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Post by Jim Martindale on Aug 19, 2015 5:13:38 GMT
How particular are you in terms of soil moisture , temperature and other conditions at or prior to pulling cores? Do you prefer a particular season of the year?
How about timing proximity to tillage and type of tillage?
I can no longer cite the study but I remember it over 30 years ago coming out of Iowa state University that conventional tillage had an enormous and nearby impact reducing blue green algae, nitrisimonas, azotobacter (esp nitrifiers.
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Post by Mary Lecerne on Aug 19, 2015 5:16:24 GMT
Jim, your question about field conditions at sampling time is one reason I believe the kind of assessment I teach can become more powerful, when the grower/land manager does the sampling, than the high throughput, standardized laboratory testing commonly used today. When I analyze soil for growers, I typically ask for a sample that is drawn three days to a week after a heavy rain or irrigation. Microbial diversity and abundance will be highest during the active growing season, but even soil from a resting field will provide some indication of the microbial community dynamics. I typically discuss implications with growers when we review the results. If soil is very wet, we can make adjustments. The fact is, every soil, and every field, and every sampling time is different. Laboratories geared for high throughput testing make broad generalizations and assumptions that lump diverse soils into one category. They use strong extraction procedures that can remove minerals from almost any matrix, and then tell you how much nitrogen, phosphorous, iron, calcium, magnesium, etc. they recover. Although their analysis results are very precise, that is, very reproducible, there are downsides to this approach. A big one is that the "one size fits all" output often leads to one-size-fits all interpretations. For example, a grower who's lab results show low levels of nitrogen might be advised to add a certain amount of ammonium nitrate. While this addresses the nitrogen deficiency, it does nothing to make nitrogen levels in the soil sustainable. The grower ends up having to re-apply nitrogen over and over again. This might be good for the fertilizer company, but it may be costing the grower unnecessary money. An advantage of learning to sample and analyze your own soil biology is that when the same decision maker is taking the samples, analyzing the result, and putting the information into context with the many variables that go into farming (Did it rain last week, what are the insects doing? are we in the middle of a heat wave? etc.), the management decisions become more intuitive and more holistic. While some analytical precision may be lost, it can be made up for through more holistic interpretation of what is happening in the soil. The grower will have a better understanding of biological factors (like the nitrogen fixing bacteria and cultural practices) that can be leveraged to build soil nitrogen. Once the process is learned, an analysis can typically be sampled and analyzed in less than an hour, so the grower can basically sample as often as they want. (Initial lab set up runs about $500-1000, and equipment can last a lifetime. Consumables run perhaps one or two dollars a sample). A grower who samples frequently can quickly learn the natural variations to expect with changes in season, cultural practices, and crop rotations. Conventional tillage destroys the nitrogen fixing capacity of the soil! Soil surfaces in natural environments contain an upper layer of living "crust" that includes many species of nitrogen fixing bacteria bound together by networks of symbiotic fungi that transport nutrients to and from plants and soils. The fungal networks also extend below the crust, where they mineralize those compounds the lab will tell you are not "bioavailable", and distribute them to plants. Today many national parks and public lands have signs like "Don't Bust the Crust" that remind ATV drivers how important this layer is to the productivity of the system. Tillage that minimizes soil disturbance is certain to support more biodiversity than tillage that destroys soil microbial communities. Mary Lucero, PhD endofite@gmail.com End-O-Fite Enterprises LLC Restoring living systems for food security and integrated health. www.endofite.comPhone: 575-649-3955
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Post by Mary Lecerne on Aug 19, 2015 5:20:25 GMT
I'm usually not quick to share government publications, but NRCS does a better job of public service (IMO) than many. This one sums up what you were sharing earlier, "Contrary to conventional thought, plowing or tillage actually reduces the capacity of the soil to receive and hold water over time, according to Moebius-Clune. “That’s because tillage destroys soil aggregates and the biologically produced glues that hold soil aggregates together,” she said. “This results in the collapse of those aggregates and the pores between them, which leads to compaction, crusting, increased run-off and downstream flooding, all of which decreases the amount of water that enters the soil profile to be stored and used by crops.” - See more at: blogs.usda.gov/2015/05/12/a-hedge-against-drought-why-healthy-soil-is-water-in-the-bank/#sthash.T2gIULGL.dpuf"
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Post by Jim Martindale on Aug 19, 2015 5:22:09 GMT
Couldn't have said it better. Unfortunately there is the usual apparent inability like most of NRCS in receiving that "not all forms of tillage" are destructive to the end result described here.
Tillage has been defined by our physical senses. Using these senses are a great way to miss deeper understanding and wisdom that comes from God.
If what I have been enamored with for over 30 years can be described as tillage (short of meeting the requirements of being destructive to aggregation, I think it is a form of tillage), the farm in upstate NY that I have referred to as the Mason Farm has historically since the mid 80's done MORE "tillage" by several times over than any farm I have ever known.
The aggregation now observed has been existent for over 25 years. No cover crops ever employed. Alfalfa and corn for silage as the rotation and surface applied manures from the dairy. Lots of tillage up to three or four reps yearly in the early years.
All has apparently led to creating a highly fungal system with an average corn silage yield that is almost twice the county average that without rainfall for 92 days in 1999 following a June 10th rainfall suffered a mere 17% reduction in yield. The neighbor suffered a 9 ton yield compared to the Mason's 19.5.
In contrast 2014 was an excellent growing season and the corn crop finished 3rd in the US competition conducted by Golden Harvest Seed company. This yield was 30 tons per acre and 25% above the rolling farm average. This is represents responsiveness in addition to resilience which is why the farm average is off the charts for the county which today includes very little Class IV soils which Masons farm.
To add the ridiculous to the sublime; In 2014 everything was in readiness to plant the corn except for the seed safe starter which had been used since 1984 in growing corn. The record 3rd place corn was grown without the added fertilizer.
These folks have used glyphosate chemical and other weed control chemicals historically and still do. NEVER grown a cover crop. NEVER used any biological soil amendments. Probably when taken in total, they have done more things wrong than they've done right according to prevailing knowledge and yet they have achieved soil performance beyond believable.
I just love their story.
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Post by Mary Lecerne PhD. on Aug 24, 2015 9:51:24 GMT
I apologize that I did not acknowledge the differences in tillage approach above. When I was working with rangelands, we were able to show benefits to discontinuous disturbances to the soil, such as those made by grazing and burrowing animals. While motor vehicles damaged the land with continuous traces that contributed to soil erosion, prairie dog holes, hoof prints, and other such, more discontinuous patterns, broke the soil crust enough to allow improved air and moisture penetration. Soils were actually better where reasonable numbers of animals were maintained. I thought of this as I watched your cursebuster video. I am intrigued by your story of the Mason Farm. Is this one of the soil samples you discussed sending? How many of your Cursebusters are in use? Have you ever marketed them in the Southwest? What similar kinds of equipment are on the market? I've seen good reports from "keyhole" plowing, but that still lives a continuous (albeit small) trace through the soil. Our region here in southern NM is easily overlooked nationwide as an ag production area, but because it is all irrigated, and we can grow almost year round, we do have a pretty strong, high dollar specialty crop production area. Our chile is considered by many the best in the world. We also grow onions, lettuce, melons, pumpkins, and more. Alfalfa, winter grains, and corn are common rotations. On the east side of the state, peanuts are pretty big. Many growers are moving to underground drip systems, raising the question of how deep your cursebuster goes.
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Post by Jim Martindale on Aug 24, 2015 9:56:16 GMT
Hi Mary.
Certainly no apologies expected or desired. I really appreciate your interest and great questions and contributions.
In the earliest forms of this tillage technology it actually resembles the action of burrowing animals. Perhaps imagine what the videos would look like it the rotary harrows on the rear were not there. We’ve added them to the mix because of other valuable contributions they make to controlling small weeds/leveling fields/making a seedbed for mechanical planting machines/distributing crop residues and animal wastes to name some.
I am intrigued by your story of the Mason Farm. Is this one of the soil samples you discussed sending? Yes.
It has been continuously tilled with the vertical tine technology without use of the rear attached harrows since 1984. There was a brief hiatus when a tandem disc was used following liquid application to incorporate surface applied liquid dairy waste after the field had been tilled vertically. This ended abruptly in 2013 when the corn crop suffered greatly in the dry weather of the 2012 summer.
How many of your CurseBuster are in use? We have 30 in the field running in the US and Canada today. As of this fall almost 1/3 of them are in Canada. We have done no farmshows there and just one field day on the farm of the first owner less than a year ago.
Have you ever marketed them in the Southwest? we have not made, a concerted effort in the SW. We have always waited patiently for the interest to develop in every area we now service. What similar kinds of equipment are on the market? The Smart-Till machine is using the tine to which I hold the patent granted in 2005. It is a good single rank machine which also uses the harrows on the rear to perform secondary tillage. The machine sold under the name Gen-Till also uses my patented tine without authority. Others on the market include one made by Great Plains-Landpride division-. Brown and Aerway. These machines all use the tine made, by Aerway which has three altered features from the NZ original (which I adhere to very strictly) and these actually transmit force into the soil and leave compacted zones all around the tine location. Water and air exchange is unaffected as a result and the net result is actually a net increase in soil bulk density. The resulting action is identical to the action of a sheepsfoot packer which is a very important machine used in building roadbeds which need to be impervious to water. This is the opinion of two different independent civil engineers who built roads and highways for a combined 70 years. The Keyline Plow is a typical approach being used to break deep compaction and silt layers in parent materials underlaying a typical A horizon. I used to think that they were an essential part of restoring soil structure. DONE IN COMBINATION WITH ROOTING ACTIVITY they can be. I had spend time on a farm in north central IN one year to discover the fallacy in my assumption. This farm which I had visited 13 years before had a serious sun-surface layer that was several inches thick that started at about 10 inches under the field surface. I discovered the layer was completely gone and it had never been directly impacted by steel. The operator had used a single rank version of the original NZ geometry tine continuously over that time period and the root systems of his corn/soybeans and cereal rye and annual ryegrass had effectively destroyed the layer completely. In fact the soil on the edge of the field where the manure tanker was loaded from the roadside revealed no increase in bulk density in the tanker/applicator wheel tracks compared to the rest of the field. We were all wowed that day!!!
Many growers are moving to underground drip systems, raising the question of how deep your CurseBuster goes. We are very familiar with this move toward sub-irrigation and sub-drip lines and anxious to place a CurseBuster in this application. We think it will be very dynamic synergy. The silt movement which is aggravated/and caused by water movement downward through soil (the anatomy of the curse pronounced by God from Heaven to Noah and his sons in Gen. 8:21) is stopped except for normal precipitation. Great relief in and of itself to stop overhead irrigation. Better yet is the fact that the tine action actually promotes upward migration of capillary water; exactly water sub-irrigation systems are about. The Eagle tine is 8.75 inches in length and for most installations does not represent a threat to the line integrity. Thanks again and God Bless.
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Post by Jim Martindale on Aug 24, 2015 9:59:30 GMT
Hi Mary.
Certainly no apologies expected or desired. I really appreciate your interest and great questions and contributions.
In the earliest forms of this tillage technology it actually resembles the action of burrowing animals. Perhaps imagine what the videos would look like it the rotary harrows on the rear were not there. We’ve added them to the mix because of other valuable contributions they make to controlling small weeds/leveling fields/making a seedbed for mechanical planting machines/distributing crop residues and animal wastes to name some.
I am intrigued by your story of the Mason Farm. Is this one of the soil samples you discussed sending? Yes.
It has been continuously tilled with the vertical tine technology without use of the rear attached harrows since 1984. There was a brief hiatus when a tandem disc was used following liquid application to incorporate surface applied liquid dairy waste after the field had been tilled vertically. This ended abruptly in 2013 when the corn crop suffered greatly in the dry weather of the 2012 summer.
How many of your CurseBuster are in use? We have 30 in the field running in the US and Canada today. As of this fall almost 1/3 of them are in Canada. We have done no farmshows there and just one field day on the farm of the first owner less than a year ago.
Have you ever marketed them in the Southwest? we have not made, a concerted effort in the SW. We have always waited patiently for the interest to develop in every area we now service. What similar kinds of equipment are on the market? The Smart-Till machine is using the tine to which I hold the patent granted in 2005. It is a good single rank machine which also uses the harrows on the rear to perform secondary tillage. The machine sold under the name Gen-Till also uses my patented tine without authority. Others on the market include one made by Great Plains-Landpride division-. Brown and Aerway. These machines all use the tine made, by Aerway which has three altered features from the NZ original (which I adhere to very strictly) and these actually transmit force into the soil and leave compacted zones all around the tine location. Water and air exchange is unaffected as a result and the net result is actually a net increase in soil bulk density. The resulting action is identical to the action of a sheepsfoot packer which is a very important machine used in building roadbeds which need to be impervious to water. This is the opinion of two different independent civil engineers who built roads and highways for a combined 70 years. The Keyline Plow is a typical approach being used to break deep compaction and silt layers in parent materials underlaying a typical A horizon. I used to think that they were an essential part of restoring soil structure. DONE IN COMBINATION WITH ROOTING ACTIVITY they can be. I had spend time on a farm in north central IN one year to discover the fallacy in my assumption. This farm which I had visited 13 years before had a serious sun-surface layer that was several inches thick that started at about 10 inches under the field surface. I discovered the layer was completely gone and it had never been directly impacted by steel. The operator had used a single rank version of the original NZ geometry tine continuously over that time period and the root systems of his corn/soybeans and cereal rye and annual ryegrass had effectively destroyed the layer completely. In fact the soil on the edge of the field where the manure tanker was loaded from the roadside revealed no increase in bulk density in the tanker/applicator wheel tracks compared to the rest of the field. We were all wowed that day!!!
Many growers are moving to underground drip systems, raising the question of how deep your CurseBuster goes. We are very familiar with this move toward sub-irrigation and sub-drip lines and anxious to place a CurseBuster in this application. We think it will be very dynamic synergy. The silt movement which is aggravated/and caused by water movement downward through soil (the anatomy of the curse pronounced by God from Heaven to Noah and his sons in Gen. 8:21) is stopped except for normal precipitation. Great relief in and of itself to stop overhead irrigation. Better yet is the fact that the tine action actually promotes upward migration of capillary water; exactly water sub-irrigation systems are about. The Eagle tine is 8.75 inches in length and for most installations does not represent a threat to the line integrity. Thanks again and God Bless.
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Post by Mary Lucero PhD. on Aug 25, 2015 5:25:40 GMT
Jim, I am not sure I have the context of the initial question being asked.
I see the discussion is leaning towards, "What do I think of phospholipid analysis for microbial monitoring, and how does it compare to the microscopic analysis I teach?" Let me know if I'm addressing the wrong question.
The phospholipid (PFLA) analysis can provide a powerful, precise, and reproducible profile of your soil microbes. If you are trying to provide an independent analysis for a client, or to prove a point that will hold up in court, the certified labs that offer this approach (or an rDNA/next generation sequencing analysis) is likely good choice. If you want to know what kinds of fungi and bacteria are present, rDNA analysis would be more appropriate than PFLA. Often, both methods are used together, since the two methods complement each other well, and both can be carried out in certified labs. Both techniques are prone to errors that can vary with different soil types and sampling times.
A downside I see to these approaches, and part of the reason I've stepped away from reliance on these high tech lab analyses in general, is that while frequent and long term monitoring is critical for establishing sustainable practices, the methods labs are using are changing so quickly that it is difficult to ensure that a commercial lab's established technique will even be available 5 or 10 years from now. I've seen well established soil labs shut down in recent years. This leaves growers in the position of having to switch their monitoring techniques. Newer is not always better. Furthermore, contract labs are often run by an "expert" who hires a crew of "technicians" to conduct the analysis and prepare the reports. Even when the "expert" carefully reviews the report, he or she is often a person who is detached from the grower's operation and has little understanding of relevant management practices, so many assumptions must be made, and too often the assumptions are inappropriate.
The method I teach is not offered by any commercial labs I am aware of. I initially developed the method with small growers and home gardeners in mind. The idea is for the grower to set up their own "lab". My goal was to illustrate how the growth, flavor, and nutrition of produce improves when soils are biologically diverse. But I am finding interest some from large growers as well, and this is good. There is nothing like seeing your own soil under the microscope to help a grower recognize which chemicals are altering the microbial communities that keep crop production affordable.
While my technique is semi quantitative (It won't provide the tightly reproducible numbers obtained with either PFLA or rDNA analysis) there are clear benefits to the analysis, and with good record keeping, it can provide valuable data to support management at any scale.
For one thing, neither PFLA nor rDNA analyses are typically calibrated to recognize alternate categories of microbes, including many protozoans, nematodes, and microarthropods. The presence of these organisms speaks volumes to the integrity of the soil ecosystem. Another advantage with my approach is that the grower can set him/herself up well to analyze soil indefinitely with an initial investment well under $1000 for training and for lab equipment that can last for decades. Once set up, consumable costs for processing each sample run perhaps $1.00/sample, making it extremely affordable to analyze soil before and after any change in management or weather. With such frequent analysis, it becomes easier for the grower to recognize how the soil microbial community is responding to management and chemicals. Growers who take the time to study their own soil this way can develop a more intuitive and holistic understanding of how management practices are influencing the microbes that build soil and protect crops. In the end, it is this intuitive understanding, more than any individual analysis, that will determine the long term sustainability of the system.
Mary
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Post by Jim Martindale on Aug 25, 2015 5:27:00 GMT
Mary/
Thanks again so much for sharing your experience and insights in light of a somewhat poorly defined set of objectives. I share your sense of obscurity re: objectives. I will digress briefly in hopes that clarity may prevail at some point sooner rather than later.
defining the problem: Possible Questions to be answered 1. How is tillage impacting advancement of soil health/Are there tillage technologies which have clearly demonstrated positive influences and others that have not? 2. can we track the rate of progress in specific soil health components? do we need to? How frequently? 3. How much glyphosate and AMPA is making its way into the food chain… what are sources of the contamination and levels of contamination? 4. Is the genome of the soil rhizoshere being changed by the presence of Bio-engineered plant materials and can it be reversed? Can the Genie be put back into the bottle? (Jeffrey Smith- Seeds of Deception) 5. How do covercrop/ crop rotation/ tillage strategies impact remediation of GMO and Gly/AMPA in soil/plant/animal populations 6. Inadvertently are we approaching the need to redefine or perhaps refine the definition of soil “HEALTH”? Can we characterize a soil as healthy when it is transmitting a chemical into the food supply that has been defined as carcinogenic by the WHO? 7. Acknowledging that significant levels of chemical residue are present in soils is it possible to determine a set of management practices which will destroy the contaminants (GMO and chemicals)? Is it important to track the rate of disappearance of both? 8. ? More
It seems to me that if a road map is not yet available for the desired destinations we want to achieve on this trip then one needs to be drawn fairly hastily.
Only then can we as a group accurately decide which investigative tools make the most sense to employ.
so far we are getting a great perspective on various technologies that could be selected. We need the basis established soon for making selections among them.
The Brookside Farms Labs Assoc. began using Mehlich 3 extractions after many years of using the neutral ammonium acetate extraction. Not so subtle differences in the reported data at the point in time when the use of glyphosate and glufosinate chemical on GM crops began to impact soil performance in the area of micro mineral nutrition of plants really created a quagmire for the producers and consultants. We should try to avoid a similar situation.
I really harmonize with this statement: “With such frequent analysis, it becomes easier for the grower to recognize how the soil microbial community is responding to management and chemicals. Growers who take the time to study their own soil this way can develop a more intuitive and holistic understanding of how management practices are influencing the microbes that build soil and protect crops. In the end, it is this intuitive understanding, more than any individual analysis, that will determine the long term sustainability of the system.”
I have always held that the individual holds the key to true genius. And that the collective genius of individuals is always greater than the sum of the parts. This is what I hear you saying above that is inherit in the approach you are teaching. There are probably a lot of different silver bullets. There may be some things that are common denominators across wide geographical areas but my hunch is that a “one size fits all approach” is not going to work well in general.
In addition I think we have a moving target here. Interim conditions with changing variables of weather/microflora and fauna population shifts and much more are very dynamic. Changes amid course should be commonplace on an individual basis. We need to select analytical tools that are sensitive enough to intercept a crash BEFORE it happens. A little like plant sap testing.
An example of this dynamic which I think I am seeing is the difference between soybean performance following a cereal rye covercrop that is chemically terminated and the same crop that is rolled down and terminated mechanically without the use of ANY chemicals. I think a 10 bu/ac. yield difference is not a stretch. The quality of the beans is totally undiagnosed to my knowledge but at least as important as the yield.
Thanks again.
Jim
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