Posts Tagged ‘fertilizer’
‘Every Year Was Better; The Fourth Was the Turning Point. It Was Just Wonderful To Be Able to Farm That Way Again’
by Roger Blobaum If you’re wondering whether large family-type farmers can kick the chemical habit and still grow plenty of food profitably, you should see the three organic operations just north of State 33 near Fremont in eastern Nebraska. These up-to-date farms cover more than 1,300 acres of some of the most productive land on…
Read MoreKansas Organic Farmer’s Profitable Operation Bypasses Traditional Market System Entirely
by Roger Blobaum Bennie Unruh of Aulne, Kansas, is an organic farmer who has developed health food market outlets for all his grain and beef and bypasses the traditional marketing system entirely. In additional to producing grain and cattle on a farm that has been in his family since 1872, he has been a registered…
Read MoreThree Nebraska Organic Farmers Beat Worst Drought Since the 1930s
by Roger Blobaum Several large family-type organic farmers in the Fremont, Nebraska, area have been producing lots of grain and livestock profitably without agricultural chemicals. In 1974 this eastern Nebraska sector was hit by the worst drought since the Dust Bowl days of the mid-1930s. It was turned into a government-declared disaster area by searing…
Read MoreOrganic Farmer in Northwest Minnesota Is Operating One of the Nation’s Largest On-Farm Milling Setups
by Roger Blobaum Ray Juhl is one Midwest farmer who sees production of organically grown grain and stone-milled flour as an emerging agricultural industry with strong demand and unusual growth potential. He’s so certain of this that he has built and equipped one of the nation’s largest on-farm milling setups. It is located on the…
Read MoreNebraska Experiment Station Leader Outlines Details of Midwest’s First Organic Farming Trials 1972-1975
By Roger Blobaum Setting up some alternative crop management plots at an agricultural field laboratory hardly qualifies as a major research event. But to Midwest organic farmers, accustomed to getting the cold shoulder from agricultural college researchers, it ranks as a significant breakthrough. A report on these new plots by Dr. Warren W. Sahs was…
Read MoreEuropean Soil Scientists Discuss Biological Farming at Summer Organic Farming Workshop at Boys Town 1972-1975
By Roger Blobaum A fascinating view of biological agriculture was presented by Dr. Herbert H. Koepf, a soil science professor from Europe, at an Omaha-area workshop for organic farmers and others from the Midwest. Also appearing at the all-day August session was Pierre Ott, a French agronomist now teaching at the University of California at…
Read MoreIowa Farmers Report Organic Methods Guarantee Good Crops in Drought Years 1972-1975
By Roger Blobaum Although Southwest Iowa has had two dry summers in a row, the operators of a rolling 720-acre farm near Tabor hardly noticed the drought as they harvested good corn and soybean crops both years. “Our corn last year, despite the drought, made 90 bushels an acre,” Adolph Codr reported. “We have corn…
Read MoreNebraska Cattle Feeder Sells Organically-Grown Beef Direct 1972-1975
By Roger Blobaum When you see Steve Groeteke pulling his mixer wagon slowly past cattle falling into line at the bunks at one end of a big hillside feedlot, it looks like any of hundreds of similar cattle setups in Northeast Nebraska. But a closer look shows this operation near North Bend is in a…
Read MoreMinnesota Farmers Make History by Obtaining the Nation’s First Organic Farming Research Grant
By Roger Blobaum The attitude of big universities that grab all the agricultural research money and insist they should decide what needs to be investigated is stirring up some sharp competition from a group of organic farmers in Minnesota. Six months after setting up the Soil Association of Minnesota, they had landed a…
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