Mackane Vogel here with this week’s Cover Crop Connection. Well last week I told you all about our upcoming National Cover Crop Summit and promised to showcase lots more great topics and speakers so without further ado, here is Gary Zimmer, another one of our speakers, to preview his presentation about fitting the cover crop to the farm and how to make money doing it.

“We farm in southern Wisconsin, we’re organic and we have developed what I call an extreme cover crop farming system. We’re one year rye cover crops and the next year — corn. Corn is our really big market so I think the takeaway from this is what extreme cover crop farming can actually do to your soil and your crops and I think that’s the message I am trying to give on here. Farmers can’t understand how we can actually have a decent income every other year but our farming system is very profitable and very low input and our soils are radically changed and our soil fertility numbers keep getting higher.”  

“I think the piece of the puzzle comes in to play is the fact that we actually have a really good organic corn market ten miles away and so we make the money on corn and so how do you make money doing it — by the fact that, even if I was conventional, I’d say we grow excessive amounts of nitrogen and that’s a big limiting factor for organic farmers. We have our soil structure getting really good. Our weed control is getting better and better every year. We've been doing this for 8 years, so 4 rotations on some of this stuff, and so, our input costs are low. We don’t seem to have very many troubles, our soil resilience is built up. And so we are extremely well satisfied with what we did for our results on our farming system. So I look at, right now on conventional farms, if soybeans get to be $8 next fall and you’re going to grow 40 bushel, you might as well take the year off and have a soil building year and put your insecticides, pesticides, fungicides, cut your nitrogen down and use all the bio-technology if you’re conventional.”  

Great stuff as always from the father of biological farming, Gary Zimmer. And there’s still plenty of time to register for our fully online and free 2025 National Cover Crop Summit, taking place March 18-20, and get access to 6 great presentations to view at your convenience from the comfort of your own home. 

Watch the full version of this episode of Conservation Ag Update.