AT THE END of 2019, when corn prices bottomed out at about $2.70 per bushel, Zack Smith realized he would need to find new ways to be profitable on his 305 acres of strip-tilled corn and soybeans. 

With a lifelong interest in conservation, as well a drive to break out of the confines of traditional ag practices, the Buffalo Center, Iowa, grower looked for solutions that didn’t rely on the ‘get big or get out’ mindset.

“The goal was to find a way that relatively small farmers could stay viable without having to just go find another 500 or 1,000 acres to farm,” he says.

Smith considered relay cropping, but his northern Iowa location near the Minnesota border made seeding a profitable third crop a tall order. 

In conversations with friends Sheldon Stevermer and Lance Peterson, strip intercropping seemed like a possible solution — but the idea quickly shifted from focusing only on plants to including livestock in the mix.

“The first idea was just to include a pen of sheep that we would make mobile somehow,” he says. “But everyone says there’s not enough biodiversity in ag right now, so we figured why not make it a three-ring circus of biodiversity with plants…