By: Franck Groeneweg

As interviewed by Martha Mintz

The regenerative practices we implement on our family’s Three Forks, Mont., farm today began germinating when I was a farm kid in France

Those swelling seeds of interest were nurtured and strengthened as I tried my hand at farming across the world. I’ve raised crops in France, Iowa, Saskatchewan and now Montana. I’ve even volunteered managing farms in Haiti. The ability to adapt to each of those environments is certainly being put to the test as I focus on fully leveraging the capabilities of soil biology to provide nutrients for dryland Montana crops.

I grew up on a 500-acre small grain dryland farm in France. I always intended to farm, and my interest was drawn to the wide-open spaces, big equipment and scale of farming in the U.S. My interest was confirmed when I had the opportunity to work on an Iowa farm in the fall of 1994 at 17 years old. I didn’t find huge acreages and multiple combines in the field there like the farm papers wrote about, but I found people I really liked. I clicked with the mentality of small-farm America. I knew I’d be back.

Just a few years later, I had the chance to farm with a family in northwest Iowa. They had the same last name as me and unofficially adopted me into their family. They were no-tilling soybeans into corn stalks using a 15-foot John Deere 750…