George Sims

George Sims, founder of CarbonWorks, has been around agriculture for close to 40 years, but he didn’t grow up on a farm. After his childhood years in northern Florida, George attended Auburn University on a Navy ROTC scholarship and earned an engineering degree. In the Navy, George flew off aircraft carriers as a pilot from 1977 to 1985. 

After his discharge from the service, George began working in land development in Florida designing golf course communities. When the company he was working for became involved in agriculture, George moved on to growing orange trees. During his career in agriculture, George has grown oranges, strawberries, watermelons, green beans, bell peppers, and potatoes. With no formal agronomy education, George learned the ropes from fellow farmers, crop advisors, and other agricultural professionals along the way.  

At his 20-year mark in agriculture, George realized that he was having a problem with his irrigation water when salt water from the ocean began infiltrating his agricultural wells. This spurred George to investigate alternatives to the standard NPK program for his agronomy program. In 2005 he began digging into the potential of carbon, as he was familiar with the use of carbon products on the West Coast for similar crops. 

During his research George developed a new agronomic approach: to provide crops with carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen—three nutrients essential to all life. Since first using the CarbonWorks products to revitalize his own yields more than 20 years ago, George has now designed and implemented CarbonWorks agronomy programs for a wide range of crops, from corn and soybeans to almonds, hemp, and potatoes.

“Everything I’ve learned, I’ve learned in the field and on the road speaking with other farmers, with university researchers, and others in the ag industry. By the grace of God, I’ve been able to learn in the real, practical world, where the ‘stuff’ has to work. I’ve always said that I believe farmers have to be, or should be, the most God-fearing, God-loving people on Earth. You go out and plant a seed in the ground and then every known or unknown calamity can happen, totally out of your control. So for me, if you were of little or no faith, how could you continue to do that and remain a sane person? So I always felt that farmers are a unique breed, and that we are the stewards of God's earth. Hopefully we will be good stewards in our lifetime.