Greening the Thumb

An interview with long-time Michigan farmer and consultant Joe Scrimger about conservation tillage, transitioning from conventional practices, and his Acres U.S.A. mentors

Acres U.S.A. You grew up on a farm, right? What was your journey of developing an ecological mindset toward farming?

Joe Scrimger. Yes. My dad was a small dairy farmer in the thumb of Michigan. He had probably 30 cows and 200-300 acres, depending on the year. We used to raise navy beans. Back then there was atrazine for corn; there were very few herbicides for navy beans early on. They came more in the late ’60s and ’70s, and they didn’t work that well. 

So, we just cultivated. There was more to weed control than just the cultivator, but my dad had a front-mount four-row cultivator. A front mount is a lot easier; everything is rear mount today, although there’s quite a few farmers that will buy a front-mount cultivator and adapt it because it’s easier for hired help to run.

Today, with GPS, we can set up any cultivator. Actually, the main argument for conventional agriculture having to use herbicides is because of hired help and cultivators. There was too much cultivator blight where the cultivator takes out the corn. Well, GPS and auto steer and cameras and hydraulic hitches — they can really hone the cultivator in. So there’s no reason conventional agriculture can’t cultivate. 

Acres U.S.A. And that’s just today. They’re coming up cultivators that use AI to recognize what’s a weed and what’s the actual crop.

Scrimger. There’s a lot of good technology. The thought back in the day was that an organic farmer just seeds the field and doesn’t do anything. That’s obviously not true.

I was blessed that my dad didn’t want to get that big. It was a small, diversified dairy. We had chickens and hogs. We did a little custom combining, but not much.

But my father-in-law was a little different. He milked a few more cows, like 50 to 60, and he was one of the first organic dairy farms in the Midwest back in the ’60s. It’s just that there wasn’t really a market. But my father-in-law made money shipping in the conventional market and watching his costs, farming organically.  

Acres U.S.A. So there was a certification agency even back then?

Scrimger. There really wasn’t. Organic Growers of Michigan was really just getting going, so we could get the farm certified, and he worked with that initially, but when he couldn’t get a market for the milk, he just farmed organically. So, my dad taught me field crops, and my father-in-law got me up to understand animal health. 

And then my dad come down with colon cancer, and that really got my attention. So, we got into organics first because I was economically trying to come up with a better market. And then there was the health issue.