Written by Anne Krapfl | Photos by Christopher Gannon
Jan. 23, 2024

Informal portrait of Nathan Meyers in the farm equipment shop.

To a man who loved his youth on an Iowa farm but expected he was destined for a farm-less career in industry, a farm manager gig provides a lot of fun days.

Nathan Meyers is the manager at the Agricultural Engineering/Agronomy (AEA) Farm west of Ames, one of the university's 15 research and demonstration farms across the state. Like most ISU farm managers, he's part of a team that supports faculty research projects. In Meyers' case, that's more than 50 faculty -- mostly from agronomy, ag and biosystems engineering, entomology and plant pathology -- and thousands of research plots across a 1,300-acre amalgam of 14 farm properties.

But Meyers also has kept his precision agriculture duties, the role for which he was first hired in 2011. Corn prices were high then, he explained, and many farmers had the resources to add high-tech sensors and analysis tools to their machinery to boost yields and gain greater efficiency in their farm operations. What many farmers lacked was expertise in this evolving area, and ISU farms administrators recognized a responsibility for the university.

Since then, Meyers has become the go-to guy for staff at all the ISU research farms around the state. One of his primary responsibilities is to manage the precision ag equipment and data for the AEA farm. And because of technology's connection to machinery, he advises his peers at the other research farms on purchasing and upgrading equipment, too. Got questions about a planter upgrade? Need to replace a tractor on a budget? Want to add GPS-reliant auto steer to your 2006 tractor? The farm managers likely call Meyers.

"Maybe it's something we've tried here at our farm, maybe it's something we talked about at our annual meeting. They're curious about doing it at their farm, so they'll call me, and I'll help them through it," Meyers said. "Precision ag is my background, but I also enjoy modifying equipment."

The small-plot demands of research open the door to many kinds of modifications. For example, Meyers and his team modified a combine built for a six-row header so their four-row corn head fits. They recently added scales and a rate control module to a dry manure spreader to apply manure more precisely and efficiently. The upgrade eliminated the need to weigh the spreader after every research plot or drive the tractor at the speed required for each plot's manure application rate.

Nathan Meyers working on a farm implement in the shop.
Winter offers indoor time to modify farm implements. Farm manager Nathan Meyers replaces bearings on a planter before he'll upgrade each row with an electric drive for greater accuracy in seed placement at planting time.

Meyers works on all the big machinery purchases for the AEA farm, which may involve out-of-state travel to inspect used equipment. He said he's learned to shop "just outside the corn belt" for more competitive prices.

If it doesn't exist on the market or is cost-prohibitive to buy, Meyers just might build it for you.

"He's an engineer at heart and his knowledge base is very broad," said AEA farm superintendent Mike Fiscus, Meyers' supervisor. "He knows how to build and design, how to fabricate, how to tear things down and put them back together."

He recalled Meyers purchasing all the pieces for six-row and eight-row planters and building them in the shop at the farm. Meyers recalled those same assignments as "really fun."

"Working with this staff is great," he said. "There's a lot of expertise here from years of experience, and the variety of the work we do is probably the best part. Day to day, you do different things and see some very unique requests."

  • Life on the farm

    ISU research farms manager Tim Goode estimates about a fourth of the occupants in the 20 or so homes on the farms are university staff and their families. Meyers, his spouse and their five children are one of these families. The easy commute comes with some additional farm duties, for example, collecting weekend weather data for the National Weather Service, plowing snow or making sure fall hunters don't trespass. For now, Meyers and his wife, also raised on a farm, enjoy living in the country and offering that lifestyle to their kids. 

    Iowa State-trained

    Meyers' first pass through Iowa State was as an undergraduate in the fall of 2005. He started in ag engineering but "realized I was more hands on," and switched to the agricultural systems technology major and its power machinery option. He worked at several Ames-area university farms and did a senior internship with Kent Berns at the Central Iowa farm on State Avenue.

    While the department's shimmering Sukup and Elings halls were still five years away, he said he felt prepared when he graduated. Ames-based Ag Leader Technology trained him as a support specialist, and his precision ag education really took flight. For more than a year he answered phone inquiries and trouble-shot farmers' questions about Ag Leader equipment spanning more than two decades. He also led on-site classes to teach farmers how to optimize their equipment.

    "When you're on the phone, you have to visualize what you're explaining to the person at the other end, for example, how to test a wire or reset a module. It was a unique skill that I still fall back on when I'm talking to farm managers around the state," Meyers said.

    All those experiences -- a childhood on a small farm near Milo with parents who taught him how to contribute, an Iowa State education, his trouble-shooting experiences -- prepared him when Berns called in the spring of 2011 to encourage him to apply for a new precision ag specialist job in the university farms system.

    "I'm a hands-on learner, and growing up on a farm, you learn a lot of skill sets that many kids don't," Meyers said. "You have to be a jack-of-all-trades on the farm. There's plumbing work on sprayers, electrical work on equipment, you're hauling grain to town in a semitrailer. Each of us needs a large skill set."

    Fiscus said Meyers' knack for finding solutions goes beyond a skill set.

    "He's an Iowa Stater. He's committed to making this farm successful," Fiscus said. "I think he really likes being back at Iowa State, and the precision ag challenges just come so naturally to him."