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Land stewardship is a key component of this 2022 Master Agriculturist’s farm operation.

March 2, 2022

6 Min Read
the Beach family in front of farm sign
FAMILY FARM: Members of the Beach family represent the fourth, fifth and sixth generations to live on the family farm in southern Green County near Monroe, Wis. Pictured are (from left) Bridgette Weber, and Erik, Tessa, Jeremy, Paul with grandson Emmett, Carolyn with granddaughter Clara, Lisa and Andrew Beach. Courtesy of the Beach family

Paul Beach didn’t establish the biggest beef operation, put up the fanciest buildings or accumulate the most acres for grain production on his century farm in southern Green County, Wis., during his 50 years as a farmer. So, when he was informed that he had been selected as a 2022 Master Agriculturist, he wasn’t so sure he was deserving.

“I’m not much different from my neighbor or the farmer over the hill,” Paul says. “It’s nice to be recognized, but I just see myself as a guy who carried on the tradition of the family farm and made it work.”

Paul has found success with beef, hogs and a variety of crops, and has been an active member of his community. And at the age of 73 — both of his parents lived to be 99 — he isn’t done yet.

120-year history

Paul’s ancestors bought their first farm in the nearby town of Jordan in 1850, but it wasn’t until 1901 that his great-grand-father William bought 60 acres where the family farm now sits in the town of Clarno. His grandfather Jesse added 80 acres as the second generation on the farm, and Paul’s father, Duane, bought an additional 120 acres before Paul took over and rounded the acreage up to 494.

Paul and his wife, Carolyn, have three sons — Erik, Jeremy and Andrew.

Paul’s primary enterprise in the early years was beef production — he raised about 400 steers and 75 cow-calf pairs at one point — but he came to a crossroads with his farming operation in the mid-1990s.

“Our sons were nearing college age, and we wanted to be able to help them financially,” he recalls. “We wouldn’t have been able to do that with the way things were looking four years ahead. I had two options: Look for an additional 500 acres and go deeper into debt or look for an opportunity off the farm as another revenue stream.”

Paul opted to begin a career as a real estate agent and auctioneer, which he worked in between cropping and running a scaled-down beef operation.

About that time, he also switched to no-till planting, which helped cut down on labor demands.

“I’ve never been one to step ahead first, but when somebody else implements a farming practice and I can see the results, then I move to get in,” he says. “I hired no-till planting on our land a couple years, and when I could see the erosion was so much less than my strip-cropping, I jumped right in.”

Paul says he hasn’t dropped a plow in the ground since 1995. He didn’t go all in on the precision planting bells and whistles, but he added as many equipment advances as made financial sense for his size operation.

Paul now plants about 200 acres of corn and 200 acres of soybeans in conjunction with his son Andrew, who bought some of the acreage and rents the rest. They also maintain a 35-cow beef herd.

Paul says they are fortunate to have an ethanol plant 3 miles away (Badger State Ethanol in Monroe) to make their corn deliveries easy.

Another son, Jeremy, is associate director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Renk Agribusiness Institute, and also rents some of the family’s land for his Cheese City Beer enterprise. Jeremy grows all the ingredients on the farm for the beer he markets directly to consumers, including hops, barley, wheat, fruit, nuts, berries and herbs.

His signature beer is called Agriculture Ale, which he describes as an “easy-drinking blonde ale.”

Paul helps Jeremy with the beer enterprise as needed, from stringing the hop vines 19 feet high to running on-farm beer-tasting events in the late summer and fall.

Always changing

Andrew describes his father as “humble almost to a fault.”

“His ability to adapt to our ever-changing world of agriculture has made our small family farm sustainable,” Andrew says. “He has been an individual to never shy away from trying something new on the farm … [and] believes wholeheartedly in lifelong learning.”

Paul says, “There are no givens other than change” in agriculture, and he has tried to adapt his farming operation as times have dictated.

“You’ve got to be able to change,” he says. “You can’t dwell on the past. You always have to be looking at something new. You want to hold on to the tradition, but you also have to be flexible.”

He says his father was a perfect example of a farmer who had to adapt to change, transitioning from farming with horses, to raising 1,000 hogs, to incorporating modern-day technologies on the farm.

“He was very aggressive for his time,” Paul recalls.

Paul earned a business degree from UW-Madison, and after a stint in the military, came back to farm with his father.

He was a German-language radio interceptor in the Army and quickly discovered that sitting in an office wasn’t in his long-term future. “After being active on the farm and enjoying the outdoors, I knew I wasn’t going to sit in the office for the next 45 years,” he says.

He began farming with his father a few years before the farm crisis in the early 1980s, so while he didn’t put his business degree to work in an off-farm job, he used it to help the farm stay afloat.

Jeremy says even though he wasn’t aware of his father’s financial and management decisions at the time, he was introduced to them at an early age.

“Transparency on the true and accurate costs of production, acknowledgement of production and marketing strengths and weaknesses, and understanding financial risks and returns are invaluable skills that too few farm operators possess,” Jeremy says.

“It’s this skill set, learned from my father, that has afforded myself and my brother to become involved in farming and carry on the legacy of our family farm for future generations,” he adds. “It’s this mindset, learned from my father, that has allowed me through my current position at UW-Madison to help educate others on the business principles and management skills necessary to run a successful agricultural operation.”

Off the farm, Paul has been a member of the Green County Beef Producers, Green County Livestock Auction Committee and the Green County Board for two terms.

Through the years, Paul says his guiding principle has been to treat other people like you would want them to treat you. “While farming involves soil or animals, it’s basically the human relationships that make it go or not go,” he says.

Massey writes from Barneveld, Wis.

2022 MASTER AGRICULTURIST

Paul Beach

Age: 73

Location: Monroe, Green County

Farming enterprises: Crops, beef, hogs

Size of farm: 494 owned acres, 60 beef cows, 20 hogs

Family: Wife Carolyn, son Erik, son Jeremy (Tessa), son Andrew (Lisa), grandchildren Clara and Emmett

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