Jeff Boedeker, left, and son Jack fill a spray rig with fertilizer-herbicide mix to apply to a nearby field. “In farming, there was one of two ways you could go,” Jeff said as he reflected back over his farming career. “Either you could have a full-time job in town, and put the minimum amount of time and money into the farm. Or you had to go all-in. That means continually taking on more acres, more risk, more debt.” They buy in bulk when they can and forward-contract essentials like fuel. “We try to figure out how not to spend money so we can actually make it. But it’s pretty tough,” he said.
Last year Jeff Boedeker harvested 75-bushel-to-the-acre wheat in Garfield County, Oklahoma, where the average is around 34.
Even fields that were pounded by a hailstorm so intense it left dimples in the ground and put $4,000 worth of damage on a pick-up in 15 seconds, ultimately yielded 60- to 65-bushel.
He attributes results like this to good fundamentals: feeding the crop what it needs, investing in good seed genetics, and matching the variety to the environment and soil type.
“Then you’ve got to be willing to spend the money on it,” he said recently as he fertilized and sprayed for rye on a 250-acre patch of rented ground near his farm east of Drummond.
Inside the spray rig, his eyes followed a computerized screen as it mapped the application, shutting off nozzles as needed to prevent duplication. The nitrogen-herbicide mix fanning from the 120-ft. boom was costing him around $25 an acre.
As Jeff Boedeker monitored spray applications on a 250-acre rented field that will revert back to a landlord next year, he talked about the difficulties finding more land to farm as urban sprawl increases around cities and towns in Oklahoma. Farming more acres is one way to spread out the high fixed costs of a business that currently supports four families.
Underneath the tires, the red dirt was dry and sandy. As assistant fire chief for the local volunteer fire department, he constantly monitors the threat of dry weather.
“When the state is on fire, you know you’re in a drought,” he said.
Without sufficient rain, the investment he was making would be lost. But skimping on anything for any reason is not in his nature. All his life, he’s treated every opportunity as a stepping stone to get him where he wanted to go.
Finding his path
By the time he graduated from Drummond High School, Boedeker knew he wanted to farm. He already had considerable know-how, having grown up farming for his uncle Eldon Craig and other area farmers. But in the aftermath of the 1980s farm crisis, the future was uncertain, and many area farm kids were forced to seek employment off the farm.
He enrolled at Northwestern Oklahoma State University in Alva, joining the rodeo team and studying agriculture with respected instructors like Jim Gilchrist. An agronomy internship sent him to Colorado, where he worked for Cargill under nationally recognized wheat breeder Sid Perry. The Ft. Collins research station was working to develop hybrid wheat at the time.
“It was a great experience. I learned a lot,” he said.
After graduation, he took a job as a crop consultant in southeast Nebraska, where he scouted 75 fields of corn and soybeans for 20 different producers.
As the “dumb Okie kid,” he had to prove himself to the seasoned farmers by demonstrating his ability to adjust and calibrate their equipment. Soon after, he was convincing them to try the now-popular row-crop management method of placing nutrients in a band two inches to the side and two inches below the seed, commonly referred to as 2-by-2. Seeing the improvement in yields won them over.
By then, he and his wife Dede had started a family, and the long drives back-and-forth to visit home motivated them to look for something closer. Leaving behind three years with ServiTech, Boedeker took a job as a district sales manager for Vigortone Ag Products, based first in Bristow, then Claremore. Five years later, after several ownership changes and a sales territory that kept expanding, he was restless again. He and six other employees eventually got together and started their own livestock supplements business, Nutrition Plus, which has grown to $11 million in annual sales.
“That’s something I’m very proud of,” he said.
Around that time, his grandmother called and offered him a chance to farm a multigenerational property that had been in the family since the Land Run.
He admits it was a scary move, since he’d already given up a steady paycheck and was still settling legal matters with his previous employer, all with three small children at home.
Twenty-five years later, the gamble appears to have paid off. He now farms more than 4,000 acres from one side of the county to the other, along with son Jack, who joined him full-time on the farm following high school graduation.
From the house he and Dede built in 2000, sloping fields of green wheat and tree-fringed draws extend as far as the eye can see, with the Drummond grain elevator visible on the horizon. A set of pipe-fence corrals with a working barn and chute frame one side of the yard, a large machine shed anchors the other.
“You take the lessons you’ve learned in your life, and the path you’ve been on, and apply it to your own situation,” he said. “Then that pride of ownership kicks in, and that’s part of the deal too.”
Jeff’s daughter Jalyn Schapansky checks first-calf heifers on the farmstead once owned by her great uncle, Eldon Craig, where she now lives with her growing family. She’s currently exploring options to sell more of the farm’s cattle as finished and processed beef.
Diversification required
Under normal circumstances, anyone who can double the average is probably hitting the ball out of the park. But with inflation-adjusted wheat prices lower now than they were during the Great Depression, it never seems like enough.
“We’re typical in this, but on an operation of our size, we lost somewhere between $250,000 and $300,000 last year,” Boedeker said. “Even with the best wheat we can produce out here, with drought and hail, our farm lost $2.3 million in the last two years. The government so far has helped us out with about 6 percent of that.”
“That’s kind of an insult to the American farmer as far as I’m concerned,” he added. “And I’m not the only one who feels this way.”
March is typically when he forward-contracts some of the wheat he’ll harvest in June. But futures market volatility has made it increasingly difficult to hedge the crop.
“Last year I contracted wheat for between $7 and $7.60 on around 50,000 bushels. That’s while we were cutting wheat,” he described as the sprayer bounced across the field. “By the time the end of June rolled around, and we were done cutting, the market had fallen by $1.30 a bushel. On 100,000 bushels you know how much money that is? That’s your profit. And now you’ve lost money.”
The value of commodities has failed to keep pace with inflation. The average farmer in Garfield County growing 30-bushel wheat and making $6 a bushel, for example, earns around $180 an acre. But the expenses to grow that crop are closer to $250 an acre, he said.
Meanwhile, the cost of things like a pick-up have gone up dramatically. At current prices, it translates to 13,000 bushels, or 13 semi-loads of grain. It takes less than a handful of those same wheat berries to make a loaf of bread.
Parked on the yard is a John Deere tractor worth half-a-million dollars. Boedeker’s rule-of-thumb is to update everything around the farm at least once every ten years. Farming at the level required to reinvest in equipment and facilities, while carrying over debt from year to year, paying interest on it and putting in another crop requires fortitude, he said.
“It just comes down to the fight you’ve got in you,” he said.
A field of wheat on Jeff Boedeker’s farm west of Waukomis, Oklahoma. The current breakeven on wheat is 50 bushels to the acre, Boedeker calculates. At $6 a bushel, the average farmer harvesting 30-bushel wheat will earn around $180 an acre, while the expenses to grow that crop are closer to $250 an acre.
Adding value
To add value to his wheat crop, two years ago Boedeker started the process of becoming a certified seed dealer. He hopes to sell around 50,000 bushels of certified seed this fall.
A strong supporter of publicly developed varieties from OSU, his top choice is Doublestop CL-Plus, the state’s most planted according to the latest survey.
“We’re diverse, which is why we like Doublestop so much. You can graze it, and it’ll recover. It comes back, and it will still produce in the mid 50s or 60s even if it’s been grazed on,” he said.
This year he’s also growing High Cotton for the first time. “It looks like it could be a racehorse,” he said. “It’s got lots of good quality, and it fits right in with the low pH soils we’ve got here.”
He’s also looking ahead to eventually planting Orange Blossom CL-Plus, the newly released next-generation Doublestop with potential to boost yields by around 15 percent.
A firm believer in rotational cropping, Boedeker also raises soybeans, sometimes grain sorghum and oats for forage.
“As an ag business you’ve got to be diversified or you don’t survive,” he said. “We’re working all the time to keep the farming operation going. We do a lot of custom work for other neighbors. We’ll do 4,000 or 5,000 bales of hay for ourselves, and another 3,000 on a custom basis, plus all the planting and harvesting. We also have the Swanson net-wrap dealership for all of northern and northwestern Oklahoma.”
Cattle are key to paying the bills. The farm has 300 head of cows, 90 first-calf heifers and leased out wheat pasture for 250 stocker calves this winter, which brought in $179 a head.
This spring his oldest daughter Jalyn Schapansky juggled calving duties with exploring the potential to sell ground beef to local schools through the Local Food for Schools Program. Last year, 250 districts signed up for the popular program and interest continues to grow, according to Oklahoma Secretary of Agriculture Blayne Arthur.
“People want to buy local, but there’s also an economic development piece to this as well,” Secretary Arthur said while speaking at the annual meeting of Oklahoma Genetics Inc. in Oklahoma City.
Participating districts purchase food directly from producers, then submit the receipt to the Oklahoma ag department for reimbursement. The program started during the Covid pandemic in response to supply chain disruptions. It was initially funded by federal pandemic relief funds, with support from state legislators.
For 2025, the department initially allocated $3.2 million. When the application period opened on February 10, available funding was snapped up by 169 districts within just two hours, Schapansky said.
Approved vendors will be notified if another round of funding is released, which could happen as early as June. The department issued a statement in mid-March saying it was monitoring the potential impact federal funding cuts could have on the program.
Looking to the future
Boedeker Beef is processed by Chisholm Trail Meats of Enid, a federally-inspected plant that opened a year ago last February. The Boedekers recently joined the Oklahoma Certified Beef Association, which promotes beef that is Oklahoma born, raised and processed.
So far they’ve sold 32 head to friends and neighbors, Schapansky said, each equivalent to around 900 pounds of hanging carcass weight.
Running a farm that supports four families takes going all-in on a large scale, according to Boedeker. The high cost of doing business requires him to spread out the fixed costs over more acres, but every year farmland is lost to urban and residential development.
Breaking out of the traditional role of being stuck as a price taker, by starting the wheat seed business and selling more cattle as beef, renews his anticipation for the farm’s future.
So, in just a few weeks, it will be wheat harvest time again, requiring all-hands-on-deck as everyone in the family contributes to bringing in the crop, including his younger daughter Caisha, who works full-time off the farm.
America can import food, Boedeker said, but it doesn’t measure up to what’s being grown right here at home.
“Most Americans don’t even know what good beef tastes like anymore,” he said.
It’s important to keep the current uncertainties in perspective, he added. “Everybody’s problems in this world would go on the back-burner tomorrow if they couldn’t find their next meal.”
