Growing Fertilizer in the Heart of Virginia:
One Farmer's Story of Resilience

“I’m trying to grow fertilizer,” says Bob Waring. And he’s not kidding.  

On his 400-acre farm in Virginia, Bob spends many of his waking hours thinking about how to make each acre profitable. Rather than rely on synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, or insecticides, he’s betting on biology: deep-rooted cover crops, time-tested rotations, and soil that’s alive and working in his favor. The shift isn’t just about saving money, though that’s part of it. For Bob, it’s about creating a system that can weather droughts, pests, or market swings and come out stronger on the other side.  

Bob’s approach is unconventional, but it’s rooted in reality.  “No other farmer is crazy enough to consider taking acres out of production to rebuild soil biology, but I am,” he laughs. 

The current numbers are encouraging and provide early justification for Bob’s idea of giving fields the resources they need and time to regenerate between cash crops. “I’m seeing the synergies happening already, especially between legume cover crops, like hairy vetch, and the following corn crop. If this year’s experiments go the way I think they will, I’ll be looking at resting a quarter of my acres to focus on rebalancing the soil.”  

Bob estimates most farmers spend about $600 per acre to grow corn. At a market value of $4 per bushel, that means they need to harvest 150 bushels per acre just to recover their costs. With reduced inputs, Bob might spend closer to $350 per acre.  

In 2024, a drought year when many farmers fertilized for a 200-bushel-per-acre corn crop but the state harvest average was just 114, Waring only needed to clear 87.5 bushels to cover his costs. His total yields were 25 percent higher than the state average. His input costs were lower, his soils held more water, and the regenerative cropping system helped make the plants more resilient.  

This is the kind of thinking that comes from decades on the land and a willingness to question assumptions. Bob is a third-generation farmer at Brandon Farms, where the land has been in his family long enough to have some mystery in its name. “I asked my dad where ‘Brandon’ came from,” he says. “He never asked my grandfather. So now, no one knows.”  

The farm includes both owned and leased land, split between a North and South unit, with family living on both. Bob’s 81-year-old father still runs equipment and leads the harvest. His mom is up before dawn most mornings to play pickleball. Bob himself just turned 55.  

His connection to the land is deep, but he isn’t stuck in the past. His focus is on long-term viability—even if his own kids don’t stay in farming. Bob and his wife, Elizabeth, have two children. Their son is a Navy medic in California, their daughter is in grad school for speech therapy. “They were part of the farm from the time they were young, out there with me and dad, in the tractors, and in the dirt,” Bob says, “but there’s no predicting the future. If my kids don’t want to pursue it, there might be another member of the family who does.” If that doesn’t happen, Bob has also considered how to bring in someone new, someone with passion but no capital. “Call it rent-to-own,” he says. “They work a few years, take on responsibility, lease the ground, build relationships with landowners. That’s what matters.”  

Bob's transformed outlook began to take shape after a 2014 fall from a ladder sent him 11 feet onto concrete. Fit and health-conscious (a self-described recovering kale shake devotee), he fractured four vertebrae but was back at work within days. The injury reshaped his thinking about stress and resilience. “What we ask of our plants and soils—withstanding pests, heat, drought—it’s not so different from what we ask of our bodies,” he says.  

Now, that connection between soil biology and farm health runs through everything he does. Take his cover crops: “The vetch is everything to us,” he says. Planted in October, it builds nitrogen naturally and holds moisture.” He’s steadily reduced his chemical use--by about 75% from where he started—to the point that he’s now using no insecticides, no fungicides, and most years, not even a post-emergent herbicide, the kind typically sprayed after crops and weeds have emerged in the spring. “Burn-down only,” he says, referring to an early-season herbicide application that clears the field before planting. “A lot of times, the cover is drowning out the weeds.” 

Importantly, though, it’s not just about doing what’s right for the land; it has to pencil out. Bob says, “If I break even at 87.5 bushels, I can still sleep at night when the weather doesn’t cooperate.”  

And lately, it often doesn’t. Summer droughts now last five to six weeks or longer. Spring rains come too hard, too fast—a recent rain system brought 12 inches all at once, and a prior year their total rainfall was 30 inches higher than normal. “I think water management in the next decade is going to be one of agriculture’s greatest challenges,” he says. “The question is, how do we come to terms with these new normals?”  

He’s tackling that question with data and support from partners. A precision agriculture trial with Virginia Tech is evaluating the effect of biochar, compost, and multi-species cover crops on water retention and nutrient uptake. And a Healthy Soils grant from American Farmland Trust (AFT) is helping him test the long-term impact of regenerative practices on a dedicated 20-acre block.  

“It’s the best grant I’ve ever received,” Bob says. Through AFT’s support, he planted the field in year-round cover, starting with sorghum-sudan grass, followed by a 6- or 7-species mix, then vetch and balansa clover to feed the next corn crop. He’s collected cover crop biomass samples and sent soil samples to a lab for analysis, tracking key nutrient levels like NPK (nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium) at half-meter intervals to understand how much fertility is actually being built. Bob asks, “Can we influence organic matter, soil biology, and carbon with these systems?” He’s banking on it.  

Others are taking notice—including a Richmond, Virginia distillery testing whether farming practices affect flavor. Bob is supplying corn for a blind “nosing” test comparing three approaches: non-GMO regenerative, GMO regenerative, and conventional. The distillery uses only Virginia-grown grain, and Bob is curious whether his soil-first methods will register in the glass. It’s a small project, but part of the larger goal of proving that regenerative farming creates value beyond just yield.  

Not everyone is there yet. “For years, the culture in agriculture has been to focus on yield when what matters most is return on investment,” Bob says. He remembers a grower calling him three times in one season to ask if they should spray fungicide on soybeans. “They’re chasing bushels, even when the economics don’t make sense.”  

Still, he sees change coming. He divides farmers into roughly three groups: 10% early adopters, 10% who are unlikely to change, and 80% in the middle. “I think half of that middle group could be persuaded,” he says, especially with rising input costs and increasingly erratic weather. “You can’t make it as a farmer and lose money every year.”  

But he’s realistic about how change happens and believes in the power of community. When a neighbor wanted to look at his planter, Bob was ready to open the gate. He’s always eager to share what he’s learning through his experiments and benefits from what others are discovering. “This only works if we talk to each other,” he says. “Farmers need to look at what others have done, embrace their successes and learn from their failures.” 

And that, more than any single practice, is where Bob sees momentum. Not in a top-down fix, but in farmer-to-farmer conversations. He’s not waiting for a perfect system to tell him that soil health matters. He’s already living the proof--on his fields, in his records, and in his own body.  

“We’re on the verge of a transformational movement,” he says. “People are paying attention. We have a listening audience now that we didn’t have before.”