When we first think about the expression ‘full circle,’ we think of fashions when grandma was a girl and wore short shorts and other fashions that ten years later, you wouldn’t be caught dead in. Guess what? A few years later, they came back. Fifty-five years ago, if you spent three days mowing back square bales in a new pair of denim jeans, you could wear the knees and fronts of the legs right through so they looked like the $100 designer jeans do today.
When you spend some time talking to an old farmer about the way his dad farmed, he will tell you about walking behind the team pulling a one furrow walking plow and his dog with him, watching for a groundhog that was trying to find his hole that grandpa had plowed in the round before. I’ll bet the dog got the groundhog before it located the covered up hole.
There was little or no soil compaction in grandpa’s time because . . .
neither he nor the horse compacted the earth walking in a different place every furrow. Grandpa never plowed on a wet, rainy day or in a wet field. He probably didn’t use much, or any chemical fertilizer or sprays that depleted the microbial life in the soil who helped keep it arable.
Today, farmers and engineers are designing machines to have less PSI on the earth by using larger or double tires, or rubber tracks to reduce compaction. Soil scientists are trying to educate farmers in ways to reduce the use of chemical fertilizers and sprays that can kill off soil microbes which not only aerate the soil, but help break down minerals and organic matter in the soil to make nutrients that grow plants.
For years, farmers pastured hilly or rocky fields that only a cow could live on, but found small level spots in the field that could be cultivated. Those little plots were worked up and seeded in the best pasture plants that he could find. Then those newly seeded little plots were fenced to keep the animals from grazing them until the late summer when the plants produced seed. Then the fence was removed so the cattle could eat the now gone to seed superior quality pasture plants. As the cattle walked all over the rough, rocky field, every place that they dropped manure, the seed from the mature pasture plants grew into new spots with the superior pasture plants. By doing this, the farmer used land that was worthless to grow grain crops, into excellent pasture for cattle who grew into high protein meat.
Beef farming is still a leader in regenerative agriculture. A century ago, most farms were mixed farms where both animals and some grain was produced. The manure from the animals was spread to feed the soil microbes which in turn helped produce fertilizer for the crops. Continuous cropping can result in disaster as the dust bowl in the west proved. The mid-western US corn belt used to have several feet of top soil. After decades of continuous cropping, a dangerous amount of top soil has been depleted.
In our own county, farms that were closest to the early logging camps (where horses did all the heavy work) sold most of their grain and hay to the logging camps to feed the horses. No manure was ever brought back to the farms that supplied the horse feed and those farms were the first ones to lose enough topsoil that they became inefficient.
For generations, some gigantic hog or chicken farms have teamed up with grain farms to get some manure returned to the soil to feed the microbes. Farmers are being encouraged to plant a crop to cover the bare soil after corn or other grains are harvested. This practice reduces wind and water erosion and provides a green manure crop to till into the ground in the spring which adds organic matter and fertility to what otherwise would be bare ground.
Many potato farmers have used buckwheat and or fall rye to plow down and return organic matter to their soil. Our ancestors always grew a garden to help feed their family. Last year the most popular short course at the largest university in Montreal was a course in roof top or balcony gardening so city dwellers could grow a garden even if they had no land for a garden.
For decades, farmers have been paid for the amount of grain, vegetables, fruit, etc. grown per acre. Dairy farmers used to be the same with pay for milk volume only. Now dairy farmers only get paid for the solids in the milk like butterfat, protein and other solids like sugar and minerals. Dairy farmers get no pay for the water content in the milk, because there is tap water for free.
Consumers are now becoming interested in the nutrient density of what they buy. During the last few decades, the nutrient density of our food has reduced drastically except for the sugar and fat part of the food. Have you noticed that most of us could lose a little weight? The nutritive value of the older Heritage varieties is far superior to most of the new higher yielding varieties.
Farming has always been a challenge each and every year. Just as the farmer thinks that it’s all figured out, the weather, temperature or demands of the consumer changes. Consumers will also change their demands from cost per volume, to cost per nutrient purchased.
Farmers have been and always will be concerned and responsible for the conditions that animals are raised and cared for, and that the environment and future of our planet are not at risk.
