Don Hart: Benefits of a Balanced, Biological Fertility System
This New Zealand farmer and consultant will discuss results he’s experienced achieving balanced soil fertility on a variety of farms, crops, livestock and dairy. And the methods he has used in integrating a high-input conventional farming system to a biological approach on his intensive irrigated cropping farm. Since attending Acres USA conferences and implementing the information he received there, he has trialed and developed various management practices that have seen significant increases in productivity and synergistic outcomes for his farm, and as a consultant, helping other farmers to meet their environmental and sustainability objectives. He will also relay the results of a comparison between a conventional fertilizer program for a dairy farm and the Kinsey-Albrecht balanced system of soil fertility, now in its second year.
Don Hart works both as a cropping farmer in partnership with his oldest son and in an intensive irrigated cropping and lamb finishing property on the South Island of New Zealand. He also serves as an agriculture pilot running an ag aviation business, which involves aerial topdressing fertilizer on hill country, pest destruction, high analysis fertilizer spreading and aerial spraying of crops. His youngest son now operates this business, with Don flying occasionally. His daughter and her husband have a marine farm, producing mussels, next to their sheep and beef hill country farm. For the past decade he has been involved with biological agriculture after realizing there had to be a better way of farming both economically and to be more sustainable. Learning from Dr. Arden Andersen, multiple Acres U.S.A. Conferences, and Neal Kinsey, his view of agriculture shifted. He has since been applying all that he learned to his farm, testing out the science and the theories and formulating practical and economical management practices and developing programs to maximize the efficiencies of fertilizers. He operates his own fertilizer importing, blending and consulting company in New Zealand, Top Soils, which specializes in fertility programs for balancing soil nutrients using the Kinsey/Albrecht system of soil fertility and taking a biological approach to agriculture. He consults widely on all types of farming businesses.
(1 hour, 3 minutes, 2 seconds) Recorded at the 2014 Acres U.S.A. Conference, Columbus, Ohio, Friday, December 5, 2014.
Don Hart works both as a cropping farmer in partnership with his oldest son and in an intensive irrigated cropping and lamb finishing property on the South Island of New Zealand. He also serves as an agriculture pilot running an ag aviation business, which involves aerial topdressing fertilizer on hill country, pest destruction, high analysis fertilizer spreading and aerial spraying of crops. His youngest son now operates this business, with Don flying occasionally. His daughter and her husband have a marine farm, producing mussels, next to their sheep and beef hill country farm. For the past decade he has been involved with biological agriculture after realizing there had to be a better way of farming both economically and to be more sustainable. Learning from Dr. Arden Andersen, multiple Acres U.S.A. Conferences, and Neal Kinsey, his view of agriculture shifted. He has since been applying all that he learned to his farm, testing out the science and the theories and formulating practical and economical management practices and developing programs to maximize the efficiencies of fertilizers. He operates his own fertilizer importing, blending and consulting company in New Zealand, Top Soils, which specializes in fertility programs for balancing soil nutrients using the Kinsey/Albrecht system of soil fertility and taking a biological approach to agriculture. He consults widely on all types of farming businesses.
(1 hour, 3 minutes, 2 seconds) Recorded at the 2014 Acres U.S.A. Conference, Columbus, Ohio, Friday, December 5, 2014.
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