Farming is Work That Matters

I was at the MOSES organic farming conference at the end of February. Several of the classes that I went to were out standing, real life changing stuff. I sent the teachers a note and told them they did a nice job and should be very proud of doing "Work that Matters".

Most organic farmers are doing "Work that Matters" too and here is why.

Soil 305: Confused

Conventional agricultural soils are confused because of the GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms) plants and residue that the soil biology is forced to deal with. These new "super plants" have unknown DNA that our soil microbes don't know what to do with, in terms of breaking it down. I think that some of this new DNA is also toxic to soil life as it persists long after is should have been cycled.

Soil 304: Supressed

Conventional agricultural soils are dead (or at least biologically suppressed) due to the use of highly salt based fertilizers like super phosphate, which suppresses soil life and anhydrous ammonia which burns out the organic matter the soil life feeds on.

Soil Testing

I test my soil with plants.

Soil scientists have learned to test soils for various nutrients. This is done by using strong chemicals to strip off the nutrients or react with the nutrients in the soil and establish a quantitative measurement. I'm always a little skeptical that the strong chemical processes can correctly detect nutrients available to the plants in a organic system that uses biological processes to make nutrients available.

I have never done any soil testing on our farm. Instead I observe the plants. For example...

Black Cottage Cheese

This post isn't about some new funky probiotic food, it is about soil aggregation.

What is soil aggregation? Read on...

Your Soil is Naked, Hungry, Thirsty and Running a Fever

You'd think from the title of this post that I was describing someone with a tropical disease like Ebola.

The title is referring to a picture of a bare field that Ray Archuleta uses in his seminars on soil health.

He says...

Chemical Agriculture 203: Ecological Diseases

A number of ecoloogical diseases have lead to undesirable consequences in agriculture. This was a surprise to some as it was thought that monocultures would not negatively affect society.

The technical terms for these diseases are "diseases of the ecotope" and "diseases of the biocoenosis".

Super Soil, Super Food - A Land Stewardship Project Guest Post

 I recently wrote a guest post for the Land Stewardship Project. Lisa and I took a course from them 12 years ago called Farm Beginnings. If you are looking to engage in farming at any level I would highly recommend it. We have maintained a relationship the Land Stewardship Project team over the last decade and appreciate the chance to give back to them for the investment they made in our farming endeavors. Brian will write occasional articles about our farm journey.

The post follows or you can find more information on their web site.

Commitment to Quality

Quality on our vegetable farm starts with the soil.

When we moved to our farm about 12 years ago the farm had been farmed conventionally with corn and beans. Nothing unusual about that, the farm had not been abused, it wasn't over grown to weeds or highly eroded. I'm sure they had been using the typical agricultural chemicals, fertilizers and GMO corn and bean varieties. We had good soil types to work with. The soil types were, way better in fact than at our previous home where the top soil had been sold and all that was left was red clay (we rebuilt this soil with compost over 7 years and when we were done it was some of the best soil I have ever seen).

However, the soil on our new farm was "biologically DEAD". Maybe It would be more politically correct to say the soil was biologically suppressed, the biology was there it was just sleeping and had to be awakened.

So what to do?

Black Gold - The Value of Compost

There should be a national compost week the first of June, where we celebrate the coming of summer by enriching our soil. You have heard of "Gold Rush" the local flea market phenomenon. Well this is a different kind of gold..."Black Gold".  (No not the Beverly Hillbillies kind either.)

Here are 10 little known benefits of compost, the "Black Gold" of the garden...

Dad's Soil Amendments and the Risosphere

Dad believed in doing anything 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.

He would use fish emulsion, a biological preparation of chicken manure, and various inoculations. I especially like the inoculations, where AgriEnergy would culture various micro-organisms from the soil and then under the watchful eye of their staff microbiologist they would increase these cultures to commercial quantities. Dad used to inoculate his seed and extended this practice to his soils. You see he understood that there was more going on in the soil than just a soup of chemical nutrients.

Soil for Future Generations

Dad had a 40 year long collaboration with the Soil Conservation Service (SCS) in the 70's dad built terraces, in the 80's he planted windbreaks and completed a wet area tiling program, and in the 90's he completed riparian strips, headlands and continued a hay rotation. In the 2000's the CSC came out with a new program to integrate various conservation practices under one umbrella. There were three tiers a first level with basic practices, a second tier with intermediate level practices and a third tier with some really stretch goals that a farm could achieve over time.

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,

Chemical Agriculture 105 - Soil Life

It is said that all soil on earth has been through the gut of an earth worm. Worms are some of the biggest of critters in the soil, albeit a very productive and important one. However, bacteria are the real work horses in the soil and are so tiny that billions will fit on the head of a pin and trillions in a gram of soil.

You can tell the health of the soil by the life in the soil. Chemical agriculture suppress the life in the soil. Most chemically farmed soils have no earth worms and beneficial insects are at an ebtide low. Beneficial bacteria and fungi are suppressed by anhydrous, pesticides and herbicides. We suppress and chase away the organisms that can benefit us the most in terms of soil building and crop quality.

Let me use our own farm as an example...

Our land was farmed chemically 12 years ago when we moved here. Because of the suppressed biology in the soil it took 2 acres to grow what we had previously grown on 1/4 acre. A productivity ratio of 8 to one. I also noticed that the quality of the produce was very inferior to our previous growing area. So what to do?