Tim Fritz, King’s AgriSeeds President and General Manager, was recently interviewed by Sherry Bunting for a Farmshine piece on the company philosophy and goals for serving dairy producers throughout the East Coast. In his interview, articulated a vision of whole farm sustainability based on sound agronomic principles that included productivity, productivity and crop diversity. Tim illustrated how King’s supplies the guidance and products to get there.
Bunting writes –
“‘Sustainability’ is the buzz word today in discussions of agriculture and the environment. But for boots-on-the-ground farmers, ‘sustainability’ means not only those practices that are good for managing soil, water, and land, it also means a few things practical to the cattle and business side of the dairy, such as having enough land and feed to sustain the dairy herd, or managing the dairy farm to stay profitable and in business, or managing the land and dairy in a way that brings opportunities to future generations, or optimizing herd health while minimizing purchased feed costs with high forage diets, or at its basic level, sustainability can mean maximizing the land’s potential to produce more forage per acre and more milk per cow.
Whatever the definition of ‘sustainable,’ one thing is for certain: profitability is surely part of it. Talking to Tim Fritz, president and general manager of King’s Agriseeds, it is clear that sustainable farming and farmer profitability go hand-in-hand with the company’s outlook on forage system rotations versus continuous straight corn and/or alfalfa cropping.
From perennial crop mixes to winter and summer annual crops to corn silage — each is a component of a balanced forage system. ‘In a forage system concept, we want the land to be as productive as possible for as many months of the year as possible,’ Fritz explains. ‘The objective is to get the most forage off the land as possible.’
Speak to an expert at King’s AgriSeeds now at 1-717-687-6224 or email us at [email protected].