Table Of ContentTHE BIOLOGICAL FARMER
A Complete Guide to the Sustainable & Profitable
Biological System of Farming
Gary F. Zimmer
Acres U.S.A.
Austin, Texas
THE BIOLOGICAL FARMER
A Complete Guide to the Sustainable & Profitable Biological System of
Farming
Acres U.S.A., Publishers
P.O. Box 91299, Austin, Texas 78709 U.S.A.
phone (512) 892-4400 • fax (512) 892-4448
[email protected] • www.acresusa.com
Copyright ©2000, Gary F. Zimmer
Cover photography by Kerri Marshall-Edgerly
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced without
written permission except in cases of brief quotations embodied in articles
and books.
The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our
knowledge. All recommendations are made without guarantee on the part of
the author and Acres U.S.A. The author and publisher disclaim any liability
in connection with the use or misuse of this information.
Printed in the United States.
Fourth Printing.
Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication
Zimmer, Gary F.
The biological farmer : a complete guide to the sustainable & profitable
biological system of farming / Gary F. Zimmer. — 1st ed. xiv, 354 p., 23 cm.
Includes index.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99-76577
ISBN: 978-0-911311-62-4
1. Organic farming. 2. Alternative agriculture. 3. Sustainable agriculture. 4.
Agricultural ecology. I. Title.
S605.5.Z56 2000
631.584
QBI99-1664
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Any book requires a lot of work and in this case I received a lot of support
and input from Bio-Ag staff workers, consultants, farmers and my family.
Everyone who has touched my life in one way or another has contributed to
this work. In particular, I would like to thank my wife, Rosemarie, for all the
support, patience and editing she has provided to make this book possible. A
big thank you, also, to my parents, Floyd and Anita Zimmer, for raising me
on a dairy farm and teaching me work ethics and farm life values.
As a college student in the 1960s I learned to observe and question — to
observe what was happening down on the farm and question agricultural
practices. This biological method of farming could not have been put into
practical and useable form without the testing and “thinking outside the box”
of many farmers and researchers.
Much has been studied and written on the subject of biological farming;
putting it all together in a working model was the challenge. Dr. Harold
Willis, author of several great books on alternative agriculture, provided
major assistance. Dr. Willis gathered and organized a lot of technical support
information found in this book and he provided editing assistance on the
practical sections. Thank you Harold, for without your driving force and
assistance this book would never have been written.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gary Zimmer was raised on a dairy farm in northeastern Wisconsin. He
received training in dairy nutrition, earning a bachelors degree from the
University of Wisconsin and a master’s degree from the University of Hawaii
(1970). After achieving his educational goals, he spent the next five years
teaching a farm operation and management course at Winona Area Technical
Institute, Winona, Minnesota. In addition to nutrition, he was required to
teach courses in crops, soils and farm finance. His approach to teaching
included outside speakers, on-farm projects, field trips and much study. He
has always asked questions and looked at many ways of farming with an
open mind. This led him to discover The Albrecht Papers, Brookside
consulting training, work as a private consultant in southeastern Minnesota,
and ultimately to promote a better understanding and appreciation of
biological farming.
For the last 25 years, Gary Zimmer has been evaluating farming practices
which has presented him with many interesting observations and methods for
successful biological farming. In the fall of 1979, Gary and his family moved
to Spring Green, Wisconsin, where, in the early 1980s, he and three partners
started Midwestern Bio-Ag. With their main emphasis on education,
Midwestern Bio-Ag currently works with more than 3,500 farms and has 75
trained consultants. Besides being president of Midwestern Bio-Ag, for the
last five years, Gary has also managed the Bio-Ag Learning Center, a
livestock and crop demonstration farm where he tests products and methods
for successful biological farming. Otter Creek Organic Farm is also operated
and co-owned with his son Nicholas. The 240-acre farm is certified organic
and grows edible beans, corn and forages. On the 100 acres of creek bottom
pasture, rotational grazing is done either with dairy heifers or beef cattle. The
first major test project on this farm was to see how rapidly low-fertility, run-
down soils could be fixed with organic methods. Soil tests and a follow-up
story are included in this manual.
Gary continues to be an educator at heart and is a much sought-after
speaker. He conducts presentations from coast to coast for diverse groups of
people, including farmers, farm financial groups, private farm consultants,
environmental groups and other agribusinesses.
ABOUT THIS BOOK
This is a training manual for farmers and Bio-Ag consultants. If we are to
change agriculture to a more sustainable biological system, we need to work
together. If this book helps you become a better farmer or consultant, it has
served its purpose.
Midwestern Bio-Ag’s emphasis is on information, education and ideas for
crop and livestock farmers. We make our living by providing high quality
programs backed up by tested and proven products. These programs have
their foundation in the “rules of biological farming.”
First published in 1983, this book began as a training guide for Bio-Ag
consultants. It has been added to and revised many times. In 1993 it was put
into a ring binder and made available to our farmers with the belief that if
farmers know and understand the whys and hows of biological farming, they
can be more successful.
We have no secrets. We work with nature, feeding soil life, balancing soil
minerals and tilling soils with a purpose. This is a practical how-to guide to
give you ideas and suggestions for making farming more fun and profitable.
Biological farming is a type of farming — another way — with beliefs,
observations and rules to be followed. I will not try to convince you of the
benefits of biological farming, but rather give reasons and explain how
biological farming works. I’m sure there are other ways to farm biologically
using other materials and methods, but the concept is the same.
No question about it, you can get high yields with lots of commercial
fertilizers and synthetic chemicals for weed, insect and disease control. There
are, however, some concerns and problems. Is this food production system
safe and sustainable? At best we hope we are not creating more problems in
the future. But we do have a lot of people to feed, and we do need to keep
production up. Biological farming does not mean less production. It does
mean working toward elimination of limiting factors to production. Once the
soil’s chemical (nutrients), physical and biological properties are in balance,
you can expect optimum production, even in bad years.
We don’t credit any one thing for making biological farming successful.
Maybe it’s the calcium source, maybe it’s the change in how we till the soil,
or the green manure crops we grow. Maybe it’s the balanced, higher quality
fertilizer. Maybe it’s all of the above. Biological farmers manage the whole
system and are not looking for miracles. They evaluate soils, crops and
farming practices, and put together a whole-farm management system. That’s
what this training manual is designed to do — to give ideas and guidelines to
follow for successful biological farming.
In 1995, Midwestern Bio-Ag consulted with Dr. Harold Willis to assist
with gathering, organizing and editing technical and background material for
the much-expanded book you now hold. Without him, this book would never
have come to fruition. The author — and all the farmers and consultants who
will benefit from this book — owe Dr. Willis a tremendous debt of gratitude.
This book has two objectives: one is to give the technical information —
the whys — and the other is to present the practical hows. There is no one
right way; this is not an exact science. But there are ways and practices that
make sense. The principles of nature are the same for all: provide a soil
which is well drained, loose and crumbly, with lots of soil life, and
mineralized with all the essential elements — that’s the objective. Select
proper sources of materials and manage the excesses as well as the
deficiencies. That is what it takes to grow high-yielding, healthy crops of any
kind on all soils. Certain crops have different requirements which can be
addressed with specific crop fertilizers added to a balanced soil. In other
words, balance the soil minerals and use crop fertilizers for specific crops and
conditions.
The “how-to,” practical parts of the book are mixed in throughout. Many
examples are given — not to be copied exactly, but to give ideas on how to
make any farm work more efficiently and profitably.
Evaluate where the soils are as a starting point. Building healthy,
mineralized soils takes time. The speed of correction has to do with soil types
and present soil conditions. Hard, dead, heavy soils seem to take the longest
to improve. The speed the farmer uses to correct mineral balance and follow
healthy practices also affects the time it takes to improve the farm. Even with
the implementation of new practices and major mineral corrections, it still
takes time for the soil to change. For most farms, it takes three to five years,
which is really a short time considering how long it has taken to get the land
in the shape it is now. Certain observations and clues can be seen along the
