Part mad scientist, part entrepreneurial farmer, Adam Lasch clearly loves what he does. Even while acknowledging the weather and pricing difficulties he and many other farmers have faced over the past couple of years, he’s always enthusiastic and excited to talk about the importance of diversification and his on-farm experiments.

“I have some really tough, heavy clay ground that doesn’t like to grow corn or soybeans,” he says. “When I take on a farm, I’m usually switching it over from tillage to no-till so we’re always in the remediation phase. But with no-till and diverse rotations, we’re getting more roots in the soil, supercharging our microbes and improving the soil structure.”

Diversified and Flexible

Based near the city of Lake Geneva in southeastern Wisconsin, Lasch Livestock and Land Solutions is a small dairy and cattle operation. Raising about 150 beef and dairy cows as well as sheep and chickens on approximately 200 acres, first-generation farmers Adam and his wife, Betsy, got started farming in 2011 by raising stocker cattle, and have been 100% no-till since 2015.

As a young farmer without a lot of established infrastructure, Lasch enjoys the flexibility of being able to respond to whatever his growing conditions or the market dictate, and his focus is on adding diversification in his fields and growing the right crop on the right ground.

“We know that certain plants grow better in certain conditions than others and we want to evaluate each field to take the risk out of it. If…