Third-generation farmer supplements family tradition with a second job

MASONVILLE - Waves of golden corn swell and surge around Andy Monaghan's small farm. It's harvest time and there's 250 acres of corn that need to be picked.

The crop is too wet, so Monaghan must patiently wait.

Harvest signals the end of another year and his favorite part of farming is preparing for next year.

'I'll say it the way my dad always did: ‘There are always two good years of farming - 20 years ago and next year,'” he said with a chuckle.

Monaghan works the soil that his father sustained and his father before him. He loves it, but it's not his only commitment. Throughout his adult life the 58-year-old has held an additional job off the farm, a trend that is increasing among farmers across the United States.

Monaghan works full time as a heavy-equipment operator with the Buchanan County Secondary Roads Department in addition to growing corn and soybeans on his 320-acre farm 11 miles south of Masonville. A&M Farms LLC is a partnership between Monaghan and his sister.

He's around retirement age, but the additional income and health benefits that come with his second job have been invaluable enough to juggle both jobs. Monaghan has idiopathic hypertrophic subaortic stenosis, a chronic heart condition from which his father also suffered.

'I'm basically the reason he's still working two jobs,” said his wife, Vicki Monaghan, as they are both covered by his health insurance.

Monaghan said he often clocks in anywhere from two to six hours on the farm in addition to an eight hour workday at his other job. During harvest or planting season, he sometimes has to take vacation days.

Nearly 60 percent of principal Iowa farm operators have worked off the farm to some capacity, according to the 2012 Agriculture Census, and 38 percent worked 200 days or more.

That's up from 44 percent and 25 percent respectively from 1987.

A U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service report indicated more than half of the nation's farmers work off the farm.

'This has been slowly building over time for a long time,” said Chad Hart, an Iowa State University extension economist.

The report cites technology that requires fewer people to work on the farm, as well as the stability of the income and benefits off-farm jobs provide.

Both Andy and Vicki Monaghan, who works at a John Deere dealership in Rowley, know people at their respective jobs who are farmers.

Andy Monaghan said large farms or those with livestock are full-time jobs, while smaller operations such as his require less time.

Hart said that's a recent development.

'If you look 100 years ago, 50 percent of the U.S. population was involved in production agriculture,” Hart said. 'It was a different style of agriculture. Today we think of a farmer, we specialize them.

'Back 100 years ago, 50 years ago, heck, 30 years ago, a farmer meant being a livestock and crop farmer.”

Monaghan will one day pass the farm on to his son Cody, an engineer at John Deere in Waterloo. Cody Monaghan said he intends to continue the family tradition.

'As I've gotten older, I've realized how much I enjoy spending time out there and recall all the memories I have growing up. I want the same for my family, too,” the 30-year-old said.

Andy Monaghan said he wants to retire in a few years, but clarifies it won't be from farming. It's a lifelong job and something he enjoys.

'The smell of the dirt that's been worked in the spring of the year, the smell of the air ...

,” Monaghan said of why he continues to farm, 'the fact you know you're feeding people.”