An Ideal Time to Transition to Organic

Although it may seem counterintuitive, now is an ideal time to consider transitioning your operation to organic. That’s because while organic fertilizers tend to be premium to conventional fertilizers when all fertilizer prices go up, that premium drops to a much smaller basis, relatively speaking. The sky-high conventional crop prices more than offset the cost of the organic fertilizer premium.
For the transition years when you’re selling a conventional crop while using organic inputs, you could potentially be looking at a net profit, not a net …

Growing Farm Margins with High-Quality Forages

Ten years ago, Plaetz Dairy came to Midwestern BioAg looking to improve their conventional dairy farm. Farmers Bruce and Sherry were struggling with feed quality, a problem they hoped Midwestern BioAg’s forage program could help them solve.
“Everything we grow is fed to the cows,” Bruce said. “Before switching to BioAg, we spent a lot of money on feed, protein and minerals trying to keep cows healthy. A big problem was that our cows didn’t like their hay.

From the Farm of Gary Zimmer

Dear Farmer/Agribusiness person,
Field Day at Otter Creek is coming soon and what do we have to show you this year? In the past year, many changes have been made to our 1,000-acre operation — we have a lot that’s new in 2015.
The dairy herd grew too large for our facility, so we sold half of our cows early this year. My daughter Sadie bought the remaining herd and manages them here on the farm.

From the Farm of Gary Zimmer

Dear Farmer/Agribusiness person,
Field Day is coming up soon; the third Tuesday in August this year is the 19th. Also this year we are back to doing a one day, all day event. Field Day is a celebration of biological agriculture and also a time to show you our farm and farming practices. Otter Creek Organic Farm, my family’s farm, has been in operation since the early 90’s or about 20 years ago. When the farm first started (it was a dairy farm), we began experimenting …