In an era where federal farm bills encourage farmers to grow monocrops of subsidized hybrid corn, a family in South Dakota has decided that the rewards – both social and financial – are better found in diversified organic farming. In this informative article titled Betting the Farm, written for Gourmet magazine, the system behind The Farm Bill is described as an almost irresistable force that drives farmers to join the herd and serve the increasingly industrial market.

Farm law has its roots in the New Deal efforts of the 1930s to control overproduction of agricultural commodities, and it has been revised, reworded, and reauthorized every five years since then. Both the House proposal and the Senate version run more than 1,000 pages. The language is impenetrable. It is traditionally hammered out by an informal bipartisan alliance of farm-state politicians and agribusiness groups as if the food we eat and the way it is grown is their private preserve. In recent years, public-health experts, conservationists, chefs, healthy-food advocates, and family farmers have tried to insert themselves into the debate, but their voices are almost completely drowned out by those of industrial agriculture. As this year’s bill lumbered through negotiations, one frustrated congressional staffer observed that it would once again be “a patchwork of parochial programs lacking a vision.”

The Stiegelmeier family, who arrived as in South Dakota over a century ago, works hardscrabble land – lacking the deep, glacially-deposited topsoil of states further east.

The family—Russian-Germans who fled the tsar’s draft—came to Walworth in the 1880s with the first wave of homesteaders. They were self-reliant and, unlike most homesteaders, knew how to grow wheat on windswept plains. Matthew is the sixth generation. He knows the family history back to his great-grandfather Jacob, who passed the land to his son Milton. Milton expanded the farm. “You could make money farming in the ’50s,” Matthew ex­plains. “But people didn’t want to farm. They wanted jobs in the cities. So there was good land available to buy.” When Milton’s sons came of age, he gave them land and loaned them money to get started. “That’s the crux of it,” Matthew says, his voice rising to emphasize the first rule of family farming. “If one generation won’t help the next get started, these farms can’t sur­vive.”

Wheat has always been the main crop for farmers in their area, but the push today is grow corn, which is used for livestock feed and myriad industrial uses. A basic farming value in the Stiegelmeier family began to be challenged, and Matthew described some practical problems, too, that come with relying on subsidized corn planting.

“I’ve got a philosophical problem with growing corn. Most corn goes to livestock. I prefer to feed grain to people, and I prefer for cattle to eat grass.” He also has practical reasons. “I hate to cultivate. We’ve got rolling land. We’re always dealing with erosion problems. In Iowa, they have four feet of top­soil. We have four inches. Besides, I can’t use pesticides.”

The family farm has gone organic, betting on a practice that may not benefit from the Farm Bill, but provides access to a growing market and greater satisfaction.

The Stiegelmeiers diversified into organic spring and winter wheat, flax, rye, barley, and buckwheat and relied on age-old ways to fight weeds and fertilize the soil. They certified their pastures as organic and grew alfalfa to feed a herd of registered British White beef cattle. Dan­elle started a small herd of sheep.

This past year, Matthew made $11 a bushel on winter wheat at mills in Kansas and North Dakota, at the time a four-dollar premium over commodity wheat. Organic flax sold for $19.50 a bushel, a premium of ten dollars.

This may not be a trend that’s spreading like wildfire, but if a family farm in South Dakota can take the alternative route, it may provide an example that other traditional and new era family farms can follow.