A Washington farmer has evolved into being a conservation leader and entrepreneur in a relatively short span of time since returning to his family farm.

Michael Vittetoe is a third-generation corn and soybean farmer, though he only came into the profession in 2014 after he had been a civil engineer in Muscatine for five years, with travel around the world for military projects. Vittetoe says there was always a pull to return home, upon which he has experimented with cover crops and diverse forage mixes, and growing cereal rye.

In 2018 he and his wife Kelsey began raising cattle for which he had no prior experience, and they now have Long Creek Pastures, a 40-head grass-fed beef operation. He hopes that as his operation continues to expand in beef and other production while reducing herbicide usage, minimizing runoff, increasing yields, and improving water quality, that these conservation tenets become more commonplace for area farmers, “So seeing the adoption throughout the areas has been neat to see. Hopefully as we get more experience with some of the things that we’re doing. Like with the rolled crimper rye in the soybeans where we’re not using chemicals or greatly reducing our chemicals. Hopefully we can get that ironed out a bit further where it’s ready to get a little bit more mainstream and see more people doing it and what not, because I think that’s a big deal to be able to reduce our chemical load that we’re putting on our land every year.”

Last December Vittetoe was one of five Washington County farmers declared “conservation champions” as part of the Iowa Soybean Association’s Front Forty initiative, and in January he received the ISA’s Environmental Leader Award at their annual Leadership Awards Luncheon. You can hear more from Vittetoe during Monday’s edition of the KCII Special Edition Agriculture Magazine at 1 and 6 p.m. and by visiting the On Demand page under the Listen Live button at kciiradio.com.