Anthony Beery Receives the 2024 Carl Luebben Soil Health and Water Quality Award

Nicole Masters of Integrity Soils standing beside Anthony Beery of Beery Farms near Cumberland, VA.  Photo by Camden Littleton for Virginia Cooperative Extension.

Congratulations to Anthony Beery on receiving the 2024 Carl Luebben Soil Health and Water Quality Award!

Carl Luebben pioneered sustainability practices and conservation and had a lifelong passion for agronomy. His career began in the Shenandoah Valley in the late 1950s as a Virginia State Dairy Inspector with a focus on soil and water quality improvement and conservation. His work greatly benefitted the Shenandoah Valley's agriculture, environment, and farming community. In his retirement, teaching, enlightening, and being of service in Rockingham County's water conservation and quality was extremely important to him. He tried to leave the earth a little better than he found it. For more about Carl's story, read here.

Anthony Beery began his farming career in the Shenandoah Valley growing up on a family dairy and poultry farm. After employing practices to manage compaction, Anthony was able to start continuous no-till in the late 1990’s. To supplement the benefits of no-till, Anthony started experimenting with mixed species cover crops, manure injection, and crop rotations as techniques for improving soil health. In 2018, he transitioned from dairy and poultry, selling the farm in Rockingham County, to cash cropping in central Virginia, purchasing land in Cumberland County. With the new farm came new challenges: lower fertility, resistant weeds, neglected land, and hotter summers. Anthony is applying the fundamental principles of soil health to his new farm where he is seeing growth in both yields and soil health. He is currently raising corn, soybeans, wheat, and orchardgrass on 500 acres of cropland and is constantly looking for ways to improve soil health, which he feels is the key to successful and sustainable farming.

During the Virginia Farm to Table Conference, Anthony Beery received the 2024 Carl Luebben Soil Health and Water Quality Award for enriching work on his farms and within the farming community.

Lydia Fitzgerald, integrated cropland agronomist with Virginia's USDA - Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and Virginia Tech, presented the award and shared remarks from Anthony's longtime colleague Cory Guilliams, District Conservationist at USDA-NRCS. Since 2004, the USDA-Virginia NRCS has strongly promoted what was then known as the “soil quality” concept and continues to expand its soil health promotional effort today.

In the summer of 2003, Cory met Anthony at the DCR Nutrient Management Planning Training school in Staunton. Anthony was taking the course to become a certified nutrient management planner because he was invested in having a Department of Environmental Quality permitted NMP on his farm operation.

"I remember Anthony regularly asking challenging but practical and relevant questions throughout the course, from a farmer’s perspective, as they related to his farm operation and other farms in the region," Cory shared. "Myself and others in the course benefited greatly by having Anthony taking the course. I will also add that there are no doubts that the instructors earned their pay for the time involved in teaching this specific course."

A slide from the award presentation featuring Anthony's farms.  Photo by Camden Littleton for Virginia Cooperative Extension.

From Rockingham to central Virginia, Anthony continued to implement conservation practices and host farm tours highlighting no-till, cover cropping, soil health, advanced nutrient management, manure injection, and other relevant conservation topics on his farm operation. He got involved with Virginia No-Till Alliance (VANTAGE), "helping it to be the success it has become," Cory shared.

Anthony was also one of the farmers featured in the short documentary Gaining Ground: Successful No-till Farmers Tell Their Stories by The Downstream Project in connection with the USDA-NRCS.

"Like Carl, Anthony understands the importance of feeding the soil and the life in it to be able to grow healthy, high-yielding crops," said Cory in his remarks. "Like Carl, Anthony understands the importance of sharing his knowledge of what he has learned in the field of agronomy/soil health.

"I know Carl would be very proud of all of Anthony’s accomplishments in the realm of soil and water conservation."

Eric Bendfeldt, Mary Sketch Bryant, Anthony Beery, Dan Luebben, Lydia Fitzgerald, and Bill "Pops" Patterson at the Virginia Farm to Table Conference 2024.  Photo by Camden Littleton for Virginia Cooperative Extension.