Sugar Producer

GROWER OF THE MONTH doing it DIFFERENT Ryberg Farms of Buffalo Lake, Minn. By Tyrell Marchant Photos courtesy Ryberg Farms 12 Sugar Producer APRIL 2019 Brian Ryberg isn't the type of guy who bases his decision- making on what someone else's opinion might be. He's not going to go against the grain just for the sake of being contrary, but neither will he stick to the main thoroughfare just to avoid some skeptical, sideways glances. So when the thought came to him five years ago to take a stab at strip-tilling his sugarbeet crop—a practice few, if any, Minnesota growers employ—he knew his own gut and intellect would be making the final decision. "To be honest, we didn't get a very optimistic outlook from a lot of people," Ryberg says of his farm's first foray into strip-till beets. "We heard a lot of, 'The ground's too heavy, it's too wet, it's never going to work.' But we tried it on some of our acres, and when we compared them to our conventionally tilled fields, they looked every bit as good." By the 2015 growing season, Ryberg Farms was fully committed, utilizing strip-till on all their sugarbeets, corn and soybeans. The farm's costs have been drastically lowered; several pieces of now-unnecessary equipment were offloaded, and the need for fuel and labor is lower than ever before. "We've implemented some cover crops and really brought our soils back to life," Ryberg says. "The crops take water and heat better than before, and our yields certainly haven't gone down." Of course, Ryberg is still, at his core, a farmer, a profession at which his father and grandfather also succeeded in southern Minnesota. His parents, Howard and Marilyn Ryberg, began growing sugarbeets in the 1960s and were instrumental in the formation of the Southern Minnesota Beet Sugar Cooperative, which harvested and handled its first crop in 1975. Brian Ryberg says he "grew up with sugarbeets" and can't recall a time when he wasn't interested in the farm. After earning an agriculture degree from the University of Minnesota Waseca, he and his young wife Sandy returned to the farm in Buffalo Lake in a partnership with Brian's parents. Howard and Marilyn retired in 1997, leaving Brian in control of the farm—something he always seemed destined for. Not That Different

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