Meet Clint Orr – A Eureka Moment Points the Way Toward a Successful Future

North Central Indiana is known for its rich agricultural farmland and for its abundant grain farms, many of which have been in continuous operation for a century. After managing a business for more than 35 years, you wouldn’t classify Clint Orr as a new farmer, but you might say that he’s leading the transition to a new way of farming.

Orr Farms was established in 1987, soon after Clint and Marianne (Smith) Orr were married. Starting out with 200 acres, they initially worked many other jobs to invest in the farm. Corn and soybeans have been their main crops, and they have utilized value added contracts almost from the beginning. Year after year, they continually added more farmland – and today farm 3,800 acres.

Staying current with new technologies is critically important to their business.

“Like many people, we began no-tilling soybeans back in the ‘90s with the advent of glyphosate-resistant crops. By 2006 we were growing more no-till corn, and within a few years we were using cover crops across every acre of farmland.”

Orr Farms is not confined to a single place and instead includes satellite locations across a wide area, so it presents a particular challenge when it comes to managing cover crops.

“We used to purchase a custom blend cover crop for individual fields. “One day, I was speaking at a grower panel when another farmer said their goal was to find a cookie-cutter approach, because they were going crazy trying to juggle different cover crop mixes, planting windows and termination dates. I guess you could say that’s when I had an epiphany – a eureka moment.”

Today, Clint uses one mix for corn and another for soybeans, which has greatly simplified the management of their entire operation. Orr Farms has used Climate FieldView™ for many years because of its robust data management capabilities and its ease of use, which is especially important when handling the documentation required for the carbon market. The farm has participated in several carbon initiatives and has been part of ForGround by Bayer and the Bayer Carbon Program since its inception. The additional revenue stream certainly helps, as do the many benefits of regenerative agriculture – and Clint could clearly see the handwriting on the wall.

“Agriculture is moving from individual decisions to a more holistic systems approach,” notes Clint.

Perhaps it stems from his love of science, but Clint sees the industry shifting from a chemical experiment to more of a biological perspective.

“I have always been fascinated by the ‘fence row effect,’ where the green growth is strikingly apparent and how we can get that on entire fields. With regenerative farming practices, we’ve seen less soil compaction, less erosion and improved water infiltration – so the field acts more like a sponge than that of a sidewalk.”

“We pride ourselves in being a sustainable operation. All of our acres receive cover crops and are no-tilled or strip-tilled. We apply some synthetic fertilizers and a lot of manures and use variable rate technologies for precision application of seed, fertilizers and other inputs.”

By using intensive soil testing and conservation practices, coupled with data-driven analytics, Orr Farms is quickly moving toward a true regenerative operation. What advice does Clint have for farmers considering adopting these practices?

“Do your research, get good advice, think long term, believe in what you’re doing and stick with it.”