When the tier system first came out the CSC came to Dad's farm to
evaluate his practices against their system. What they found was
one of the few farms in the state of Iowa that met all the tier three
criteria and then some. Dad didn't do all these things to achieve a
tier system or fit into a government program,
he did them because they were the right
thing to do for the land, for the soil and for the future generations who would farm his land.
Dad believed in doing everything possible
to improve the soil and even proactively build biology and soil
structure. He would do this by adding compost, cover cropping, and
using various soil amendments from AgriEnergy Resources.
This was way beyond anything the SCS
has ever considered and most of traditional agriculture as well. When
the local SCS folks came to evaluate Dad's farm he was trying to
explain some of these techniques to them and for the most part he got
the “glazed over look” as this new information went solidly “over their heads”. Maybe the SCS could consider a tier 4 level in
honor of Dad, this tier would be about proactive soil building instead of just
slowing the soil loss.
We use these same techniques that Dad
used on our farm.
Our farming is on a micro scale and we
extend these techniques well beyond what Dad was able to do on a
larger scale. For example, we have added 350,000 lbs of compost a
year to our farm for the 12 years we have been in stewardship of our
land. This is 4 million pounds of compost total. This would be 12
pounds of nearly pure organic matter per square foot and would cover
the farm 6-8 inches deep.
This doesn't just improve the biology
of the soil, though it does that well, it also builds
organic matter at a rate 100's of times faster than would occur in
nature. So instead of loosing soil at an alarming rate like most of
agriculture, we are adding pure humus to our soils and building soil
organic matter. This is carbon sequestration at its best. We are not just storing CO2 in some weird underground storage facility like the environmental scientists propose. We are putting the carbon back in the soil where it belongs. In addition
to improving how the plants grow it improves the quality of the
nutrients they contain and the shelf life of the produce. This
translates to the health and vitality of the eater.
Our next post is about some of these
biology enhancing techniques that Dad used.
We honor my fathers legacy in these
posts. He began enhancing soils in heaven on March 30, 2014.
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