Forever Pursuing his Purpose: Helping Farmers and Ranchers

During the course of life, one must go where one’s skills and gifts lead. This is especially true for Jim Schneider who has reinvented his professional journey many times in his quest to help farmers save the soil and adopt conservation practices.

Schneider’s diverse resume, that is centered around agronomy and research management, makes him qualified to provide agricultural expertise in a host of areas, “As I enter the retirement stage of life, it’s a time to inventory my strengths, passions, and my limitations. I am hoping to find that win-win place where I can make a difference and feel like I am serving my purpose.”?

“I think one of the morals of the story I really want to get across is that there is a fit for conservation, no matter where you are or what you’re doing,” Schneider said passionately. “I am retired now, but I want to stay involved. I always want to be promoting agricultural sustainability.”

Life has a way of coming full circle, and that is also the case for Schneider, as he balances life on two properties – one in Alexandria, Minn. and the other on the farm where he grew up near Gettysburg, S.D., 15 miles east of the Missouri River, “My farm is mostly highly-productive silt loam soils. I bought the farm site from my family several years ago. My son, Ty and I, spent a lot of time cleaning the place up and that has been very rewarding.”?

Schneider credits the foundation of his soil health and regenerative thinking to Dr. Dwayne Beck, founder of the Dakota Lakes Research Farm, “Dwayne started it for me. He actually started his career as a chemistry teacher at my high school. He was a very good chemistry teacher, but left before I took chemistry from him and went on to get his Ph.D. While he was earning his doctorate, I ended up working for him on his dissertation project. At that time, I was attending college at South Dakota State University (SDSU).”

“Dwayne’s research was focused on minimizing erosion under irrigation pivots along the Missouri River. There was a terrible amount of run-off and erosion under the pivots causing some serious issues. Different tillage practices coupled with different sprinkler packages to minimize that erosion were evaluated. He used a lateral move irrigation system that he got funded for the research and collaborated with farmer cooperators in the area,” Schneider explained.

“Under the irrigation system, Dwayne had replications of different tillage practices. There were dikes under the tillage practices and stage recorders that would measure the flow of water running out from the bottom of the plots. We monitored soil moisture with tensiometers and neutron probes in each of those plots. The irrigation system had multiple nozzles with quick couplers tethered at each nozzle port. Between replications, the crew, which included me and several other college students, would shut the system down and walk the catwalks to switch sprinkler heads. I only fell off once and it was a soft landing,” he went on.

Results of the project demonstrated the best tillage practice was no tillage at all, Schneider said, “That was the starting point of the no-till revolution in our geography. A group of farmers banded together and created a cooperative that would help Dwayne start the Dakota Lakes Research Farm (still in existence today). That project is a joint venture between privately owned land by the cooperative and the SDSU system.”

Schneider graduated from SDSU with an Ag Business degree and an Agronomy minor. During college, he worked in the seed testing lab as a part time job and then headed to the Minnesota Crop Improvement Association – the group that manages certified, registered, and foundation seed in the state, “Then I went back to South Dakota State and got my masters in agronomy where my research was in the area of seed technology.”

After college, he served as a crop consultant in northeast South Dakota for a couple of years, “Then I went to work for Pioneer Hi-Bred, when Pioneer was still privately owned. I was a field sales agronomist and covered the western two-thirds of South Dakota and fringes of Montana and Wyoming. That was a fun job and an opportunity to become acquainted with more no-till pioneers. My passion for no-till really started then and I was fortunate to work with such a large territory and diversity of farmers.”

“My interest in sustainability was not always appreciated by management because it’s a diversion from a focus on selling products,” Schneider admitted. “Still, at the time, between 1991 and 1996, with Dwayne Becks’ guidance, I promoted the idea of research plots west of the Missouri River which was mostly winter wheat and range. The management of Pioneer Hi-Bred was out of Iowa and other “I” states and they weren’t as familiar with the potential in those areas like Dwayne and I were. I put together a proposal showing how much business we could do west of the river if we could get the data by planting strip plots. At the time, CRP (Conservation Reserve Program) acres were coming out of production and there was a lot of potential out there with the benefits of no-till. But, that potential was quickly dismissed by management.”?

Still, Schneider didn’t stray from his confidence that sustainability practices were the future of agriculture, “My next career move was to York, Neb. where I was hired by Asgrow? to start a research/demonstration farm, one of eight Asgrow Concept Farms they had located through the corn belt. Along with that, I served as the tech support agronomist for Nebraska and northern Kansas. That was a really good opportunity. The management was very innovative and supportive, and I was able to do a lot of things at that farm. No-till in York County wasn’t widely adopted, but they recognized the potential and made a significant investment to support the new research farm and buy the equipment.”

He added that, “Agri Products Inc., based out of York, built a tool bar for a 15-inch corn planter. I bought a 15-inch corn head from Bish Enterprises in Giltner, Neb and a 6620 John Deere combine. This equipment allowed us to demonstrate practices on a more realistic farm scale than we could with our small research equipment. At the same time, we had the new technology of RoundUp? Ready soybeans entering the market. The farmers would come out to see the soybeans and then I could preach to them about the conservation aspects of farming too. That was a real opportunity. Then Monsanto bought out Asgrow and with that came the opportunity to research biotech corn. Our flexible research platform allowed us to tie the technologies and practices together in our research and demonstration.”

“Monsanto then offered me a farm systems manager position managing farmer seed dealers in west-central Minnesota. That is when Alexandria, Minnesota became my new home,” Schneider added. “This is an area of extremely high tillage intensity. The challenge that still exists in many areas of farm country such as Minnesota is there’s so much pride in black, tilled fields which is perceived as a sign of a good farmer.”

“I ended up heading back to Nebraska to work for the University of Nebraska – Lincoln Extension out of Hamilton County,” he said, moving along his journey. “That was a good opportunity to spread more education around no-till and conservation practices. I worked with the water conservation and irrigation team and an active group promoting no-till which included the likes of extension engineer, Paul Jasa; extension educators – Paul Hay (deceased), Randy Pryor, Gary Lesoing, Dan Leininger with the Upper Big Blue Natural Resources District (NRD), and Dan Gillespie (deceased) with the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). That was a neat yet challenging opportunity. I felt like we were making a difference.”

Then Schneider received a call from Gary Zoubek at the York County Extension office, “Farmer Scott Gonnerman had contacted Gary wanting to learn more about cover crops and no-till and Gary referred him to me. On Scott’s farm, with a great amount of support from Scott and his wife Barb, we did a project researching the use of cover crops to recycle nutrients and to help his fertilizer program. We had a replicated study where we measured soil nutrients before and after and the nutritional values from the cover crop residue. It was a fun project. We used Ward Laboratories for our soil testing. Dr. Ray Ward was a real supporter of that project as was Green Cover Seed.”

“Then came an opportunity to conduct research for DuPont Pioneer in York,” he noted. “That was researching seed production. There again, it was not a regenerative, sustainable research farm. They used tillage to wipe out the effects of the previous experiments which is typical in small plot research at a genetics research station. I was able to no-till some of my research, but I did not plan my farming well enough, and didn’t consider they were going to anhydrous across the soybean residue. My lesson learned when playing a role in a large diverse research program is that you cannot plan and communicate enough. My supervisor was a self-proclaimed Illinois ‘plow boy’ who did not hold the same amount of appreciation for adding to the purpose of the given research project. Soon after, DuPont was acquired by Dow and my position was eliminated.”

Carrying his core purpose with him, Schneider said, “With change comes opportunity. I wanted to stay in York because my son was a senior in high school. So, after Dupont, I did some contract work. Then I got a pretty nice job with start-up company – Calyxt. They were developing high oleic soybeans with the plan to vertically integrate from field production to store shelf. I was hired as their lead agronomist. I had the idea to promote these soybeans in my home area. They were a public Minnesota variety in which they could introduce the high oleic trait. Their genetic nemesis was the Soybean Cyst Nematode (SCN) of which the variety had no resistance. Potter County had yet to see SCN, making it a good location. Although this was the case, the company insisted on testing every contracted field for the SCN. It hurt me deeply when a third-party contractor hired to do the testing sampled a customer’s no-till field leaving a pattern of pickup ruts through the entire quarter.”

Dan Forgey, (a farmer manager who tried the Calyxt soybeans) happened to be on the board of the South Dakota Soil Health Coalition, a program heavily funded by the NRCS, “The coalition was designed to promote soil health in ways that a government agency does not have the time nor resources to do. I moved back to my hometown for a position with the coalition that fit my passion. I rented a trailer house in Gettysburg and did that job while I worked on cleaning up my family farmstead which was a great pastime during the Covid years.”

Schneider then worked for the NRCS in Faulk County out of the Faulkton, S.D. field office. “I commuted to Faulkton for that job for a few years. That was during COVID too and I was able to mix a lot of teleworking into that which helped. I was then offered the position of district conservationist in my home county from the Gettysburg field office. Serving my home community was a very rewarding way to finish my career.”

Making a difference with his diverse road of experiences is what Schneider deeply desires to do, “When my five years were up at NRCS, I was eligible for retirement and that was the door opening to be free of all strings. Now I want to continue following my core passion. So here I am, not sure how far I will get, but really hoping to find something meaningful.”

Schneider means it too. He is genuinely ready to pursue his life’s purpose of helping farmers and ranchers for years to come.

?Contact Jim Schneider at: [email protected] | 1 (402) 631-1100