Del and Burtis Aufenkamp – Retired Nebraska Farmer

Del and Burtis Aufenkamp – Retired Nebraska Farmer 402-274-4685 cell

1^st Phone Interview with Lee Redden

***Key Insight***

Organic farming practices allow people who want to get into small “hobby” farming the opportunity because they would quickly become limited on by acreage (Like before combines). Making a machine to make organic row crop farming more productive would allow bigger modern farms the opportunity to go into organic farming without large labor crews.

Del is a retired farmer in Nebraska. What/ Why I interviewed him was because he farmed organically before fertilizer, herbicide, and pesticides were created. This brings up a point that the methods used in the 30’s are the same methods that are becoming more popular today. It also is interesting from a trends and historical point of view.

When he was growing up his family has a 240 acre (big back then plot) and one tractor (they were modern). His family would not have wanted more land because there was not enough labor to work a bigger field.

Currently his son (Arlin) farms about 5,000 acres and would farm more with the same machinery if he could obtain better leases for ground. This shows the trend of farming to sustain your family to farming as a big business where many people are being squeezed out by bigger farms.