Regenerative Agriculture Spurs Growth on This Montana Farm

A holistic triple bottom line guides every management decision Jeff and Marisa Sather make for their fourth-generation Sather Farm and Ranch northeast of Glasgow, Montana. “We want to maximize profit for our operation, as well as maximize the ecological benefit to our land and the social benefit to our community,” says Jeff, who manages the northeast Montana operation with his wife, Marisa, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The three-pronged goal springs from the Sathers’ relatively newfound commitment to regenerative agriculture. It sets their operation on a course veering sharply from the traditional management practices once underpinning the farm and so many others like it in the surrounding community.

The previous generations practiced tillage and grew a 50-50 wheat-fallow rotation. After graduating from college and becoming involved in the farm’s management in 2006, Jeff began making changes.

“We had eliminated some tillage by planting with a hoe drill, but in 2020, I switched to a disk drill to further reduce soil disturbance,” he says. “I also got a stripper header for the combine to leave more stubble standing to protect soil from wind, and trap snow in winter.”

Hand in hand with the switch to no-till came continuous cropping, with a more diverse crop rotation. Eliminating tillage and diversifying crops helps the farm survive the area’s frequent droughts.

In 2019, an employee’s casual observation triggered further, radical changes. “An employee pointed out to me that we spent more on fertilizer every year than his parents earned in an entire year, with both working full time,” Jeff says. “That caused us to sit down and figure out what our actual costs were per year and what we were spending the money on. We looked at what would happen if we stopped applying fertilizers. We figured out that we would only need a 15-bushel-an-acre corn yield to break even.”

The new insight coincided with the Sathers’ efforts to learn more about regenerative agriculture. They visited prominent regenerative farms and enrolled in soil health courses.

“We went to a soil health symposium and learned that we had phosphorus in our soils but needed to build and correct the balance of the soil biology in order to make it available to plants,” Jeff says. “We also heard farmers tell how they had reduced nitrogen applications by about 50%. It became my goal to stop using all fertilizers.”

This set them on the path they follow today in their cropping. The rotation now includes peas, lentils, safflower, flax, spring wheat, and durum wheat.

To replace synthetic fertilizers, they work to activate natural processes of soil fertility. “Soil tests have shown us that our biggest issue is an insufficient fungal population,” Jeff says. “Bacteria dominate the biology in our soil. We’re aiming for a one-to-one balance in the soil. Eliminating tillage helps, and we’ve stopped treating seed with fungicides.”

Using Cover Crops

Growing cover crops for livestock grazing is a key way to build soil biology, but drought and grasshopper predation bring challenges. Alternatively, the Sathers are trying to jump-start the rebuilding of soil biology by applying compost extract and fish hydrolysate.

“We also apply a calcium treatment to try to break up compaction in tight soils,” Jeff says. He adds that the improved soil aeration reduces populations of dandelion and Canada thistle, reducing the need to apply herbicides.

Along with using natural soil amendments, the Sathers plant full-season cover crops on fields where fencing and water availability permit grazing by their 160-head cow herd.

Though drought and grasshoppers often hinder cover crop growth, the Sathers see benefits in years when cover crops thrive. This was most evident in 2021, a year of severe drought in northeastern Montana. “The only fields we harvested were those where we had grown a full-season cover crop the year before,” Jeff says.

The Sathers’ diverse crop rotation includes spring and durum wheat.

The Sathers have had best success growing a five-way, cool-season mix, planted early in spring. “We grazed it in early July, then combined seed from the regrowth,” Jeff says. “We grazed it again in November. The next year’s soil tests showed that we’d bumped up the organic matter by a half of a percentage point in just one year.”

While the cropping system changes may have reduced yields, net profit per acre has improved, Jeff says. “Sometimes,” he notes, “we can still harvest 50-bushel-per-acre durum in a drought with no fertilizer.”

Regenerative Livestock Production

The Sathers also have implemented regenerative practices on their cattle side. They’ve delayed calving until May and June to permit calving on pasture. And they practice managed grazing by rotating cattle through multiple, small paddocks. They select for efficient herd genetics that thrive on grass and require few purchased inputs.

Jeff and Marisa run flocks of free-range butcher chickens and turkeys, as well as hogs they market locally. The poultry and hogs add value to the cropping enterprises’ grain screenings. The turkeys, in particular, eat grasshoppers, reducing the damage to the Sathers’ market garden.

Growing the Farm

The Sathers have grown their operation by purchasing nearby farms that come up for sale. Their land base has grown to 5,000 acres of cropland and 7,000 acres of pastureland.

Along with acquiring more land, the Sathers continually look out for diverse enterprises, as well as new farmers who might join their operation and rejuvenate their local communities.

“We’re trying to add value and people to the acres we have,” Marisa says. “We hope we can help somebody create a revenue stream of their own on some acres.” Selling, leasing, or gifting those acres are options the Sathers consider.

While some enterprises remain experimental, the diverse side businesses the Sathers have added to their operation illustrate the possibilities they see for young people, who would start out working as apprentices on their farm.

Marisa sums up the vision for their new-generation farm: “We would like to see the productivity of our operation increase over time, both in terms of traditional yield and also in terms of value. This includes ecological and social value such as adding families to the landscape and layering diverse enterprise mixes. We would like to see thriving wildlife, as well as a thriving human community, as we continue to succeed and grow our operation.”