to apply to it to feed the crop. The biggest surprising thing has been that there’s not as much need to apply a lot of fertilizer if you have a soil that’s able to supply more. You make the soil work more for you, vs. keep dumping fertilizer out there.”

According to his nominator, Sally Flis, Strom has long worked, and with his father before him, to be more progressive with testing new technology, whether that was with GPS usage and auto shut-offs 15 years ago or more recently with no-till, sidedressing, and other conservation strategies. The farm participates in field testing through research trials with their ag retailer, and equips all planters and combines with GPS, yield monitors, and VRT. He also incorporates drone technology.

Not only is Strom an innovator, he has been a 4-H club leader for over 10 years, is a member of the FFA Alumni Association, Illinois Soybean Association, Illinois Corn Growers Association, and Knox County Cattlemen’s Association. He serves as president of the Knox County Farm Bureau and is a 2010 graduate of the Illinois Ag Leadership Foundation program. Strom is also a district yield champion in both corn and soybeans and the 2017 NCGA State Winner in the AA Non-Irrigated No-till/Strip Till category for Illinois. He’s been recognized as a leader in farm management when he and his wife, Kristen, won the American Farm Bureau Federation Young Farmers & Ranchers Achievement Award in 2017. Strom was also recognized in 2017 as a 4R Advocate for his commitment to improving nutrient management practices.

In terms of his farming practices and work ethic, Strom names his parents and grandparents as his most important mentors.

“Everything we do is based on how hard you’re willing to work,” he says. “The work is different than it was for my father or grandfather. You bend your brain more than you do your back, but you’ve got to still be willing to go out and bend your back.”

In terms of leadership, he says, “I come from a county that has a really strong tradition of leadership in agriculture. There were lots of role models in 4-H, who taught me about how to be a leader, how to work with people, and how to achieve certain goals,” he says, adding, “It’s a cultural thing in our area; there’s an expectation that gets passed down generation to generation.”

In terms of his drive to become a better farmer, grow a better crop, and become more efficient with fertilizer, Strom says it stems from a competitive streak as much as anything.

“It’s more of a compete-with-yourself type of thing: What can I do to make this crop better than last year’s crop? What things can I unlock that I haven’t unlocked yet or found yet that my farm can do for me?”

In carving his path, “I have a tremendous group of peers that I work with who all have the same type of goals in mind,” Strom says. “I think that is one of most underrated and underappreciated things, is surrounding yourself with people who are likeminded, and are experts in their field.”

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