Huge Organic Farm in Iowa Thrives Without Chemicals

By Keith Schneider

Just shy of 800 residents, West Bend is barely a blip on a prairie landscape. But this small northern Iowa town has become a hub for the nation’s growing organic farming sector, challenging the notion that pesticides and other agricultural chemicals are required to feed the world. 

The town’s towering grain bins are surrounded by around 50,000 acres of corn, soybeans, oats and other crops grown without the use of synthetic chemicals. Farmers fertilize the land with chicken litter and hog manure. Weeds are removed by hand or with non-chemical tools, such as new laser weeders. 

In 1998, farmer Barry Fehr began experimenting with raising chemical-free soybeans on 45 acres. Today, the West Bend region is the most expansive and profitable area of organic grain production in Iowa and possibly the United States. Most of the land is farmed by multiple generations of Fehr families that live close to West Bend. One operation, Clear Creek Acres name, generates nearly $40 million a year in crop sales from 25,000 acres. The Fehr family also manages about 3,000 organic acres in Colorado.

The agrochemical industry, led by Monsanto-owner Bayer, Syngenta and other global seed and chemical giants, maintains that weed killers, insecticides and other pesticides are essential to robust food production, and that a growing global population requires the use of chemicals in agriculture.

But 71-year-old Dan Fehr, who has been farming for more than 50 years, called that notion “debatable.”

The Fehr family farms are nearly matching the yields of crops grown conventionally, perhaps seeing only about a 10% yield decline in comparison, Fehr said. Their costs are lower because they’re not buying pesticides and the high-priced genetically modified seeds designed to be used with certain weed-killing pesticides.