To get myself fired up for this article, I took a walk through a test plot where I started and continue a crop rotation. We grew some trial food grains on it and then pastured pigs on a replanted area. Pigs like to graze clover.
Then we wintered horses by bale grazing i.e. setting out bales for self /demand feeding.
Now we are trying out a power harrow and seeding a cover crop to build soil. The soil was cracked and I am wondering why when we have had four inches or rain so far this spring.
Building and renewing soil is what all the talk and articles are about when you hear the words “rotational grazing” and “cover crops.” Soil needs to be covered with photosynthesizing (actively growing) plants or it is being degrading in its ability to sustain its ability to grow crops.
Staring out of my bookshelf is a 40-year-old Senate of Canada report called “Soil at Risk.” Last week the same Senate (different members) issued a new report entitled Critical Ground: Why soil is Essential to Canada’s Economic, Environmental, Human and Social Health.
Here is a quote from the report "… climate change, extreme weather events, urbanization and misread outcomes of soil management practices mare contributing to the problem.”
In an interview with The Western Producer, the senate chair of the committee, Rob Black, which issued the report is quoted as saying: “We do not, and I repeat, we do not, have another 40 years to protect and conserve our soil. We must act now.”
We are talking mostly about the frequently or annually farmed soils of the food and crop growing farmlands of Canada and the rest of North America, not so much the perennial swards of natural grasslands and the forage (hay) growing soils which is the basis of much of our livestock growing areas. But we can’t be complacent about those lands either.
Of course, after the first report there has been a transition towards “no-till’ planting where a crop is seeded into the stubble of the last annual crop of grain or feedstuff (peas, lentils etc.)
I noted above using a rotary harrow which mixes crop residue and old sod by stirring the top soil horizontally rather than slicing and dicing soil with moldboard plows and disks harrows or rotovators which can compact soil and disturb the layers of bacteria by turning over the top six inches of the soil. The motion of tractor tires and rotovators can compact the soil so roots won’t easily penetrate in their search for water and nutrients.
That said, we are in dire need of practical or applied research need to use science or local wisdom about these practices.
Producers need to band together to encourage this research and reporting to those of us in the fields. Amen
