Gary Zimmer: Minerals for Healthy Soil

Gary Zimmer is an expert known for his field and crop consulting work around the world. In this talk, he talks about how soil health is the new flavor of the times. It’s talked about in all circles of agriculture, not just the biological/organic publications. They write about cover crops, plant diversity, no-till, minimum disturbance, crop rotations, but rarely about minerals. The assumptions are that the minerals are in the soil, and all you need is cheap NPK and lime to a certain pH with whatever is available in the area. What about sources of minerals, ratios, how to use soil test and what to test for? Yield and healthy quality crops are minerals, sunshine and water with a carbon biological link. Exchangeable calcium is king for high-yielding healthy soils as nitrogen is king for conventional farming. It’s not just adding these minerals and having them show up on a soil test, it’s season long availability, residue digestibility and feeding the soil life for the ones you want to do the work you want them to do. This session will focus on where are your minerals, what are the best sources, how much can a good healthy soil supply. Also what needs to be supplemented for obtaining high yielding high quality crops without chemical intervention? At the same time building soil carbon and obtaining resilience.

(26.00 MB) (18 minutes, 56 seconds) Recorded at the 2017 Acres U.S.A. Conference, Columbus, Ohio, Friday, December 8, 2017.