If you ask Comanche County Farm Bureau member Chasen Doye the definition of “achievement,” one answer quickly comes to his mind.
Chasen strives daily to implement new farming practices and test new ideas on his southwestern Oklahoma farm, keeping him ahead of curveballs that pose challenges to the young farmer’s crops.
Chasen’s innovations and unique approach to farming land that his family has worked for generations earned him recognition as Oklahoma Farm Bureau’s 2024 Young Farmers & Ranchers Achievement Award winner.
While today he implements agricultural innovations such as cover crops, minimal tillage and strip tillage into his operation near Hulen, Chasen’s passion for discovering and using new ideas started at a young age.
Chasen grew up on his family’s farm with his parents, Thad and Marla, and two sisters, Cortlin and Christann, along with both sets of grandparents who lived nearby. Growing up as a farm kid, he enjoyed working with the family’s cattle herd, which consists primarily of Herefords.
Chasen began his farming career around the age of nine plowing fields. He said that as he worked alongside his family, the Doyes made some upgrades to their farm equipment, which sparked Chasen’s passion for farming.
“I’ve always been into farming, but it comes with ups and downs just like anything else,” Chasen said.
As a teenager, Chasen began implementing his new ideas on the farm, which included planting cowpeas and corn into the family’s crop rotation instead of the traditional wheat-on-wheat cultivation that is common in the area.
“I always had interesting ideas when I was a kid,” Chasen said. “I didn’t know about ever implementing them on the farm because the surrounding farmers have stuck to the same thing they have always done.”
While he recognizes that starting new practices on the farm does not happen overnight, Chasen has seen success with innovative crop rotations and using cover crops.
Throughout his career as a young agriculturalist, Chasen has kept an open mind to learning and growing, whether it is from input and advice provided by older farmers in the area, his grandpas or his dad.
“If you’re not sitting and trying to learn something, you’re not going to gain anything,” Chasen said.
He spends time researching and studying articles about new agricultural practices other farmers have tried that he thinks would fit into his operation.
“If I read something that has worked for someone else, I’ll try to implement it on the farm,” Chasen said. “It can be kind of hit-or-miss because it depends on the climate and our soil type.”
As he researches and implements new approaches to farming, he also considers the efficiency these practices provide to benefit his operation.
Chasen said using a minimal amount of tillage on his fields by plowing fields only one time before planting turns the weeds into mulch, creating a protective layer on top of the soil to preserve water, similar to the benefits of a cover crop.
“With the minimal tillage, I’m not having to work my equipment as hard or use as much diesel,” Chasen said of the efficiencies the practice has helped him achieve.
Aside from using minimal tillage, Chasen implements innovative crop rotations throughout his operation to retain soil nutrients and break up the crop disease cycle.
“Crop rotation has helped my yield out tremendously,” Chasen said. “Going from one crop to the next helps to break up the disease cycle.”
Chasen’s crop rotations consist mainly of cowpeas and corn, with the addition sunflowers, sorghum sudangrass and a traditional wheat crop.
In addition to reducing the number of times he tills
a field to improve soil health, Chasen also implements cover crops to provide a cover for the soil between planting seasons.
Chasen said he has planted native sunflowers to use as a cover crop and hired out a neighbor to harvest them to use for a dove-hunting food plot.
He tries to use the cover crops to retain moisture, and he uses the residue from the leftover cover crop to create an armor to protect the soil.
“To me, everything can be a cover crop.” Chasen said.
Chasen said that by using both cover crops and developing a crop rotation, he adds micronutrients into his soil, which allows him to minimize the amount of commercial fertilizers needed to maintain soil fertility.
“I am trying to stay ahead of the curve if we are ever limited on spraying our fields,” Chasen said.
He also takes a natural approach to eradicating weeds, which he likes to call “selective weed control.” By using minimal tillage before he plants a crop, he disks the weeds right back into the soil to use as organic matter.
Chasen also uses strip tillage, which tills the field in strips, leaving alternating strips of worked and unworked soil throughout the field. He said this allows him to plant into the tilled portions of each field, leaving the untilled strips to serve as a cover crop.
Although his way of farming may seem unconventional to some, he has made a positive impact on his operation by being open to trying anything that can help make his operation successful.
Although he has seen success resulting from his cutting-edge farming practices, Chasen said the biggest challenge posed to him and his crop is the weather. Chasen uses a versatile planting strategy that enables him to have multiple options with each crop including turning it into hay, letting it become a cover crop or turning his cattle in on what is left, depending on what the weather does.
“I have been happy to have cover crops to use during the droughts we’ve had,” Chasen said. “My cows will have a bare pasture, then I turn them out on the cover crop, and they can graze whatever they want to.”
The combination of these strategies allows Chasen to easily pivot his crop plan depending on growing conditions. He works to find a way that his crops can be used no matter what the ever changing weather does.
He can easily turn a crop into hay for his cattle rather than harvesting it, or he can use it as an armor for the soil that later becomes organic matter he can plant into.
“No one should know your ground better than you,” Chasen said. “It’s up to you to manage it how you want to. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution.”
Chasen will have the opportunity to showcase his approach to production agriculture as he represents OKFB at the 2026 American Farm Bureau convention in Anaheim, California, as he competes in the AFBF YF&R Achievement Award contest against fellow young agriculturalists from around the nation.
Chasen is not the only member of his family who has represented Oklahoma agriculture as a statewide Farm Bureau award winner. He is actually the second generation of the Doye family to win the OKFB YF&R Achievement Award, an honor his parents earned when Chasen himself was a kid.
Winning statewide recognition is simply a result of Chasen doing what he loves most – finding new, innovative ways to continue the family tradition of earning a living off the land as a farmer and rancher.
“Farming really is amazing,” Chasen said. “There are all kinds of new things compared to the past, but there’s only so much that can work for you.”
