Type: Topic Briefs
Soil and Plant Testing Basics for Organic Farming
Organic Apple Production in Iowa
New and experienced organic apple growers will find recommendations in this guide for managing insect pests, diseases, and weeds.
Adapting Enterprise Budgets for Organic Crops
Deciding what organic products to grow and how to price them is difficult, particularly when markets often are not well established. This publication discusses how to adapt enterprise budgets to organic crops in order to better ensure a producer earns a profit from their crop.
Organic Crop Production Enterprise Budgets
An enterprise budget is an estimate of the costs and returns to produce a product. This publication looks at enterprise budgets for organic growers, reflecting a four-year rotation using corn, soybeans, oats with alfalfa and a second year of alfalfa
Evaluating Organic Transitions at the Field Level
This publication provides information on making plans to transition to organic crop production. It helps outline the need for a transition crop plan, the importance of individual crop budgets, and evaluating results.
Making the Transition from Conventional to Organic
Farming organically allows producers to incur many economic and social advantages compared to farming conventionally. Understanding and planning the economic returns of the transition process can aid the producer in planning and in becoming organically certified.
Weed Management for Organic Farmers
Organic farmers use a wide variety of tools and strategies to control weeds without synthetic chemicals. Those tools and strategies and their effects on soil quality are discussed.
Organic No-Till Production
Reduced tillage or no-till can provide multiple environmental benefits, particularly in the area of soil health, as well as reducing machinery, labor and fuel costs. With organic no-till, herbicides cannot be used to terminate cover crops, as is practiced in conventional no-till. Iowa State University has worked with the Rodale Institute (RI) in conducting research… Continue reading Organic No-Till Production
Growing Organic Soybeans on Conservation Reserve Program Land
Organic soybeans may be a very lucrative crop for Iowa farmers. Learn about the market, land preparation, planting and weed management, and the harvest and subsequent crops.