A Systems Overhaul

These farmers jump-started soil lite to provide health and fertility for crops.

- By Raylene Nickel

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 the central North Dakota community of South Prairie. 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.