‘Non-traditional’ fertility program leads to success

GROVELAND, Ill. — Brad Zimmerman’s father, Phil, was an early adopter of no-till and always looking for ways to improve his farm.

He is now carrying on the idea of looking outside the box with an even more holistic approach to crop production that focuses on plant and soil health.

“Dad was a fourth-generation farmer and he was one of the first ones to go to no-till in about the mid-1980s. He was still using anhydrous, but started doing strip-till with the anhydrous bar in the early 1990s. He basically sold the chisel, field cultivator and all that stuff,” he said.

A move to no-tilling in the 1980s was not on most farmers’ bingo card.

“He was always somebody that would look to do things better and differently, not be afraid to try things, and he didn’t care what other people said,” Zimmerman said.

He believes one of the factors that led to his dad’s move to conservation tillage was his conversations with other growers.

Phil worked for Sommer Brothers Seed Company where he was in charge of detasseling and delivered seed in the winter.

“He’d go to New York, Michigan, Ohio, and talk to all these different farmers and get ideas of what to try and bring that back to our farm,” Zimmerman said.

After his dad passed in 2013, Zimmerman came back to the farm, continuing his dad’s legacy, and also began making his own mark on the land that included cover crops.

He soon became a certified crop adviser, joined the Tazewell County Soil and Water Conservation District board. In 2018, Zimmerman enrolled in the Precision Conservation Management program through the Illinois Corn Growers Association, a program he continues with today.

Zimmerman also started his business, SeedOnomy, in 2013.

“I was selling seed corn while I was farming because I wanted something else to do and guys would ask me different questions. They knew I was in the SWCD and into cover crops and things like that,” he said.

“SeedOnomy came about as a kind of a shell of a lot of the things that I do, whether it’s corn and soybean seed, cover crops, soil testing, tissue testing, or nutrient building.

“I sell corn, soybeans, wheat, cover crops. I’m a Channel dealer. I work with Saddle Butte for cover crops and there are a couple smaller organic seed companies that I work with, as well.”

Zimmerman has also teamed up with Brad Forkner, Nutrient Management Specialists, Cherry, and Trenton Carley, Fullthrottle Ag Service, Watseka, to form Targeted Plant Nutrition.

“We have planter box treatments, we have in-furrow starters and we have several different foliars that we’re working on, all with the same premise of multiple modes of nutritional movement,” he said.

He’s also among the specialists on the Avant Ag Tech team. Avant provides a comprehensive soil health consulting program designed to help producers maximize crop performance, improve soil biology and achieve long-term profitability.

Fertility Plan

Zimmerman utilizes a multifaceted approach in his crop fertility program.

“What we’ve been doing the last five years is basically a nontraditional fertility program,” he said.

“We use products like ocean minerals, dry humates, liquid fulvics, humics, sugars, aloe, kelp and a lot of these things that aren’t traditionally sold by fertilizer purveyors, but they’re very useful in terms of a biostimulant or feeding the crop or getting nutrients into the crop.

“It all began when I started working with Brad Forkner. His main thing was multiple modes of nutritional movement. So, we use fulvics, we use aminos, we use sugars, we use carbons to get nutrients into the plant so they’re more efficient.”

Zimmerman’s fertility plan varies by field location and crop.

“We found that by becoming more efficient in all the other things that are involved in the nitrogen process, molybdenum, cobalt, nickel, a lot of these co-enzymes that make your nitrogen process work better, nitrogen fixing better and keeping the plant healthier, you’re a lot more efficient with that nitrogen,”he said.

“Nitrogen is basically an energy source. So are phosphorus and potassium. It’s all stored energy. It’s kinetic energy stored in those bonds. And when you break those bonds or a plant uses it, that energy is released and it’s utilized for a certain process.

“Different types of nitrogen have different types of energies with them, as well. When you help facilitate that breakdown or have a healthier plant that’s able to better utilize it, then you’re getting more efficient use of it. We grew 282-bushel corn on a farm on 150 pounds of nitrogen.

“I’ll preface that by saying that we didn’t start out by doing that, but we’ve earned the right to do that based on a lot of the soil health principles that we’ve done, making the soil healthier and banding it at the right time, with the right product, all that, and then supplementing it with biology.”

Zimmerman applies synthetic fertilizer twice throughout the year.

“We do strips in the fall as tillage to warm up the soil, and we’ll come back in the springtime with the strip freshener and put on liquid nitrogen. It’s got nitrogen, sulfur, humics, molybdenum, boron, five different sugars, kelp and ocean minerals in that strip in one pass,” he said. “Then we’ll plant it, and we’ll come back and do a Y-drop pass at V5, V6.

“I haven’t used dry fertilizer — phosphorous and potassium — in the last four years. Everything that we do is banded on the planter or foliar-applied.”

Outside The Box

Zimmerman was asked about his farming strategies compared to the “conventional” approaches.

“We can’t farm the same way that we did 30 years ago. My dad was a great farmer because he could fix stuff. Back in the ‘80s and ‘90s, he could repair things, he could fabricate. I’m not as good as him, but today’s farmers need to be more team leaders and CEOs and decision-makers versus being somebody that is a good operator or is a good mechanic,” he said.

“It’s the same thing with fertility. We can’t just expect to go out there and put on 200 pounds of nitrogen and 100 pounds of DAP and 100 pounds of potash and expect to get better results. We’ve got to look to some of these different things, get more precise and do it better.

“We’re blessed to have the wonderful soil. That’s made us lazy farmers. We’re definitely blessed and we just can’t take that for granted. We can’t lose that.

“One thing my dad always told me was to leave something better than what you found it. So, we’re trying to build up organic matter, build up earthworm populations and build up carbon. It’s hard to do when you’re when you’re doing some of the things that traditional farming has taught us to do.”

Looking Ahead

Zimmerman has carried on with his dad’s legacy of innovation to the next level. He was asked what he sees in farming 20 years down the road.

“If I think of what farming was 20 years ago, we’ve got a lot better in terms of measuring what we we put on or what we need to put on. The genetics have gotten exceptionally better. So, I would think that would continue to improve,” he said.

“As far as machinery goes, you’re probably going to see a split between going bigger and bigger and bigger and then also smaller and smaller and smaller. I would anticipate robotics to become heavily involved.

“Data is gonna be continually more valuable, and especially as we can manipulate it with AI, and learn. Guys are going to learn differently. We’ll probably not see farm shows anymore because we’ll be able to learn in different ways.

“I think you’re probably going to see a lot more collaboration between growers versus what we saw 20 years ago. Guys were pretty close to the vest and not willing to share, whereas now I think you’re going to have to. You’re going to have to collaborate a whole lot more.

“I’d like to see more diversity in crops, too. It’s not necessarily organic, but let’s get some more oilseeds going. I think canola is going to be a big deal. CoverCress is going to become used more and more. I’d like for us to grow more fiber in terms of like hemp to make clothes, bags, rope and things like that.

“I think it’s going to be interesting. It’s going to be a lot of fun.”