In an interview conducted by Greg Wandry at Iowa Corn for the Iowa Corn Stewardship Advocate, Gina White was featured as the Farmer Focus for their June Edition.
Gina White farms near Spencer, Iowa with her husband and father-in-law. She has been helping out around the farm for the last six years, but in 2025, she rented her own ground for the first time. They typically plant a corn/soybean rotation but occasionally,?as needed, plant corn on corn in some fields.
When it comes to her goals for the farm, profitability is a key component but Gina says, “My main goal is farming sustainably?with a keen focus on soil health and water quality. We are only caretakers of the soil for a short amount of time, so I believe it is our duty to take care of it and even make it better to pass onto the next generation.” She also appreciates the family aspect of her farm, saying, “I love being able to farm with my husband and my father-in-law because even though?I did not come from a farming background, they are happy to integrate me into the operation.”?
On their farms,?they typically plant 100 to 104 day maturity corn at a 32,000-35,000 population. They use either chicken or hog manure, depending on the availability with an application of nitrogen with herbicide preplant and an application of Y-drop nitrogen in June. They utilize several conservation practices on their farm. Gina says, “ We use no-till, strip-till and cover crop practices to ensure that there is constantly a living root in the soil to ensure that our soil is the healthiest that it can be.”
When asked about changes to their operation in 2025, Gina states, “The biggest change to our farming operation will be the increased use of irrigation. This will be our first year running a fully-autonomous irrigation system. This opens up many opportunities to study what impacts yield and helps us become much more efficient with how we fertilize our crop. Our fields were also heavily impacted by last year’s devastating flood, so we are looking forward to a better year for our operation.”
When Gina is asked what she would like others to know about their operation, she reflects on her sustainability goals, saying, “We look at improving the economic productivity of the soil by implementing soil health and sustainable farming practices.”
Not surprisingly, Gina is busy off of the farm too. She works as a business administrator for her father-in-law’s farm management company. In her day job, she runs the company’s social media page and takes care of day-to-day accounting needs.
Gina is also active in Iowa Corn, serving on the District 1 Committee and the Animal Ag and Environment Committee. She says, “I did not come from a farming background, so being able to serve on these committees gives me the opportunity to continue to learn about the industry and find innovative ways to improve what we do on our own farm.”
During the past two years, Gina has participated in Iowa Corn’s Leadership Enhancement and Development (I-LEAD) program. She found it to be rewarding, saying, “Not only was I able to improve my leadership skills, but I was able to meet so many others from different backgrounds and aspects of the agricultural industry and learn so much from them. I was also able to see what agriculture looks like in different parts of the United States and internationally with learning experiences in Washington D.C., Seattle and Vietnam and South Korea. It isn’t?every day that you can expose yourself to new ways of thinking and different parts of agriculture, so by having these experiences, I am able to broaden my horizons and my way of thinking for the betterment of our farm and our community. I highly recommend this program!”