How a Systems Overhaul Improved a North Dakota Farm

For years, Kelly Lozensky found himself on a treadmill. He was purchasing more and more inputs to increase yields, only to find himself heading down a path toward decreasing profitability. 

Before overhauling his system, Lozensky farmed 7,500 acres of rented land with his wife, DeAnna, in north-central North Dakota. They grew all-GMO crops of corn, soybeans, canola, and sunflowers along with spring wheat, barley, and flax.

Necessity drove their decision to overhaul their system. “Something had to give,” Kelly Lozensky said. “We were borrowing a lot of money just to purchase inputs.” At the end of each year, they were lucky to break even.

In 2014, the couple decided to phase out synthetic fertilizers. They switched to crops requiring less fertility, and in 2019, cut out synthetic fertilizers completely and began stimulating the soil biome with indigenous microorganisms (IMOs).

“We began to think that if we had a healthy crop to begin with, we could eliminate a lot of problems and a lot of inputs,” he said. That thought led the Lozenskys to focus on building soil health, with a goal of improving crop health.

Eliminating Synthetic Fertilizers

In 2014, the Lozenskys began using variable-rate applications to minimize fertilizer applications. “From grid soil sampling, we determined we had 500 acres of soils with 3.5% or higher organic matter,” Lozensky said. “These were areas that, up to that point, had had annual applications of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, sulfur, and zinc.” 

At harvest, he saw no significant yield losses in the areas of the field receiving no fertilizer. “The unfertilized areas also had fewer aphids and grasshoppers, as well as no bacterial infection that we had been struggling with,” Lozensky said. 

The positive outcome, and a growing belief that eliminating fertilizers could jump-start existing soil life to provide natural fertility for crops, encouraged them to continue experimenting. They followed a staged transition by reducing fertilizers first on fields with the highest organic matter. “We reduced fertilizer use by 20% per year across the farm for the next five years,” Lozensky said.

Changing Crops

The Lozenskys also began shifting to crops requiring less fertility. They eventually stopped growing corn, soybeans, and sunflowers, and adopted a broader range of more-resilient crops such as cereal grains, yellow mustard, and yellow field peas.

Field Peas 

The field peas gave them their first, positive experience with cover crops. “One year in early July, our field peas were hailed out on a whole section of land,” Lozensky said. “Eighty-five to 90% of the peas were on the ground. Then, we got an inch of rain. The peas regrew and outcompeted the late-season weeds. I didn’t have to spray once.”

Following the yellow pea harvest, they planted a cover crop that was cost-shared by the Natural Resources Conservation Service’s Conservation Stewardship Program. The cover crop mix included oats, turnip, millet, and radishes. Volunteer peas grew up in the cover crop planting as well.

Seeing the valuable contributions of diverse plants to soil life and the weed-smothering ability of certain crops, the Lozenskys began experimenting with different crop combinations and sequences.

Yellow Mustard

As good soil moisture permitted, they routinely planted cover crops behind yellow peas. And, because yellow mustard allowed early harvest, Loskensky relied on post-harvest volunteer mustard to smother late-summer weeds. “It doesn’t take a lot of mustard to cover the ground, and I was able to eliminate fall spraying because of the ground cover provided by the volunteer mustard,” Loskensky said.

Next, he added yellow blossom sweet clover to yellow mustard plantings in spring, applying the seed through the side banders on his no-till drill. At harvest, the mustard stood above the sweet clover, and he harvested the mustard crop using stripper headers on the combines.

“I took that crop combination of mustard and sweet clover one step further by planting 4 pounds to the acre of oats along with the yellow mustard seed,” he said.

At harvest, he adjusted the combine sieve “to blow the oats out the back of the combine,” while retaining the mustard seed. He estimated the oats yielded 80 pounds per acre of cover crop seed. “That let us grow a cover crop, including both a legume and a cereal, to provide more carbon to the soil,” he said.

The seeding-harvesting combinations eliminated seeding passes with equipment. “In addition to developing a natural system of fertility, I was also looking for ways to reduce equipment use,” Lozensky said.

Cereal Crops

In recent years, the Lozenskys have sidestepped cover crops due to drought. To keep the soil covered, they’ve added more high-carbon cereal crops. Now, in addition to growing yellow peas and yellow mustard, they also grow barley and oats, as well as heritage grains such as Egyptian hullless barley, Turkey Red winter wheat, Rouge de Bordeaux spring wheat, and some spelt.

“We’ve been stacking cereal crops in the rotation, keeping the ground covered by adding as much carbon to the soil system as possible,” Lozensky said. “The heritage varieties are resistant to disease, resilient to drought, and they stay green for a long time into the growing season, increasing the time we have living roots in the soil.”

The nonpatented cereal crops also reduce seed costs, he noted. To further reduce seed costs, the Lozenskys save their own seed.

Benefits Abound

Beyond enabling the Lozenskys to eliminate fertilizers, the overhauled cropping system has helped cut out fungicides and insecticides, and reduced herbicide use. “Because of less weed pressure, I’ve been able to reduce herbicide applications by 50%,” Lozensky said.

The couple sell most of their grains through conventional markets. They also process some of their specialty grains through their on-farm business, Guardian Grains, LLC. They direct-market stone-milled flours and artisan whole-wheat pasta.

To augment populations of soil microorganisms that cover crops might otherwise build, the Lozenskys have begun adding IMOs to their soil system, an emerging practice among regenerative farmers. They harvest the IMOs by digging small amounts of their most fertile soil. From the soil, they brew and ferment a liquid bioprimer for seed. The coated seed implants the IMOs across the fields, with the goal of increasing microbe populations on a broad scale.

Improvements in soil health suggest their practices are working. The soil is mellow, Lozensky said. Compaction is eliminated, and water infiltration has improved.

Lozensky said he has also noted increased seeding ease. “I’ve been able to reduce down pressure on the drill, lengthening the life of equipment,” he said.

Eliminating most purchased inputs and increasing soil health has led to greater profitability. This has permitted their purchasing of land and fewer acres farmed. “We now farm 2,200 acres of cropland, with 80% of that land purchased in the last 10 years,” he said. The couple, who both farm full time, also manage 600 acres of native water and wildlife habitat.

Overall, the remaking of their farming system has led to fewer problems, less labor, and better quality of life. It has let them spend more time for recreation and more time with their children, Paislee and Nash.

Lozensky summed it up: “We won’t win any yield contests, but our system is resilient when times are tough.”