Q. What’s your process for transitioning previously GMO cropland to pasture, and what’s your opinion about the three-year waiting period for organic certification?
A. One of the reasons we’re not organic certified is because sometimes a place comes up to rent near us and we don’t want to not be able to sell from it for three years. But the way we transition a place like that to pasture is we just broadcast a cocktail of seeds and drag a treetop over it that disturbs the ground enough. We sit in the back of a pickup truck with a cyclone cedar, or with a three-point hitch site on the tractor, pulling a couple treetops. We have an affiliate program with the local chiropractic community for all the neighbors that rank their necks looking at the crazy things we do!
And, of course, you can’t graze it very hard the first year. It’s got to be very, very gentle that first year. But normally, crop ground has enough residual fertility that you don’t have to add a bunch of that if you’re just going to go to grass.
From Joel Salatin’s Q&A time at the 2024 Acres U.S.A. conference. Come hear Joel again this year! The Acres U.S.A. Eco-Ag Conference will be in Madison, Wisconsin, 1-4 December. conference.eco-ag.com
