Ryan Nell and his father, Ron, are innovators when it comes to the 2,200-acre family farm in Beaver Dam, Wis. However, they don’t adopt new practices without first researching them and conducting their own on-farm trials to optimize methods for their operation. 

Over the past 5 years, Chris Perkins has been challenging conventional wisdom in corn production with a systems-approach banding program that has bumped yields on his southwestern Indiana farm by an additional 50-60 bushels per acre.

In  2012, the Isley family took a firm dislike to using the word “dirt.” They had gone through a substantial drought and were working ground, watching it turn to powder.