Junior Pfanstiel farms with his wife Katelyn and their four children near McLean, Nebraska. After exiting the retail ag industry and being fed up with high input prices, he dove head first toward regenerative farming practices. His farm operation consists of 330 acres (50/50 dryland/irrigated), all of which will be fully regenerative, organic certified in July 2026. In 2022, he received the Lower Elkhorn NRD’s Sustainable Agriculture Award.
Junior is an agronomy enthusiast and founder of Outside the Box Agronomy, where he demonstrates high clearance cover crop inter-seeding applications and other alternative agronomic farming practices. Some of the crops he has grown (in an area with 26-inch average annual precipitation) include, but are not limited to corn, soybeans, buckwheat, rye, wheat, hemp, grain sorghum, oats, peas, and hairy vetch. Roller crimping cover crops has significantly accelerated the advancement of his soil health, and cover crops have allowed him to eliminate the need for synthetic inputs. In addition, his diverse rotation has allowed habitat to thrive—in 2025, a blue bee was spotted in his field.
Click the links below to learn more about Junior:
Outside the box thinking yields success on Pfanstiel farm
Against the Grain: How a Nebraska farmer steers away from conventional corn and soybeans