Zoerb graduated from Doane College (now Doane University), a four-year liberal arts institution about 150 miles away from home, with a degree in environmental sciences and minor in biology. But he never really took his eye off the farm.
Lack of cropland availability is a challenge he faces as a young farmer. “There’s very little tillable land that comes up for lease or rent here these days. If it does become available, it’s typically a purchase big enough to make a banker’s eyes roll,” he said.
The home farm currently spans 6,500 acres when custom farming acres are thrown into the equation. Four full-time employees help keep things rolling.
Commodity corn and soybeans dominate production. Ethanol plants tend to gobble up the corn, but some goes to livestock producers. About 400 acres of white corn grown is raised for an export market. Soybeans head to a crush plant in Hastings.
Most delivery points are at least an hour away. Over the years, the farm has expanded grain storage capacity to 800,000 bushels. A plastic bagging system helps flex space at harvest.
In the fall, cereal rye covers up soybean stubble on fields being rotated to corn. Corn acres are strip-tilled the following spring. Soybean acres are mostly no-till but may get a vertical-till treatment if they are “really trashy.”
Field sizes average around 120 acres to 140 acres. The best fields contain Holdrege soils — the fertile state soil of Nebraska that responds favorably to irrigation and management. Hilltops are lighter and tend to burn out when conditions turn hot and humid.
With average rainfall of about 24 inches per year, irrigation is critical to making a crop. Nearly every acre sports a pivot.
WATER RULES
The Ogallala Aquifer, the largest aquifer in the United States and one of the largest in the world, runs beneath the farm. Irrigation water is pulled from wells, which are monitored to protect the resource.
“We’ll typically get a rain around Father’s Day in June. We’ll get a storm about July 10 and then, it may not rain until September,” Zoerb noted. “Irrigation is life for our crops.”
He remembers only one year — 2018 — when the skies opened and pumping was barely needed. “We had a couple of soybean fields that the only time we watered was to fertigate,” Zoerb recalled. “Our dryland soybeans averaged 92 bushels per acre (bpa) that year.”
Dryland soybeans are more likely to yield 40 bpa or less in this area. Irrigated soybeans typically average 80 to 85 bpa. Dryland corn yields around 125 bpa.
“We’re disappointed if we don’t hit 275 bushels or better on corn under water (irrigated),” he said. “With the price of inputs right now, that needs to be our goal.”
Unfortunately, this is the “Wild West” when it comes to weather. Zoerb can tell tales of waist-high soybean plants being ground to pulp by freak July hailstorms.
In 2022, he planted a field of soybeans three times. They succumbed to frost in May, only to be hammered by hail in early June as the cotyledons were just breaking the soil surface.
“Hail, in particular, can be heartbreaking, but fortunately it doesn’t seem to happen every year or at least not in the same fields every year,” he said.
COMMUNITY MATTERS
The summers are a whirlwind of checking irrigation units and scouting crops. Zoerb is diligent about pulling tissue samples, which helps identify if more groceries are needed to keep crops satisfied.
He enjoys technology and looking for ways to fine-tune production practices. He will fly a new drone this summer with spray capabilities.
Zoerb also serves on the Nebraska Corn Growers Association executive board and feels strongly about the need for his generation to have a voice. The networking is nice, but his involvement is with an eye toward preserving agriculture’s legacy. After all, it won’t be long before his own children will reach the age when he started in this business.
For now, sports, church and school activities clamor for attention. He and Nichole find themselves volunteering as coaches on the regular.
Then, there’s the by-the-honor system sweet corn patch the farm plants along the highway. And the machine shed is constantly being swept out to host a community boutique or fundraiser.
If he gets a spare minute, he might stop by for a cup of coffee at Ash Hollow Coffee Co. in nearby Loup City (1,100 population). His sister opened the place a few years ago.
“I know farming is a business and that’s the way we treat it, but it doesn’t have to be at the expense of other things. For me, the best part of farming is being with family,” he said.
Pamela Smith can be reached at [email protected]
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