Step on to Lukas Fricke’s farm in Ulysses, Neb., and you’ll quickly see a farm family carrying on a legacy rooted in six generations.
“I get to work on a family farm, really lucky to be able to farm with my brother, Brendan, my mom, Laurie and another longtime employee, Mike,” says Fricke. “We grow kids, crops and pigs.”
The Nebraska farmer says his father started planting seeds of conservation across their farm, including when he adopted cover crops nearly 15 years ago. His dad has since passed, but Fricke is working to not only preserve the strong foundation already set by his father, but also uncover new opportunities. This year, those opportunities are continuing, but he’s also not immune to the challenges currently facing farmers and livestock producers across the country.
“We’re worried about are we going to have enough extra nitrogen that we’re not already getting from hogs to be able to help in turn grow that corn crop for next year’s pig crop,” says Fricke.
The other major concern he has as a pork producer is having enough people at the packing plants to which he sends his hogs.
“That’s something that I’ve actually experienced quite a few times when trying to take pigs,” says Fricke. “We’re now scheduling around moving loads, taking them on and off simply because the employee force is not there all the time.”
Availability and proximity to the nearest packing plant isn’t just about business for pork producers, it also has a major impact on his relationship to the environment.
“I really never even knew our carbon impact,” he says. “I never understood what our water footprint was until I started to look at it. I know a lot of people want to maybe paint a bad picture for production agriculture, with using barns to raise our animals, or using synthetic fertilizers or crop protection products. Those aren’t scary things. Those are a part of the solution.”
Fricke, along with other pork producers, recently came together to set sustainability goals for the pork industry, goals in which National Pork Board’s Ashley