Tony Brateng was just 21 years old and had not yet completed college when he made the biggest decision of his young life: he went into farming full-time and on his own, with no equity and no money. In fact, he didn’t even have much of a farm background.
How did he do it? With the help and wise counsel of a retiring farmer and a strong dose of his own courage.
“A lot of people think I’m nuts!” Brateng said. “I often hear about friends of mine who have graduated from college and have jobs where they only work a certain number of hours a day. I can see there are easier ways to make a living, but I’m a hands-on, outdoor kind of person, and I need to be busy all the time,” he said.
It has only been three years since the 2,000-acre farm near Roseau, Minnesota, became his total responsibility, but so far he and farming are a perfect fit, and it certainly fills his need to be busy. He grows soybeans, winter wheat, spring wheat, Kentucky bluegrass seed, perennial ryegrass, and switchgrass.
Most of the land he farms is rented from retired farmer Steve Dahl. The creative agreement he struck with Dahl is what made his farming start possible. He cash rents the land from Dahl with the agreement that after five years the payments will turn into land payments on a contract for deed.
He also leases Dahl’s equipment with an agreement to purchase it. The lease payments are applied to the purchase price, which can be completed in a balloon payment in the future.
Brateng was still a college student when he made his decision to take on the farm. He had been working for Dahl during the summers, driving the seed truck and filling the drill during spring work, and driving the swather at harvest time.
“Steve decided to sell the farm in the fall of 2005,” said Brateng. “The harvest that year was nearly a disaster because it was so wet; it had rained all summer. I remember that we had three combines trying to work in a field of bluegrass, and all three ended up getting stuck at the same time.”
Dahl decided that day to quit farming and sell or rent out the land. The news sparked several questions in Brateng’s mind: Could he be the one to take over the land? And could he make it work?
A fascination with farming had simmered in his blood ever since he was a child. “Though my father didn’t farm, my uncle had a farm,” he said. “We’d go out to the farm and help my uncle, and I enjoyed doing that kind of work, helping with the cattle and putting up hay.”
After he started working for Dahl, he came to love grain farming so much that he changed his degree major from animal science to agronomy.
Dahl’s decision to rent out his land seemed like an open door. “I’ll do it!” Brateng told his boss. But the older farmer at first questioned the young man’s wisdom. “You don’t have any money!” he declared to his protégé.
“Wait until December, and I’ll put together a financial package for you,” Brateng replied.
In the months following harvest he figured and calculated, painstakingly putting together a cash flow statement that would prove to Dahl he understood the financial risks of agriculture. “When I first starting working at it, I didn’t have a clue about how much money would be needed,” he said.
A clearer picture of crop inputs along with realistic yields and prices began to take shape as he put together the pieces of his experiences and the resources at his disposal. His ag college education was helpful along with the actual farm work experience he already had. He also received invaluable help from his father, the agronomy manager at the Farmers Union co-op in Roseau.
His completed cash flow statement convinced Dahl to give him a chance. He was still a student at the University of Minnesota at Crookston. When there was field work to do, he would make the hour and a half trip to get it done, often in the middle of the night.
With his graduation from college in the spring of ’07, he commented that, “This last year has been a lot easier.” His first year with crops has gone well enough that he still plans to complete the purchase of the farm.
Winter wheat, spring wheat, and soybeans are important cash crops, especially in years like the past two, when there is normal or below normal rainfall for the area.
Grass crops, on the other hand, especially the perennials like bluegrass, reduce the risk posed by the potential for excessively wet weather, which is common in northwestern Minnesota. “We can have a lot of extreme weather here,” he said. “When it rains, it rains a lot. Grain crops don’t fare too well when it’s wet and there’s water standing in the fields.”
Among his crops he grows 250 acres of Kentucky bluegrass for seed and 80 acres of switchgrass. Last fall he seeded the annual ryegrass by no-tilling it into canola stubble. If the ryegrass grows to the three-leaf stage in fall, it tends to overwinter well.
He also seeds winter wheat in late summer, no-tilling it into spring wheat stubble. If he wants to establish a new field of bluegrass, he underseeds the winter wheat with bluegrass.
“The bluegrass grows up with the winter wheat the next spring, but it only gets about six inches tall,” he said. “After I cut the winter wheat the bluegrass grows taller in the fall. The seed can be harvested the following season. By growing the bluegrass in the winter wheat, I don’t lose a year of production. Usually the first-year crops of bluegrass seed aren’t that good anyway.”
The remaining crops of spring wheat and soybeans are, of course, planted in the spring. Brateng barely finishes spring seeding before harvesting begins. The bluegrass fields are ready to cut around July 4. He swathes the grass and lets it cure in the swath for seven days before combining it.
He modifies a regular combine in order to harvest the bluegrass seed. Because the seed is light and is encased by a wool that prevents it from flowing as easily as grain seed does, he lowers the wind settings on the combine. To help the seed flow through the auger on the grain tank, he removes the shields on the inside.
The combine augers the seed into a truck box, and Brateng unloads the bluegrass seed in a big pile on the floor of a Quonset. Later in the year, he hauls the seed to a local grass-seed plant.
Soon after combining the bluegrass, the pressures of the harvest season increase. His father and Dahl step in then to help out with the combining.
The first week in August, the ryegrass is ready to swath and combine, as are the winter wheat and spring wheat crops. Switchgrass is soon ready to harvest after that, and then the soybeans.
So far, the marketing of his crops has provided the cash flow he envisioned as he drafted the initial financial statements forming the foundation of his business agreement with Dahl.
Brateng has depended on the cash grain crops as primary breadwinners, while the grass crops earn the gravy. The income from these crops is often delayed. The local grass seed plants will take delivery of the seed only as they have orders to fill. This can cause a delay in payment for a grass crop as long as a year. It’s a system that works, as long as the farmer plans for it.
“The profitability in the grass crops is not as good as it is in crops like wheat, for instance,” said Brateng. “Yet no matter how wet it might get, crops like bluegrass always produce a yield.”
Bluegrass also has a reduced cost of production. “Some growers leave bluegrass fields in production for as long as 15 years,” said Brateng. “During all that time the fields need no tilling and no seeding. You only need to spray, fertilize, and harvest the crop.”
The yield Brateng expects from bluegrass is about 350 pounds per acre. A good price is 70 cents a pound. For annual ryegrass, he expects to harvest 800 pounds to the acre and sell it for about 35 cents a pound.
From switchgrass he harvests about 400 pounds to the acre. This particular crop has a much more volatile market. “The market isn’t very big for switchgrass seed,” he said. “You might not be able to market the seed for three to four years, and the price ranges from $1 to $6 a pound.”
So far, Brateng has had no regrets about his decision to build a career from farming. “I look up to Steve a lot, and in many ways he has inspired me,” said Brateng. “I remember, while I was working for him, when we’d shut down work for the day, he’d share stories then from previous years on the farm. It seemed to me that it had been a good life he’d had as a farmer. I believe it can be a good life for me as well.”
Article by Raylene Nickel Photos by Rick Mooney