Tillage focus: Progressive and open…leading the way in Ontario, Canada

Aug 06, 2019

“I built this drill.” That was one of the first things that Mark Brock said when he greeted a group of EU journalists in Ontario, Canada, last week.

From then on he had us enthralled. He’s a farmer who’s passionate about crops, technology and sustainability – economics, environment and people.

Key to sustainability is documenting the work being done on Shepherd’s Creek Farm, after all you can’t say something is sustainable if there is no proof and you can’t improve things if you don’t record – ‘you can’t manage what you don’t measure’.

Mark’s wife Sandi threw in that phrase as she came from the sheep unit on the farm. The pair run a grain and livestock operation across 1,800ac near Staffa in Ontario, Canada. Sandi manages a flock of 450 ewes, while Mark looks after the corn, soybeans and winter wheat, but forces join together at peak times for the given enterprises.

As Mark says himself, they have always been progressive on the farm. His father was one of the first to buy a no-till drill in the late 1980s. Later they planted no-till soybeans into corn stalks, despite crazy looks from his neighbours.

The motto on the farm is not centred around yield per acre, but the overall return as a farm. In recent years, technology has played an important role for the Brocks and they also hope it can help to face societal challenges which are becoming more and more common.

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Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.