Soil Science, the Ground To Build A Sustainable Farming Operstion

“I went to a meeting put on by the Chautauqua Beef Association a couple of evenings ago and wonder to myself why none of the farmers in that organization ever consider the life in the soil as an integral part of raising quality forage and field crops? They tend to have speakers that talk about soil quality but tend to think more in terms of how much chemical fertilizer to put onto the field and how to double a field crop so that you can use up the extra nitrogen that doesn’t get used up from the first crop.

In dealing with soil biology, the soil has its own system of using microbes to digest the nutrients that get tied up onto the soil particles and become unavailable unless the microbes can digest the particles. The microbes make the nutrients available to the plants root system as they consume the nutrient and die off. When you feed the plants either by foliar feeding with carbon based nutrients or feed the soil microbes with carbon based nutirents, the biology of the plant is enhanced allowing the plant itself to store carbon in the soil, taking CO2 out of the atmosphere and enriching the soil with organic carbon and increasing the water absorption ability in the soil. It’s a win, win situation.

I know it is easier to just do what the extension service or university tells you what to do but I would rather take a soil sample or forage sample and feed the plant accordingly completing the regenerative cycle. End of rant,”! -Farmer Steve