When Joan Maxwell switched careers from commercial underwriter to farmer, she did not put down the Excel spreadsheet. Instead, she took her accounting and spreadsheets skills and technology know-how into the farm field, ensuring that Cinnamon Ridge Farms runs as efficient and sustainably as possible.
Joan Maxwell lives and works on Cinnamon Ridge Farms, a diversified dairy farm approximately 14 miles northwest of Davenport, Iowa, alongside her husband John Maxwell. Over the years, the Maxwell family has earned numerous accolades for their farm, including the US Dairy Sustainability Award, Wergin Good Farm Neighbor Award, the Iowa Farm Environmental Leader Award, and others.
A part of the Maxwells’ success comes down to a deep understanding of the metrics that make an agribusiness work, informed by Joan’s ABC accounting and Six Sigma expertise. For instance, the farm runs enterprise analysis on equipment to determine if it’s better financially to repair a piece of equipment or purchase a new one, Joan Maxwell told AgNavigator.
“It’s not how much money you make; it’s how much money you can try to keep. And my background in commercial underwriting really was more process orientated — process reengineering,” Joan noted.
She added, “When farming was really easy, they didn’t have to worry about expenses so much. But now, we need to make data-driven decisions. That’s just the way it is.”
Technology & sustainability are key to a successful modern dairy
Another part of the Maxwells’ success comes from an embrace of technology, whether that’s low-tech solutions like a label maker for its direct-to-consumer cheese or genetic testing to determine how much a calf will produce in the future. Cinnamon Ridge Farms uses an automatic milking machine from ag machinery supplier Lely.
Additionally, the Maxwells are exploring the use of virtual fencing technologies to better manage their herd and save money on the costs associated with constructing fencing, Joan Maxwell said.
“What we’re seeing is that you can do rotational grazing by using the fencing and moving cows if you have a big area. Another thing that other farmers are using it on is waterways and filter strips that they can graze the cows on and then move them on because it would be cost prohibitive to put fence on filter strips,” she elaborated.
Cinnamon Ridge Farms uses several sustainable practices from no-tilling to cover cropping, which improve soil health and help reduce nitrates in waterways, John Maxwell explained. The farm also uses manure from its livestock operations to provide nutrients for its corn, soybean, and hay crops.
However, adopting sustainable farming practices comes with certain risks and costs for farmers, Joan Maxwell admitted.
“It costs money to buy a no-till drill. It costs money for someone to seed your crop for you to do a cover crop,” Joan Maxwell said. “The farmer needs to see some form of benefit from it. The challenge that we have today is that [fewer] farmers own their land, and so why should a farmer do a practice that improves the land that the farmer doesn’t own?”
‘What we’re doing is supporting business and not agriculture’
Beyond the cost of switching to sustainable farming practices, changes are needed to support first-time growers to purchase land, Joan Maxwell explained. 347.8 million acres of U.S. are rented, and nearly 52% of non-operating landlords have never farmed, according to USDA’s Tenure, Ownership, and Transition of Agricultural Land Survey.
If regulations required farmers to improve fields through sustainable farming practices like cover cropping, this could mean farmers are left to pay the bill, while landowners reap the benefit of those investments, Joan Maxwell explained.
“A lot of our leases say do not mine the land. If you take out X amount of nutrients, you put back X amount of nutrients. I’ve never seen a lease that has you make the farm better,” Maxwell elaborated.
She added, “If the government mandate that farmers have to put in a cover crop, who’s going to benefit from that? The landowner. And so, what we’re doing is supporting business and not agriculture. “
