Our partner: Denny Friest

Denny Friest, a fourth-generation farmer, grows corn and soybeans on 1,450 acres in Iowa with his wife, son and daughter-in-law.

In his Iowa Soybean Association hat, Friest looks like a traditional farmer, but in fact he’s part of an agricultural vanguard, an evangelist for the use of precise data to raise crops more efficiently, with less impact on the environment.

When he learned that fertilizer runoff from Midwestern farms flows down the Mississippi River, creating a 6,000-square-mile dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, he enrolled in a program to cut fertilizer use.

Field of dreams

“We farmers are targeted as part of the problem, but we want to be part of the solution, too,” he says.

Working with the On-Farm Network, Friest has cut fertilizer use on his farm by 30% while his yield has steadily increased.

“This partnership gives farmers the resources we need,” he says. “Rather than telling us what to do, EDF helped us become better managers—and better stewards of the soil.”