Episode #68: Alvin Peachey
Regenerative Agriculture Podcast
AEA Marketing
4.7 • 546 Ratings
🗓️ 23 April 2021
⏱️ 66 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Alvin Peachey is an Amish organic dairy farmer from central Pennsylvania. Over the course of more than a decade, Alvin has grown his operation to 90 100% grass-fed cows on 92 acres, implementing regenerative practices that flips the script of the status quo for dairy farmers.
In this thought provoking and practical conversation, Alvin and John discuss:
- Alvin's background as a dairy farmer starting with only 25 cows and 10 replacements.
- The difference between rotational grazing and management-intensive grazing.
- How Alvin tracks and manages his cost of production and how his economic models diverge from the mainstream.
- Unique approaches to creating balanced and diverse nutritional profiles, not just in grazable forages, but also in stored winter feeds.
- Important considerations for maximizing sugars and proteins in baleage.
- The genetic and structural qualities Alvin looks for in dairy cows.
- Alvin's thoughts and observations on the financial future of dairy farming.
"For the crop production acres, we have no budget on fertilizer… because we have unlimited potential, so why would we have a budget? Right?" -Alvin Peachey
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, friends. Welcome back. This is John, and this is the Regenerative Agriculture podcast, |
| 0:05.3 | where we talk about the agronomic sciences and the cultural management practices that regenerate plant health, |
| 0:10.4 | soil health, and livestock health, and ultimately public health, and the health of farming profitability. |
| 0:17.2 | My guest for this episode is someone you may have heard me mention on several different |
| 0:22.2 | occasions and Amish organic dairy farmer from central Pennsylvania, Alvin Peachy. |
| 0:28.5 | Alvin has 100% grass-fed dairy and has been doing some really extraordinary things that |
| 0:34.4 | kind of put the status quo of dairy farming on its head, and he has lots of really |
| 0:39.1 | interesting insights for us to share. So Alvin, thank you for being willing to join us and to |
| 0:45.4 | share some of the experiences that you have had. Can you tell us a little bit about your |
| 0:48.8 | personal story and tell us a little bit about your operation and where you've come from |
| 0:53.9 | and what brought |
| 0:54.4 | you to the work that you're doing today. |
| 0:56.7 | Sure. |
| 0:57.3 | Well, I thank you, John, for inviting me on the Sun Conversations. |
| 1:02.3 | And I feel honored to be on this call. |
| 1:06.5 | First, I want to express a very deep thank you to all of my very good mentors, which would |
| 1:13.6 | be John Kemp, Gay Brown, just to mention a few. Sam's Look from Keaton Bylag, Dr. Sue Abel-Kane's |
| 1:23.6 | some of my tremendous good mentors that have helped me a lot over the years. |
| 1:29.7 | We are a small certified organic grass-based dairy in central Pennsylvania. |
| 1:37.1 | And currently we're milking around 90 cows total. |
| 1:41.0 | So I was smoking cows twice a day since I was eight years old for my mom and |
| 1:46.8 | dad and grew up on the dairy farm at age 15. I was put in charge of the dairy cows really |
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