Ryan Speer

Ryan Speer has been with Jacob Farms for 21 years, first as a farm manager and slowly working his way up to an operator and co-owner. Along with farm management experience, Ryan has a fundamental understanding of soil science, having also served as a CCA agronomist for the Scott Cooperative in Scott City, Kansas, before his work at Jacob Farms. 

Ryan has been a practitioner and advocate for regenerative agricultural practices. Jacob Farms farm has been under no-till for about 21 years and has been using intensive planting rotations, variable rate applications, and cover crops for 14 years. Working with 22 different landowners, Ryan’s goal at Jacob Farms is to provide a fair return to landowners, improve soil conditions to a state better than when he started farming it, and in turn will provide the farm a stable income stream for future generations. Ryan works towards this goal by aiming to have a living root in the soil as many days of the year as possible on every acre. On some fields this means 365 days a year or very close including cash crops and cover crops that are planted in between all cash crops. For the past 14 years they have also incorporated custom grazing on some of these covers in the winter.