County Conservation farmer of the year
By Andy Albertson
Swift County SWCD
District Manager
Matt Mesenbrink isn’t your typical farmer. Mesenbrink grew up on his parents’ home farm north of Holloway and was a normal farm kid living a normal farm life.
He helped with all the farm chores to make sure the family farming operation was chugging right along. He always made sure to get all his chores done and find time for some hunting and fishing opportunities around the Pomme de Terre River.
As Mesenbrink grew older, he moved off the farm and ended up meeting his wife, Kristi, and having three boys Gavin, 12, Teyton, 9, and Ryker, 4. Mesenbrink now works for Winfield as a district sales manager where he works to bridge the gap between farmers and ag retailers.
As Mesenbrink grew into his new job, he began itching at the opportunity to get involved with the family farm again. This reinvigoration all started back in 2018.
With a farm consisting of five fields and about 550 acres of tillable land along the Pomme de Terre River, Mesenbrink knew that his margins would be tight and there was little room for error.
He wanted to maintain or improve profitability while reducing inputs. One way he did this was by evaluating each acre on their fields. He identified certain spots that continually underperformed, where the inputs outweighed the outputs, and decided to tip the scale in his favor.
By taking marginal land out of production and enrolling those acres into a combination of the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) and the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), Mesenbrink was able to create a better return on investment across the entire farm. That allowed him to focus on improving his agronomic practices on the remaining tillable acres.
With three of their five fields being irrigated, Mesenbrink knew he wanted to make every drop count. That meant putting together a prescription for each field and knowing what areas within a field would need different levels of moisture depending on the soil type.
To collect the necessary information to write these prescriptions, Mesenbrink installed Crop X soil moisture sensors. These sensors allow him to check the soil moisture in his fields anytime, day or night, through an app on his smartphone.
The app also allows him to view rainfall totals from the weather stations on his fields and view a soil moisture forecast based on the weather forecast so he knows when he may have to turn the irrigator on and how much will need to be applied.
Mesenbrink has been pleased with the accuracy of the sensors, noting that when they field check the soil moisture, the sensors are right on the money.
In addition to the sensors, he has begun to convert his irrigators over to variable rate irrigation and install low pressure nozzles. The low-pressure nozzles allow for more water to be used by the plant and less to transpire into the atmosphere. The variable rate application allows him to save water by only applying the amount the crop needs, where it needs it.
Another conservation practices that Mesenbrink has implemented are water and sediment control basins (WASCOB). A WASCOB is an earthen embankment that is formed perpendicular to a gully in a field. Drain tile and a Hickenbottom intake are used for transporting the temporarily stored water down the field and into a stable outlet location, so as not to cause additional erosion.
This conservation practice works well on steeper slopes that have gully erosion issues.
Mesenbrink has installed two WASCOBs last year, and they functioned so well that he installed three additional WASCOBs on another field this past fall. Both projects were eligible for cost share assistance through the Swift Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD) office.
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