If you know anything about farming and you looked at Brendon Rockey’s fields, you might think the potato farmer doesn’t know what he’s doing, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Brendon Rockey knows his fields, and he knows where to find gold. In his case that is Golden Globe potatoes.
“Which we hope replaces Yukon Gold,” says Brendon as he shows off some potatoes he just dug up.
He, along with his brother Sheldon Rockey, own Rockey Farms. They grow all types of potatoes in the San Luis Valley, but they also grow a lot of other crops among their potato plants that never make it to market, like peas, buckwheat, and chickpeas.
Brendon explains, “I’m growing them out there because the potatoes truly do perform better when they have some diversity out there.”
That goes against most modern farming norms which Bredon says these days is more like a chemistry project with all the different fertilizers and pesticides he would need to grow a single healthy crop like potatoes.
“They are very harsh on the soil, they destroy soil structure, they destroy the life in the soil,” he says.
Instead, he is creating biodiversity on his farms to solve his problems. He relies on predator insects to eliminate his pests. To fertilize he uses compost livestock grazing and, those companion crops planted among his potatoes which won’t compete with them and instead fertilize the ground the old-fashioned way.
“The plant can take in CO2 from the atmosphere, make this glucose, feed the bacteria allowing them to thrive, so the bacteria can take the nitrogen from the atmosphere and add it to the soil,” explains Brendon.
His family has been farming in The Valley for 83 years, but this is a 25-year project of his that he is just now perfecting. It all started because his uncle didn’t want to be exposed to harsh chemicals any longer. Even though this process is uniquely his own, Brendon knows this is just a return to the ways of his forefathers.
“We’ve actually gone back to some of those techniques,” he says.
These techniques haven’t affected his yield, but it has the quality of his potatoes. He says they are much better.
He travels around the world speaking about his techniques so that maybe future farmers can wean themselves off chemicals, but his real reward is right beneath his feet.
Brendon says, “It comes down to that healthy soil, because if you start with a healthy soil then you have a healthy plant, and the healthy plant can grow healthy potatoes.”