Event Details
Date
March 7, 2014
Time
8am
Location
Holiday Inn, Auburn
75 North Street
Auburn, NY
Host
NOFA NY Organic Dairy & Field Crop Conference
March 7, 2014The keynote speaker will be Gary Zimmer, farmer, author, agri-businessman and educator dedicated to biological agriculture. Recognized around the world for his commitment to improving farming through building healthy soils, Gary has spoken to farmers and agribusiness professionals all across the United States and in Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Ethiopia, Korea, and South Africa.
Gary has never stopped learning or teaching throughout a lifetime in agriculture. Raised on a Wisconsin dairy farm, he studied dairy nutrition, earning a bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin and a master's degree from the University of Hawaii. Teaching agriculture in southern Minnesota, he continued learning, studying and reading, always asking questions and looking at ways of farming with an open mind. His questions about the soil and how it relates to healthy and productive plants lead him to read The Albrecht Papers. Gary trained and worked as a Brookside consultant for two years in southeastern Minnesota.
For over 35 years, Gary has been evaluating farming practices as a consultant, on his family's farm, and as president of Midwestern BioAg, a biological farming consulting company. He operates the Bio-Ag Learning Center, where biological farming practices and agricultural products are field tested, and where the annual Field Day draws 800 -1,000 agriculture professionals from across the country.
The Zimmer family's organic farming operation near Spring Green, Wisconsin utilizes the ideas Gary has gleaned over a lifetime spent studying agriculture. Otter Creek Organic Farm is a 300-cow organic dairy also producing beef cattle and farm crops on over 1,000 acres. The farm operates on the principles of Mineralized Balanced Agriculture--do everything you can to get the soils healthy and mineralized; do everything you can to get the livestock healthy and comfortable.
The family was honored in 2008 as the MOSES Organic Farmer of The Year and Gary was presented the AcresUSA Eco-Agriculture Achievement Award in 2011. He is the author of two books, The Biological Farmer, A Complete Guide to the Sustainable & Profitable Biological System of Farming, published in 2000, and Advancing Biological Farming: Practicing Mineralized Balanced Agriculture to Improve Soils & Crops, written with his daughter Leilani Zimmer-Durand and published in 2010.
