mi·cro·man·age: to manage or control with excessive attention to minor details. As a means to improve soil management, I commend the high interest in soil biology among farmers and gardeners. However, I have noticed the tendency for this interest to…
In a past post, I argued that killing a cover crop with an herbicide was better for building soil than killing it with tillage. Here is another option. Why not develop genetically engineered cover crops that die easily when sprayed…
Last year, at a Washington State University (WSU) Building Soils for Better Crops conference, farmers from Kansas, North Dakota, and Colorado all spoke on the benefits they were seeing from using multi-species cover crops. These cover crop “cocktails” consist of…
A number of studies have suggested that organic farming better addresses issues related to climate change than non-organic farming. Many of the reported climate change advantages of organic farming flow from its prohibition of synthetic fertilizers and exclusive use of…
I recently saw an infographic that stated, “There are no life forms in the soil, which is sterilized…” What was it talking about? Soils on the moon? A toxic chemical spill? Soils around Chernobyl? Nope, this was the description of…
Last summer, I visited an organic farm in the area. The farmer showed me various parts of his operation, one of which was a field that he had planted to a species of perennial grass that produces an abundance of…
The director of the WSU Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources, Chad Kruger, posed the question, "For farm and food system sustainability, is it possible to shift our existing system in the right direction with small, positive changes or…
Read More Stepping, rather than jumping, towards sustainability
A recent paper (Olson, 2013) finds a number of long-term studies were wrong about no-till practices building soil organic matter and thus sequestering carbon. Kenneth Olson, soil scientist at the University of Illinois, says the problem is how the studies…
The secret to building soils is... wait for it... manure and diverse crop rotation. Underwhelmed? Researchers in Iowa (Delate et al, 2013) came to this result after conducting ten years of field research. Only this wasn’t their conclusion. Instead, the headline…
Read More Study shows soil-building benefits of manure and crop rotation, so why didn’t they say so?
I eat meat. More specifically, I eat feedlot beef from major supermarket chains and generally enjoy it. Nonetheless, the implications of a recent study have me questioning whether I will eat meat in the future. In their paper, Redefining agricultural…
