While growing up on her family’s farm in North Central Iowa near Charles City during the 1980s, Wendy Johnson couldn’t wait to get down the road to the next chapter of her life.

“I didn’t want to live in a rural community, didn’t want to be from a hog farm,” Johnson said. “I wanted to be a city kid. I wanted to do something drastically different with my life.”

Johnson left the farm at 18, yet after stints working in the fashion industry in Los Angeles and traveling extensively throughout Brazil, she returned to Charles City 18 years later. Johnson calls it her “mid-career shakeup.”

“I was at another turning point in my life. I was looking for a slower pace of life,” Johnson said. When her grandmother passed in 2008, Johnson found herself concerned about the place she grew up. “I was focused on what’s going to happen to that farm. Who’s going to take it on? Are we just going to rent it out? I wanted to be part of protecting that place.”

Today, Johnson and her husband are raising their daughter in her Grandmother’s house. She’s even raising hogs again.

Johnson’s farm includes both conventional corn-soybean rotation row crops and a regenerative conservation-focused food and fiber enterprise, Joia Food and Fiber Farm. “We like diversity on our farm. We are focused on conservation and diversification,” Johnson said.

Part of the operation is Johnson’s introduction of direct marketing of meat, wool, and other farm-raised food products. They raise Animal Welfare Approved livestock: sheep, broiler chickens, laying hens, pigs, turkeys, and cattle. They also take on a cow-calf herd seasonally through a custom grazing arrangement.

Johnson also co-manages row crop production with her father. “We’ve made a lot of progress on implementing conservation into our crop production. We’ve gone to 100% no-till. We were an early adopter of cover crops,” Johnson said. Embracing those strategies has helped to cut expenses for herbicides, as well as cutting tillage costs and saving labor and tractor time. 

Federal conservation dollars have helped Johnson along the way. Her farm has participated in various USDA Natural Resource and Conservation Service (NRCS) programs: Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) for agroforestry and grazing, Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) for pasture and livestock infrastructure improvements, Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) contracts for prairie strips on cropland. 

Johnson hopes that more farmers can implement conservation practices on their farms through federal funding in the next five years. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2021 included $20 billion in increased funding to support broader participation and conservation adoption by farmers. 

“It’s in everybody’s interest to learn more about these great conservation programs for working lands,” said Johnson, who serves on Iowa’s Farm Service Agency State Technical Committee. “There are a lot of tools and support available right now to accomplish diversification and conservation for their operations through USDA funding.”

Johnson has hosted field days to help people consider more possibilities within agriculture. “There’s a real hunger to see examples of farming in a different way and share stories about restoration and regeneration,” Johnson said.

“I really feel like I got back into farming at the right time, a good time for a person interested in food and biodiversity,” Johnson said. “Conservation is helping me grow my businesses and make them more resilient. Farm policy is moving in the right direction. There are billions of dollars flowing into working lands conservation programs. That’s exactly what we need to grow more Iowa farmers and rural businesses.”

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was an incentive package passed by the 117th U.S. Congress designed to reduce inflation, reduce drug prices, and lower climate emissions. The IRA was signed into law in August 2022 by President Joe Biden. The legislation included a $20 billion boost in funding and availability of USDA conservation programs for farmers and private landowners, including $8.45 billion for EQIP.