Submitted Photo Kelly and DeAnna Lozensky, who farm near South Prairie, are pictured with their children Paislee, 7, and Nash, 5.

Farming has been a family affair for Kelly and DeAnna Lozensky, who farm in the South Prairie area and have found new business opportunities through no till, regenerative farming and their practice of carbon sequestration.

They market their grains on their website at www.guardiangrains.com and through the Bisman Food Co-op in Bismarck. DeAnna Lozensky manages the website and also markets the operation through their social media pages.

Kelly Lozensky bought into the farming operation of his parents, Bev and Tim Lozensky, in 1999.

“A majority of our acres are located 15 miles south of Minot off Highway 83,” said his wife, DeAnna Lozensky. “We grow ancient grains, hard red spring wheat, yellow peas, yellow mustard and golden flax in our rotation.”

She said farming has posed many challenges but they have also discovered that the only thing they really cannot control is the weather.

“We spent years farming in a no-till system with extremely high inputs: seed treatments, fertilizers, insecticides, fungicides and herbicides,” she said. “These practices left our soils completely degraded and unable to care for themselves. There was always some type of symptom to treat in our fields: pests, disease, low nitrogen, something was always needing treatment of one kind or another. Along with the inputs came endless hours in the field scouting our crops and treating ‘sick patients’. The cost of ‘intensive’ monitoring made it all the more difficult to turn a profit with average commodity prices.”

The Lozenskys decided there had to be a different way of doing things.

In 2013, they lost their biggest landlord to a farmer who was willing to pay more rent.

“We decided to take a hard look at how we could do a better job on our farm, with less acres,” said DeAnna Lozensky. “It became evident that we needed to start cutting back on our fertilizer costs: enter variable rate nutrient application. We began fertilizing based on soil type and Kelly set up his air seeder to recognize how much fertilizer each soil type needed as he was planting. We were able to start reducing our rates of fertilizer and cutting input expenses. We began to observe areas in the field that required no fertilizer, also had no disease or pest pressure. This intrigued us. We began to realize there was something very important working in the soil that we had been ignoring. A healthy biological soil system can feed the plants, suppress diseases in plants, eliminate pest infestations and produce grain that has more nutrients available that those grown conventionally or in an organic system using no tillage. Our soils, had become addicted to soil amendments, so much so that they could not function without them. We began the process of weaning our soils off of the ‘junk.'”

The result is a farming method that DeAnna Lozensky said some call “regenerative.”

Their system involves no tillage, no synthetic or organic fertilizers, no insecticides, and no fungicide treatments on either the seed or on the leaves of the grains that they grow.

“With these practices we take a more natural approach to farming,” said DeAnna Lozensky. “We do a lot of observing and asking questions about what’s going on in our system. We have found through time and patience, our soils are repairing themselves.”

She said the COVID-19 pandemic emphasized problems with the current food system and also has provided them with a new business opportunity.

“It was clear that consumers, restaurants, bakeries and retailers needed access to grains that were nutrient available,” said DeAnna Lozensky. “For six seasons our farm and our soils benefited from our growing practices (and) we thought it was time that people benefit from the nutrition in regeneratively grown grains rather than having it all commingled with conventional grains at the elevator. We decided that for the first time, we would start marketing our regenerative whole grains to somewhere other than just our local elevator.”

This past winter DeAnna Lozensky developed the website and reached out to area restaurants and bakeries to gauge their interest in incorporating locally grown, regenerative grains in their menus.

“Whole grains can be prepared in a variety of ways,” said DeAnna Lozensky. “They are an excellent source of protein and zinc. Whole wheat can be ground into fresh flour using a grain mill (we carry Mock Mill on our website) for baking.”

She said going forward they are most concerned about soil health going forward since the nutrients in the grains they grow are dependent on the soil they are grown in.

The Lozenskys want to make sure that the soil is still there for their children, Paislee, 7, and Nash, 5, decades from now.

“We learned that the term for our practices is widely known as Regenerative Farming,” said DeAnna Lozensky. “It is not widespread from a grain perspective, but there are more ranches that are going regenerative all the time. This is because of the benefit on the environment and the animals. We have watched webinars, YouTube presentations and read books on regen farming. The pandemic actually made info more accessible. Through Zoom meetings we were able to attend soil care workshops from our home, where as before COVID we would have to travel all across the world to get this valuable info, which we probably would not have done.

“Carbon is a huge focus as we can take it from the atmosphere and sequester it safely in the soil where it won’t contribute to climate change and it can help feed our grains.”

They have also learned from the practices of organizations such as The Menoken Farm, No Till on the Plains and Regeneration on the Plains.

The Lozenskys grow only grain, but other operations that practice these methods farm and also grow livestock.

“What we enjoy most is getting to carry on a family tradition of farming and stay rooted. Regenerative farming methods have added so much freedom to our lives both economically and spiritually,” said DeAnna Lozensky. “We are so proud to watch nature and learn how we can do things better as farmers. Sometimes, as hard as it might be, that means doing less and observing more.”