Cover crops are everywhere on Prince Edward Island. In recent years, growers looking to help manage the Island’s light-textured soils have rapidly ramped up cover crop planting to improve soil health and fight erosion. Syngenta Canada agronomist Eric Richter says he noticed a big change since he moved to PEI five years ago. In this… Read More
Category: Soil Health
There isn’t any one thing that creates a healthy soil. Instead, building soil health and resiliency takes a combination of plant growth, nutrient additions, and careful management. Turns out, it’s not just building organic matter that adds to this dynamic — growing high yielding crops is also key part of nutrient cycling and productive soil…. Read More
Soil type, water availability, hybrid choice, plant population and crop nutrients are just some of the factors growers have to consider when pursuing a high-yielding corn crop on their farm. On this episode of RealAgriculture’s Soil School, we catch up with Aaron Stevanus as he shares how these factors are evaluated at the Stevanus Family… Read More
Soil fertility is the powerhouse that drives crop yield — and this episode of The Agronomists is an absolute powerhouse of soil fertility knowledge in order to learn more about soil pH. When too high or too low, the pH of soil can create huge issues in nutrient availability, nitrogen fixing capability, and soil microbe… Read More
A new soil-focused training program for agronomists is set to launch in 2025. The Canada Trusted Advisor Partnership (TAP) will be offered in Manitoba and Saskatchewan next year, with a goal of 10 to 15 participants. Modeled after the North Dakota TAP, which formed in 2022 to provide Certified Crop Advisors (CCAs) with practical soil… Read More
How to create and maintain healthy soils has been a topic of conversation and data collection for at least the past 40 years. In that time, a growing movement of farmers and ranchers have been shifting their practices to make use of the impact that livestock can have on the soil beneath their hooves. One… Read More
Saline soils are part of the natural landscape of Western Canada. “They were here when we broke the land, they are part of the soil cycle and they’re here to stay,” says Nutrien Premium Fertilizer Technologies senior agronomist Lyle Cowell. Salt can move down through the soil profile and outside the root system, but high… Read More
Is a healthy soil about what it has, or is, or does, or doesn’t do? There are three ways to assess soil: through its physical, chemical, and biological components. But is a healthy soil one that produces the highest yield? Or is it the one with the highest biological activity? What about organic matter, trafficability,… Read More
A new intake for Ontario’s On-Farm Climate Action Fund (OFCAF) opens August 1, 2024. Applications will be accepted on a continuous basis. OFCAF funding, administered by Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association in the province, provides successful applicants with cost-share funding to support the implementation of best management practices (BMPs) to tackle climate change through… Read More
The Prairie Farmer and Rancher Forum eventually agreed — by consensus — on 36 policy recommendations it wants to see put forward. But that doesn’t mean that all the attendees of the forum agreed with each other at the outset. Instead, the forum worked hard to find areas of common interest and support to create… Read More