Gary Zimmer: Establishing "Best Practices" for Farming - Ecological & Otherwise

Farmer and consultant Gary Zimmer sets off to discern what the best farming practices are for best-of-the-best operators in varying farming systems: conventional, biological, sustainable and specialty crops. In this session learn the commonalities of the top farmers. By surveying varying operations a set of “best practices” appears. What are the best farmers doing? If money were not the limiting factor, what would growers do? What brings not only the top yields and profits, but also considers other measures of farming success, namely soil health, runoff and pollution, biodiversity, etc. What are best practices? As always, start with the fundamentals.

Gary Zimmer heads Midwestern Bio-Ag Products & Services, a manufacturing and consulting company that provides products and services for sustainable agriculture. He is also an on-farm consultant and manages the company’s learning center and Otter Creek Organic Farm in Wisconsin. Before launching Midwestern Bio-Ag, he served as an independent soils and dairy nutrition consultant, as well as working with Brookside Laboratories. An educator at heart, he taught agriculture at both high school and technical school levels. He holds a graduate degree in dairy nutrition and lectures widely on the subject. He is author of The Biological Farmer and co-author of Advancing Biological Farming.

(1 hour, 4 minutes, 39 seconds) Recorded at the 2014 Acres U.S.A. Conference, Columbus, Ohio, Friday, December 5, 2014.