Concepts of Biological Farming with Gary Zimmer

Hi friends, this is John. I'm passionate about developing regenerative agriculture systems that improve soil health, produce crops that are completely resistant to diseases and insects, and produce food of such an exceptional quality that we can have a legitimate conversation about growing food as medicine. I've been fortunate to meet many people with incredible knowledge and information about soil and plant systems. However, much of this knowledge and information is scattered all over the place. There are many incredible stories and a lot of knowledge that have not been widely shared. I founded Advancing eco Agriculture in 2006 to bring this knowledge together in a more coherent fashion and incorporate it into products and growing systems that growers can easily put into practice. It's my personal mission to have these regenerative agriculture systems become the mainstream globally, the status quo against which all other growing systems are compared to. To achieve this goal, I want to share the knowledge that we have learned in the last decade and make it available to everyone. These concepts and principles about regenerative systems can be applied anywhere and when they're properly applied, they will increase farm profitability and resilience to climate stress. If you have any questions, suggestions, comments or topics of ideas that you would like for me to discuss, please connect on social media or email me. JohnGenerativeAgriculturePodcast.com Be sure to sign up for our email list@regenerativeagriculturepodcast.com Hope you enjoy and thank you for listening. Hi friends, I'm here with a consultant and one of the original co founders of Midwestern BioAg, Gary Zimmer, who has been a leader in the biological farming field for many years, several decades, and was one of my original mentors in getting started. Gary, thank you very much for being here with us today. I'm very honored to have you.

It's my pleasure. I look forward to our discussion.

Gary, you've done a lot of work over the years in many different areas. Obviously with your background in dairy nutrition and the work that you've done with Midwestern Bio Ag, what are some of the really memorable moments that led you to where you are today?

I think it really started out because there was a lot of questioning going back on in the 70s. We got to go way back that far. I was teaching at a technical college and I got introduced to the fact that what we put on the fields affected the feed that we fed the cows and that was like oh my gosh, that meant that we could change feeds. I think prior to that time most dairy people would ever feed, the farmer grew. They would just take Take a sample and add what was short or dilute it down to try to make a ration. And then we realized we could change that feed. And then if you think about it, we ought to be able to change food. We ought to be able to change a lot of things we consume by getting healthier soils, better mineral balance. And so that was one of the real moments of changing my career. And then I teaching at that technical college, I was a dairy nutrit, but I had to do soils and agronomy and farm finance. And so I brought in outside speakers. And my next kind of a moment was I was introduced to Brookside Laboratory Farms out of New Knoxville, Ohio. Back in those days, they were a pretty big force in southeastern Minnesota, where I was. And I learned an awful lot for some really good mentors. I always said people I didn't create or develop too much. I paid a lot of attention. And I think as time goes on, we all got better at understanding soils and soil health. I had some really good teachers in the beginning through that Brookside experience.

Gary there's a lot of conversation around how we need healthy soils to produce healthy plants and produce healthy food for people. And I sometimes hear people saying that that link is weak to describe. And so question that I have for you as a dairy nutritionist, how much can we impact food quality by impacting soil health? And does it really make a difference for animals? And by extension, do you believe it really makes a difference for people?

Yes. I think it starts possibly with finding limiting mineral factors. Like I always said, way back in the old days, we were under the assumption that N was N and P was P and K was K and phs were fine. Well then begin to realize that the sources of those minerals in this whole thing. If I had to define soil health and soil fertility thrown into that discussion, it's the exchange of those nutrients and calcium is really kind of king. Not having the right ph but having the right available levels of calcium. So soil health is really having a biological balance, a minimal bal and a beautiful structure, loose, crumbly, kind of chocolate cake kind of a structure to have this all happen in. So how do you achieve that? And I think there's some really guideline principles. I know way back when I wrote my first book, we came up with the rules of biological farming. And now they have the rules of what soil health is. But I think there's a lot of common sense, common ground. I mean, you gotta have a variety of crops. You can't have a crust, you can't have Packed ground, you can't over till it. And there's all kinds of factors that affect what makes that thing work. And then of course, the thing that's hardest for people to understand is this mineral thing. Just because you have minerals dumped on the soil does not mean the plant gets them in the right kind of proportion. And sometimes one interferes with another. And I think that's a hard one that still needs a lot of work. But yes, having that all said, it does really impact our feed for our cattle because the minerals coming through the feed that we created, we would get a 50% higher mineral uptake into our forages. Those minerals are much more biologically available to the animal than adding a stone. Actually, if as a human, if I said I'm not getting enough nutrition and minerals and I'm going to take all these supplements, well, are we designed to utilize those supplements like we are designed to utilize the stuff that should be in our food?

Exactly. One of the things that we've observed over the last couple of years as we've started using a lot of SAP analysis, speaking to your comments on mineral balance, is that in many cases the nutrient imbalances that crops experiencing, particularly nutrient deficiencies, are a direct result of the excesses of the products that growers apply.

Yeah, absolutely. No question about. That's why these guys that dump on lots of nitrogen or potassium and then with that potassium comes a lot of chloride in their salt form fertilizer, they are definitely interfering with calcium and so the interference of the magnesium uptake. I think that's absolutely right. And that's the other thing you brought up, the SAP analysis. Just because you got a soil test and some lab says everything is ideal, you and I both know that that doesn't necessarily translate into the plan having it ideal. These guys that are driving these high healthy, high yielding crops, how are they paying attention to minerals? The levels that were determined by some lab was based on what an average crop and they're using a lot of plant protective compounds. So what would those numbers and ratios look like? And I'm sure you've seen a lot of things in your testing and career that it isn't quite as simple as just grabbing a soil test and putting something on.

Our goal as farmers should not be to create a pretty looking soil test. It needs to be to grow a really great crop. And, and yeah, I think that's been the fallacy sometimes where soil analysis are used as the goal rather than as measuring stick for where we want to go.

Yes. And that was why in My career and in my books I try to get it simplified so people can understand. And that's why separating out soil correction from crop fertilizer I think was a really good move on farmers understanding if they get a salt AS back. I had a call this morning from a producer and they said, well, our salt AS looks pretty good. Does that mean we don't do anything? I said, well, that means if that soil test was correct, that means you don't have anything major to correct. We still certain things like the boron, the sulfur soluble calcium, there's certain things we still need to feed the crop. And that soil has a certain ability to dish out minerals. And how do we provide all those extra other things that like you said, ratios and excesses we put on interfered with?

Gary, you mentioned the three foundational pieces, biology, minerals and structure. Managing soil biology, soil mineral balance and soil structure. Which is of those three, have you found the most challenging to address and the most challenging to resolve?

Probably gets back to the misunderstandings. Like I said, I think we do understand today the biology. We called my company Midwestern BioAg because of the fact I wanted them to focus on biology. But just because you focus on it now, what do we do about it? I think the minerals are probably the easiest, but then we still got to decide how much to put on what source. Biology and tillage, kind of the physical all kind of work together. If you get the, if you get, if you feed the soil a decent amount of different kinds of carbons and you gotta say what kind of carbons? How do I manage them? Do I just leave them lay on top? Do I shall extract all these questions and progress sometimes is slow. So I think the real struggle is trying to find the farmers, to find what their limiting factor is. And of course they're limited on budgets and then to give it time. But I would probably say that of all the things that's the hardest would be getting biology to work. Because in order to get biology to work, that does provide my structure. If I have that really working, that's probably the hard part to understand.

Yeah, and that's been our experience as well, is that biology has been the most difficult to get going. And in my observation, it's actually become more difficult over the years. It's harder now to regenerate biology than it was 10 years ago when I started. And I wonder what the implications are of continuing herbicide and pesticide applications and whether they might be contributing to that challenge.

We took on another farm, my family farms, and we're organic and we took on this land and there wasn't a weed growing out. It had been chemicaled heavy, heavy, heavy for lots and lots of years. And the first year there's not a weed out there. And then we grew some crops and you know, we put our fertility on and of course it seems to be struggling a little bit. And then we took it through a transition to organic and grew some cover crops, but there was no weeds went to seed. So this fall we had a crop, a small grain in there and then we put a nice cover crop in following it. The weeds are everywhere. So what it looks to me like the soil came alive and those little seeds have been laying out, they're suppressed by chemistry, are now back trying to work. And it was just really an interesting kind of thing as where did those weed seeds didn't get dropped on there. I just think that we had that thing so suppressed with chemistry that the biology wasn't functioning. So whether weeds or plants I'm trying to grow, it came back alive is what I see out here. And so you're right. And that's why as a dairy nutritionist, when I started this business, we only worked because we had a lot of small family dairy farms, which a lot of my gone now, which is sad to see. But a dairy farm because of manure use and because of rotation, because having forages in line and because they weren't such heavy chemical users, they were already half biological when we started.

Yeah. It is amazing what forages and what having a bit more crop diversity can do in the system. You know that in the state of Iowa, anything that is not corn and soybeans is considered a specialty crop. Alfalfa is considered a specialty crop.

Wow. I just drove all the way out to Nebraska last week. That's right. There's nothing but corn and beans there. So they're probably our specialty crops. Yeah.

In the wealth and the depth of experience that you have had, what has been something that really surprised you, Things.

That I guess are really surprising me to now I seem like I've been at this for 35 years, struggling away and maybe got into more specialty things. Couple of things was everybody's brother wants to get in organic now because they want the money, but they don't understand the system. But I think the movement about soil health and seeing nrcs get involved and really push hard on this soil health, yet I wouldn't necessarily agree 100% with them is at least it's bringing up the discussion about the value of soil health and water infiltration. And all these things. And that was a. That's a kind of a real surprise there to me to see that that would happen on a conventional thing, that they would be talking about soil health and they would be asking some of the questions that we've been asking for many, many years. And now I see it in my world, I see so many conventional farms. They used to, you know, kind of not laugh at us, but they just thought, wow, where's the research behind it? Now they're asking all kinds of really good questions and paying attention. That's been a real big surprise to me. I didn't expect to see that in my lifetime.

Yeah, we are seeing a tremendous shift as well and tremendous desire for information. Continuing with that thought, you're surprised that people are inquiring and because of the different perspective that you've had in the past. Could you elaborate a little bit on that? What is something that you believe to be true about modern agriculture that is very different from the mainstream view?

So modern agriculture to me is this. I think what really changed some factors, not necessarily economically, is that. See, way back in the when I was a Brookside consultant in 1976, I stood on a farm in northern Illinois growing 375 bushel corn with a public variety of corn from University of Illinois on 40 inch rows. And you could stick your hand in the ground clear to your elbow. And this guy was his pet little project, nobody. I stood there and saw it and of course it got my attention. Then in the 90s, of course in the Iowa, somebody grew their 300 some bushel corn. These guys that are growing the 4 to 500 bushel corn have really opened up the doors I think to say that there's much more potential. See, I started my business back in the early 80s by leasing a fertilizer facility in northern Illinois. But we very did very little business in Illinois. The soils are so good, that's all you got to do is knife in anhydrous. And if you got seeds in the hopper, you're going to get 150 bushel corn. Well, now they're saying $12,000 an acre land and all these things out here. And so they're all chasing 300 bushel corn now. So we actually built a new fertilizer facility in Illinois and hadn't done much business there prior to that. But there's a whole new group. I like my strip till kind of farms for convention. At least I can get that zone done right. A lot of that land is rented. Nobody wants to fix it. But that whole kind of a thing. So now is that transition to become conventional. That was why I find it kind of offensive when people say, how are we going to feed all these people?