Earn the Right | From the Desk of Gary Zimmer

Here we go again. In your farming career, you have about 40 chances. You could do the same thing every year. Make money, make life easy, and get rich when you sell the farm. But farming is not just about the money and getting rich, it’s also about responsibility and pride. We want to do what’s right for the land, the environment, and the consumer. Obviously, we wouldn’t have to regenerate anything if it was all being done perfectly.

Combating Higher Nitrogen Prices in 2022 with the BioAg System

Global demand for nitrogen fertilizer is expected to increase in 2022, while the nitrogen supply is expected to be down due to reduced production and supply chain constraints. For growers, this equates to an increase in nitrogen fertilizer price as supply and demand forces react with each other.
 
Midwestern BioAg has always taken a system-based approach towards our fertility program. By balancing our customers’ soil chemical, physical, and biological needs, their farms can generally remain resilient through adverse weather conditions or …

From the Desk of Gary Zimmer

Dear farmers and agriculturalists,
 
I have been at a few events this fall and there sure is a lot of interest in carbon, quality feed/food, and soil regeneration. High fertilizer, especially nitrogen, and chemical prices have also been farmers’ concerns. No-till constantly comes up – it is a practice, not a farming system, that may help or may not lead to improved soil health and sequester carbon. Having said that, why would you till if you don’t have to?

Bridging the Yield Gap with Soil Productivity

As farmers navigate the reality of higher production costs, the biological farming space will continue to draw attention. Many farmers identify yield gaps as a significant concern looking forward to 2022.
 
Yield gaps are those differences between what is applied vs. what is realized. We often think yield gaps are negative; however, yield gaps present opportunities for soil productivity. Opportunities for nutrient management recovery through enhanced soil productivity and biological farming systems.

Liquid Carbon-Based Fertilizer: A Spring Soil Starter

As we all know, spring weather in the Midwest can be really variable. Rain, snow, and cold soils are all things we deal with during the planting season. Getting the seed in the ground under the right conditions is the first step in fulfilling yield potential, but unfortunately, there isn’t always time to wait until those conditions occur. There’s not a crop grower out there who hasn’t had to plant under less than ideal circumstances; it’s just a call that has to be made sometimes.

Measuring your soil health like never before

Midwestern BioAg recently partnered with Trace Genomics in order to adopt the most advanced commercially available soil testing in the industry. Trace Genomics is a soil testing company that provides a full chemical as well as 21 biology and pathology analyses. Midwestern BioAg will be implementing these analyses to improve our scouting and recommendations to our customers.
Midwestern BioAg has been promoting biological farming for nearly 40 years. We’ve known from our extensive time as crop and soil consultants that biology is equally as important as …

Ask An Agronomist – Q&A with Midwestern BioAg’s Technical Agronomist

Q: What is biological farming and how does it compare to organic farming?
A: Most organic farming practices implement biological farming principles, but not all biological farming practices are organic. Biological farming, much like organic farming, treats the soil as a living ecosystem that works best when care is taken to limit our negative effects on soil life.
Gary Zimmer, one of the co-founders of Midwestern BioAg, has refined the biological farming approach since the 1980s and has published two books on biological farming.

Improving Dairy Profitability

To make improvements to dairy farm margins in challenging times, dairies should look “lower” to increase profitability — all the way down to the ground, according to Midwestern BioAg’s nutritionist.
“If you grow your own forages,” says the BioAg nutritionist, “we can help you improve profitability by building a fertility plan to grow a better quality, higher-yielding crop. There’s a lot of revenue potential in the soil, and we can help you unlock it.”
By taking a systems approach to dairy farm management, Midwestern BioAg consultants …

Profitable Practices are the Bottom Line

What’s profitable?
That’s the question that drives decision-making for Bill Ehrlinger, a southern Wisconsin farmer with 1200 acres of corn and soybeans. He considers the price of purchased inputs not just what he pays today, but also the long-term costs of products and practices, understanding that what he does this year can keep his farmland profitable and productive in the long term.
That’s important to Bill because this farmland has been in his family since his grandparents purchased the home farm over a century ago.

Practicing Regenerative Agriculture

As more consumers care about clean air, clean water and clean food and want to buy organic foods more land is being transitioned to organic. Many organic farmers also talk about “regenerative farming”, but what does this mean? Regenerative farming is a system of farming that focuses on healthy, mineral-rich, biologically-diverse soils that grow healthy, mineral-rich food while also improving soils, crops, and the livelihoods of the farmers. A farm can be certified organic just by avoiding prohibited chemical substances, but regenerative organic farmers also do …