My mom, Beverly Ficke, sure enjoyed this story because of the connection the Ficke family has had with the Garst family throughout the years.  
 
This article first appeared in the Midwest Messenger:  
 

The Garst Family Seed and Agricultural Legacy

By Kerry Hoffschneider

Liz Garst

On September 23, 1959, in the middle of the Cold War, Liz Garst’s grandfather, Roswell Garst, hosted Nikita Khrushchev at the family farm near Coon Rapids, Iowa.  Liz said the theme of the visit for Roswell was crystal clear – hungry people are dangerous people.

“And the people of Russia were hungry,” Liz said.  “That relationship, between my grandfather and Khrushchev, was really the first warm up during that time.  Roswell sold the Soviet Union seed corn, seed technology, fertilizer and mechanization.  The Soviet Union was hungry and not feeding themselves.  He did it to make money and because he was a progressive humanist who wanted to make the world a better place.”

Roswell and Elizabeth Garst had five children, three girls and two boys Liz said, “The oldest boy, Stephen, my father, was the farmer of the family.  My Uncle David was the seed corn salesman of the family.  I am the oldest of the six children of Stephen and Mary Garst and am the Garst family business manager. I manage farmland and community banks for my family.” 

Liz explained how the history of their family’s legacy began, “My grandfather, Roswell Garst, was a friend of Henry A. Wallace, who started Pioneer Hybrid Seed Company.  In 1930, Roswell entered into business with Wallace to start producing and selling hybrid seed in the Western Corn Belt under the Pioneer name.  A couple years later, it was clear the company was going to grow so the Garsts brought in Charlie and Bertha Thomas as partners.  Bertha was an heiress with a lot of money and Charlie was a farmer injured in a farm accident who became production manager of the seed company.  My grandfather, Roswell, was the salesman.”

Garst and Thomas Seed Company grew rapidly, Liz said, “Part of the reason it was able to grow was because the Western Corn Belt was not fully-developed in things like irrigation.  So, in Nebraska and Colorado, it expanded and penetrated the market.”

In 1973, Liz explained that Pioneer became a publicly-traded company on the New York Stock Exchange, “Pioneer was very good at hybrid seed but not so good at other businesses.  We (Garst and Thomas) were functioning as a franchise and they eventually wanted to take us out.  That happened in the mid-1980s.  There was some litigation on it and we bought out the Thomases at that time and became Garst Seed Company and went on our own for a while.  Then we sold out to Imperial Chemical Industries and the name was briefly changed to ICI Seeds and later back to Garst Seed.  That company was bought and sold, and the Garst Seed brand was terminated a couple years ago.” 

A consummate salesman and agriculturist at heart, Liz said Roswell also managed an extensive amount of farmland, “He was a really good land manager, the kind who seeded in ditches, built terraces and kept land that should be in pasture in pasture.  My father Stephen was an even better caretaker and we were among the first adaptors of no-till in the state of Iowa.  All our land has been no-tilled for more than 40 years.  My father also became interested in conservation directly. He built 60 fishing ponds for soil conservation and fishing and made them open to the public since the 1950s.” 

“My father and mother also took the six of us on picnics every single Sunday, weather permitting, throughout our childhood.  My parents raised kids who loved the outdoors and gave us a good education,” she added.

Today, Liz and her family have grown their efforts to recognize the importance of biodiversity, “Biodiversity is a subject my dad and grandfather did not know much about.  My dad, for example, who loved to pheasant hunt would plant whole fields of just switchgrass; but, that is not the prairie and does not have biodiversity.  When my father’s health failed, he owned a lot of cattle pasture, timber, a lot of beautiful land southeast of coon rapids.  When I took over, my siblings, mother and I had quite a discussion about what we should do with all the land.  We wanted to protect it forever and decided the best way to do that was to give it away.  We spent some time figuring out who to give it to and ended up starting a new, non-profit land trust called Whiterock Conservancy.  The land is owned by the Board of Directors of the non-profit.  We are giving away a total of 5,500 acres.  So far, we have given away a little more than 4,000 acres with plans to give away more in the future.” 

The Whiterock Conservancy mission is three-fold, Liz said, “The first part is natural resource protection and restoration.  Our main activity is an oak savanna restoration, what the land area was before the white man showed up.  The main thing we do is have fires there.  We burn one to 2,000 acres a year in our timbers and prairies and have unique prairies and wetlands.”

“The second part of the mission is sustainable agriculture with an overarching goal of improving soil health and soil protection,” Liz went on, “My parents and grandparents were superb at soil protection (stopping erosion).  But now, thanks to science, we understand much more about soil health and the fact that soil is filled with biology, the little critters and funguses that really hold nitrogen and protect soil structure, making it more resistant to erosion.  We are also now using cover crops on 100 percent of our ground for the second year. We believe cover crops make us money and protect the soil.” 

“In cattle grazing, we are into higher-rotational grazing systems and also using clovers instead of chemical fertilizers to help fertilize the pastures,” she noted.  “The third part of our mission statement is to welcome people here to recreate and learn about sustainable agriculture and natural resources.  It can be complicated to balance the three arms of the mission.  However, I know we are successful when everyone is mad at us; because, it takes a bit of tension between the three arms of the mission statement to make things work and that is fine with us.  We are about multi-purpose land use.  The land is not just to produce and make money, but also to protect natural resources and provide a home for wildlife and recreation and enjoyment for the public.” 

In closing, Liz had a strong message for all farmers and ranchers, “With the climate change we are getting in Iowa and elsewhere, we are experiencing changes.  In Iowa, pretty much every farm is seeing five-inch rain events, some 7 to 10 inches.  The way we are farming is not protecting our soils from this new reality.  At current trends, we are going to be out of top soil in 35 years in the Loess Hills of Iowa.  In the Prairie Pothole region – the flat, black region of Iowa, we will be out of top soil in 80 years unless we change our ways.  We have lost more than half our topsoil already.  Farmers need to be paying attention to this problem with terraces, waterways, contours, no-till and cover crops.”  

A photo of Roswell and Elizabeth Garst that hangs at their historic farmhouse near Coon Rapids, Iowa. 

The barn at the Garst farm.  The Whiterock Conservancy welcomes everyone to visit the Roswell farm and landscapes they are preserving and demonstrating sustainable agriculture upon:  http://whiterockconservancy.org/

1. Report all farming income. This includes sales of livestock, produce, grains and other products you raised, distributions from a cooperative, agricultural program payments, crop insurance proceeds, federal crop disaster payments, income you received for custom hire or machine work, and gasoline or fuel tax credit or refunds.
2. Report resale of livestock. According to the IRS, if you sold livestock or items that you bought for resale, you must also report the sale when filing your taxes. Your profit or loss is the difference between your selling price and your basis in the item. Basis is usually the cost of the item, and your cost may also include other expenses such as sales tax and freight.
3. Deduct ordinary and necessary business expenses. With an ordinary expense considered as a common and accepted cost for the business and a necessary expense defined as a cost that is proper for the business.
4. Deduct employee wages. Another item farmers can deduct are employee wages. You can deduct wages you paid to your operation’s full- and part-time workers, keeping in mind that you must withhold Social Security, Medicare and income taxes from their wages.
5. Other common tax deductions around maintenance. These deductions include seeds and plants, veterinary costs for livestock, depreciation, chemicals, feed, fertilizers and lime, insurances (other than health), mortgage interest, and storage and warehousing. Unfortunately, not quite everything is deductible. For example, personal or living expenses that do not produce farm income, expenses of raising anything you or your family used, the value of raised animals that died, inventory losses and personal losses cannot be deducted.
6. Consider commodity gifts. If you do not itemize or plan on giving money to your church or other charity at year-end, consider giving a commodity gift to help reduce your taxable income and self-employment tax burden.
7. Benefit off a net operating loss. If your expenses are more than income for the year, you may have a net operating loss. You can carry that loss over to other years and deduct it. You may get a refund of part or all of the income tax you paid in prior years, and you may be able to lower your tax in future years.
8. Spread out your farm income. You may be able to average some or all of the current year’s farm income by spreading it out over the past three years. This may cut your taxes if your farm income is high in the current year and low in the prior three years (also known as base years).