One plus that this COVID slow down, lockdown, don’t travel time has caused us to do is think why. Why can’t we go on a vacation? Is this climate change a hoax? A farmer asking “why is my soil getting harder?” There are dozens of other why questions that you can add.
Vacation, during WWII, unless you were a brave soldier, you wouldn’t . . .
head for the front lines where bullets and gas could kill you, just to see how it was really going. Today, where could you go that you could be very, very confident that you would not be close to someone who could be a COVID carrier?
We have been watching an increase in floods, wild fires, and extended drought periods. We are also watching documentary after documentary showing a continuing increase in the growing period for crops and plants, or what the farmer call heat units.
Fifty some years ago when I returned home from Agriculture College, Pontiac had only 2,300 heat units. Today in 2021, we have 2,700 heat units. Scientists who have been tracking temperatures and frost free days and heat units predict that by 2050, Pontiac County will have 3,800 heat units. That means that you will be able to grow peaches and maybe even oranges in your garden.
With the extended dry periods and heavy rains that will also come, our soils become more likely to blow away with the wind in extended dry periods and get washed away with the heavy rains. The three documentaries on soil health that I watched during the last month all addressed the water holding capacity of soil. The organic matter content in soil improves the water holding capacity so the soil can absorb more water in wet times before excess water runs off. Water run off usually carries away some topsoil into creeks, rivers and eventually the ocean. When topsoil goes, some fertility and even soil life floods away with it. The more water that a soil can hold increases the ability of plants to survive and grow from one rain to the next.
Soil compaction was not a problem in grandpa’s time. Then, they never worked the soil when it was wet. My dad had a saying, “If your face don’t get dirty when you are cropping, then you’re better off in the house.” Grandpa wouldn’t even let the cattle out on pasture until the fields dried up because they would tramp up the pastures, cause compaction and kill the little plants.
Today’s big tractors are big enough to go right through that muddy field while at the same time they weigh as much as 20 horses and can pull a manure tanker that can weigh 150,000 pounds when loaded. Engineers have encouraged farmers to equip tractors with dual or triple tires, increase tire size, use radial tires and even switch to wide rubber tracks on tractors, combines, manure tankers, grain buggies, etc., all to reduce the pounds per square inch of equipment in the fields. Dad used to pull a three furrow plow with a little 27 horse power Ferguson tractor. Our soils are so compacted today that it would take twice the horse power to pull a three furrow plow.
A soil penetrometer, (soil probe) can be used to determine how hard the ground is. A one quarter inch steel rod with a handle welded to the top can also be used if a penetrometer is not available. A farmer checks how hard it is to shove the rod or soil penetrometer down into the soil at a fence line where the heavy machinery cannot go. Then step out into the field and try to push the soil probe down a foot. If in both places, you get the same resistance then your soil is not compacted. I’ll bet you a coffee that the resistance is not the same.
Why? Farmers have always been inquisitive. In the late 1930s, Louis Bromfield (an Ohio farmer) wondered why alfalfa grew so well in Nebraska and wouldn’t grow in Ohio. Louis figured that there was something in the soil but the agronomists at the time didn’t know what it was. The neighbours thought that Louis was crazy when he brought a boxcar” full of soil from a field in Nebraska that grew beautiful alfalfa, to his farm and spread it on a small field. When Louis planted alfalfa seed in that field, it not only germinated, but grew very well and remained healthy in that field for many years. Soil tests could show him that the soil was balanced right for alfalfa, but it couldn’t tell him what soil life was there or not there. Louis later found that it was the nitrogen fixing bacteria in the Nebraska soil that were needed to affix nitrogen in the alfalfa roots. Now farmers mix nitrogen fixing bacteria into the alfalfa seed at planting time.
It is earth worms and thousands of other very small live creatures in our soil that help make a soil productive. Since WWII, farmers have been advised to use increasing amounts of chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides in their fields. All these expensive additives plus soil compaction have contributed to a serious reduction in life and carbon in the soil. There are still a few colleges and universities that specialize in regenerative agriculture and a healthy soil. Just as now we are witnessing a reduction in the use of fossil fuels, we will soon see much more emphasis placed on regenerative agriculture and soil health and less on chemical additives.
Seventy years ago, Louis Bromfield called grass “the great healer” when a field became unproductive. Today, both agronomists and farmers will admit that the field of corn planted after a pasture or hayfield is plowed up is the most economical field of corn on the farm.
Chris Judd is a farmer in Clarendon on land that has been in his family for generations. gladcrest@gmail.com
