Michael Vittetoe is a 3rd generation farmer from Washington, IA. Michael farms with his father, Denny, and his sister, Anne. The Vittetoe’s raise corn, soybeans, cereal rye for row crops, as well as pasture finished beef, pastured laying hens, and confinement pork.

 They have been no-tilling since the 1980’s and the cover crops were brought into the operation around 2013, to address soil erosion issues on farms with steeper slopes. Cover cropped acres increased over time and 100% of the row crop acres have been cover cropped since 2019. During this time, the Vittetoe’s have leveraged the weed suppression capability of cereal rye to reduce herbicide use by over 60% in both corn and soybeans.

Typically, southeast Iowa battles excessive rainfall, especially early in the year, but 2022 & 2023 have provided an opportunity to learn how to manage cover crops in low moisture conditions.

 Along with no-till and cover crops, Michael began digging deeper into crop nutrition in recent years by studying topics such as the Albrecht system of soil balancing, humic/fulvic acid, and foliar feeding, among other topics. In 2022, Michael began experimenting with homemade liquid fertilizers by making his own liquid urea solution to be foliar fed to the crops