Organic Production Systems

The basis of organic agriculture is healthy soil. It doesn't matter whether you are growing grain crops, fruits, vegetables, forage, beef cattle, dairy cows, goats, sheep or poultry. The success of your farming enterprise will depend on maintaining and increasing the fertility and organic matter in the soil.

Three highly recommended publications from the Sustainable Agriculture Network (SAN) are: Managing Cover Crops Profitably, Building Soils for Better Crops, and Steel in the Field: A Farmers Guide to Weed Management Tools.

Managing Cover Crops Profitably has a wealth of specific information on most species used as cover crops and how to manage them for fertility and soil health, erosion control, and weed and disease control.

Building Soils for Better Crops is a text that covers all aspects of managing soils. Every farmer, organic or not should study this book.

Steel in the Field presents what farmers and researchers have learned in the last 20 years about cutting weed-control costs through improved cultivation tools, cover crops and new cropping rotations.

For a comprehensive list of resources concerning organic management practices for all types of organic production, see www.HowToGoOrganic.com

Purdue University has developed a web site to help producer’s interested, transition from conventional to organic livestock production. The Organic and Alternative Livestock Production Systems web site offers fact sheets, Extension publications, PowerPoint presentations and videos at the site’s YouTube channel PurdueOrganic.

The greatest source for practical information about organic farming are other organic farmers. And perhaps the greatest source of information on an ongoing and renewing basis for this region is the Northern Plains Sustainable Agriculture Society (NPSAS) – a collegial society of organic farmers, marketers, consumers and all folks interested in supporting and sharing ideas about organic production and consumption and living more sustainably.

NPSAS holds an annual winter conference and summer farm tour/symposium. They publish The Germinator, an information packed, quarterly newsletter. Reading material is available from the NPSAS lending library.

The Foundation for Agricultural and Rural Resources Management and Sustainability (FARRMS) provides educational opportunities to new and transitioning organic farmers through workshops, field days, mentorships, and a series of Organic 101 classes.