Issue October 2006 Behind the Lines Cover Story Stories Crops Business     Letter From Europe Rural Roots   Contact Us

Seedbed   Leaving the world (and your land) a better place Here are four principles you can adopt on your farm that will help you leave a better legacy for your children by KEITH REID As I was growing up, one of the guiding principles that my father and many of his generation followed was to leave his little piece of the world a better place than when he found it. With the challenges in agriculture today, where economic survival has taken precedence over everything else, this idea has fallen out of fashion, but I think it is past time that we revive this principle in farming today. Some of you will scoff that I would even suggest this. After all, isn’t it at odds with the hard pragmatism necessary to survive in today’s world? Quite the contrary. We have prospered over the past decades in large part on the strength of our parent’s commitment to improving the land. Our children will prosper only if we show the same commitment.  More to the point, the productivity of the land during our tenure will suffer if we don’t take proper care of the soil. The only thing that has changed since my father started farming is a better understanding of how to care for the long-term productivity of the land, and better technology is available to allow that to happen. Improving the land for now and for the future boils down to four key concepts. 1. Take care of what you already have. Erosion by wind or water carries away the most productive parts of our soil, so preventing erosion is critical to maintaining the productivity of the land. The most practical way is to keep the soil surface covered as much as possible. This may be by a living crop, or by crop residue, so long as there isn’t bare soil exposed to the elements. If your cropping system uses tillage, then include cover crops or forages in the rotation as frequently as possible to provide cover outside of the regular growing season. The second threat to productivity is soil compaction. Everything that happens in the soil happens in the pore spaces, and compaction squeezes these pores shut. Minimize traffic across the field, reduce axle loads and avoid field activities when the soil is moist to prevent compaction. The final threat is depletion of the soil’s fertility. Use soil testing to monitor the level of available nutrients in the soil, and apply manure and fertilizer judiciously to maintain the soil in a productive range, but without excess nutrients. 2. Make it better. The surest way to improve the long-term productivity of the soil is to increase the organic matter content. This improves the nutrient- and moisture-holding capacity of coarse-textured soils, the structural stability of medium-textured soils, and the permeability and workability of fine-textured soils. It is not, however, easily accomplished. Normal farming practices lead to a decline in soil organic matter through increased breakdown of the organic compounds and also through erosion. It takes a concerted effort to reverse this trend by reducing the amount of tillage and by adding organic matter at every possible opportunity. This includes crop residues, cover crops, forage crops in the rotation, and livestock manure. Even with this constant addition, only a small fraction will remain in the soil as humus, as the rest is broken down to feed soil organisms. Related to increased organic matter is improving soil structure, or tilth. It is possible to create a desirable soil structure with tillage if the soil moisture conditions are just right, but this structure will not hang together under heavy rains. More often, the structure created by tillage is either too lumpy, or the soil has been worked down to a fine powder that crusts during the first shower.  Far better is the structure created by biological activity in the soil. The fine roots and fungal hyphae form a framework that holds the soil particles together, and the complex organic molecules in humus form a glue that bonds the particles and keeps them from coming apart with the first rainstorm. It’s a little bit like the glass fibers and resin that make up fiberglass, only at a microscopic scale. The same materials that build soil organic matter are the fuel for the biological engine that creates soil structure. Too much tillage will “burn out” this organic matter, but a soil with a stable structure should not need much tillage to create a seedbed. 3. Foster biodiversity. This sounds like something from an ecologist rather than an agronomist, but the concept is just as sound in a field as in a forest. The main disagreement with the ecologists is how much diversity is necessary for a healthy system, but we all agree that a monoculture is not a sustainable system, no matter what inputs are available to prop it up. Biodiversity does not require a return to mixed crops within a field, or to small fields, although that may be appropriate for some pasture systems. It can be as simple as rotating crops to prevent the build-up of insect pests or disease. A diversity of crops also reduces the risk of some calamity wiping out the entire year’s harvest. Adding areas of non-crop plants to the landscape as windbreaks, shelter belts or woodlots also provides cover for beneficial insects and birds that consume insect pests. It is true that these areas can be home to wildlife that can become pests in their own right, but the benefits generally outweigh the costs. 4. Take time to enjoy what you’ve accomplished.  Farming is a business, but it is also much more than just a business. I don’t think anyone working in a factory or an office can feel the same satisfaction as a farmer looking over the crops he has tended. This pride in the land is what we want to preserve, and pass on to the next generations.BF Keith Reid is soil fertility specialist with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food and Rural Affairs, based in Stratford. E-mail: keith.reid@omafra.gov.on.ca