Author: Andrew McGuire
Irrigated cropping systems agronomist, working to improve agriculture.
Organic Farming Reliant on Synthetic Nitrogen
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 organic fertilizers. In the debate over the future of agriculture, organic food proponents have been…
Hamstrung by Ideology
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 deep roots. We dug a hole and confirmed it; a dense fibrous root system had…
Stepping, rather than jumping, towards sustainability
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 do we actually need to completely redesign our farm and food systems?” I think, with…
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Does no-till really reverse soil degradation?
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 measured changes in soil organic carbon (SOC, which is about 50% of soil organic matter…
