Where Corn Is King, the Stirrings of a Renaissance in Small Grains
To the untrained eye, Jeremy Gustafson’s 1,600-acre farm looks like all the others spread out across Iowa. Gazing at his conventional corn and soybean fields during a visit in June, I was hard-pressed to say where his neighbor’s tightly planted row crops ended and Gustafson’s began.
But what distinguished this vast farm in Boone, Iowa, was a thin, 16-acre strip of oats Gustafson had planted in a loop around the barn. At the time, the chest-high oats were at the “milk stage.” When Gustafson squeezed the grains embedded in the feathery grass between his thumb and forefinger, they released a tiny dollop of white liquid, a sign that they would be ready to harvest in about a month.
![](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4ba0ec_4f5645059d6642e99fbb3651b519253e~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_500,h_333,al_c,q_80,enc_auto/4ba0ec_4f5645059d6642e99fbb3651b519253e~mv2.jpg)
photo credit: muffinn