Boron is one of the essential micronutrients needed to grow a high-yielding crop of canola. When looked at in the plant and how it is used, boron doesn’t move about all that quickly. As Erika Dowling, technical sales manager with Mosaic Company, explains in this Soil School episode, due to the slow mobility of boron… Read More

What’s going on below ground? That’s a question farmers often ask when it comes to tillage and the impact different tillage strategies and implements have on soil and crop roots. In this 2021 Ontario Diagnostic Days video report, we catch up with Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) soil management specialist Sebastien Belliard,… Read More

Trying to tackle the enormity that is recognizing leading women in agriculture left me so overwhelmed, I ended up being unable to even begin to write or interview. In order to overcome the inertia, I decided instead to focus on one aspect of the industry and tip the hat to some notable scientists who also… Read More

Building organic matter is a complicated and sometimes slow process, but you can’t build soil organic matter without carbon and biological activity. There’s some research out there to suggest that adding commercial nitrogen fertilizer to cropping systems burns through organic matter — but field level research doesn’t show the same results. What’s happening? First time… Read More

How do you measure soil heath? On this episode of RealAgriculture’s Soil School, OMAFRA soil scientist and land use specialist Dan Saurette joins Bernard Tobin to look at some of the assessment tools available to farmers and the type of insights they provide. One of the most well known soil health tests is Cornell’s Comprehensive… Read More

Whether or not you’re farming healthy soils depends on many things, says Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Rural Affairs soil specialist Anne Verhallen. When asked what makes a healthy soil, Verhallen says that growers need to think first about the qualities of their soil, including properties such as soil texture — are you farming… Read More

After a drought, lingering effects of herbicides can really pose a threat for the next cropping year. In this Canola School episode, Breanne Tidemann, research scientist at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Lacombe, Alta., explains why there’s a risk for herbicide carryover from residual products for the upcoming crop year. Tidemann says that it’s important to… Read More

Drought this year has not only hindered yields on the Prairies, but it could also directly affect next year’s crop by not allowing for pesticide breakdown in soil. There are several different ways pesticides can break down in the soil: by volatilization after application; through photodegradation on the soil surface (sunlight); through hydrolysis in soil;… Read More

Organic matter plays a key role in soil health, productivity, and resiliency. But building or replenishing organic matter can take a long time and a tremendous amount of organic material. On this episode of RealAgriculture’s Soil School we visit with Nicole Penney, precision ag manager for FS Partners in Ontario. Penney notes that it takes… Read More

Interest in building soil resiliency or measuring soil health is growing. But before jumping to complicated soil health tests, we first need to understand how the basic physical, chemical, and biological properties of a soil in combination with management practices will affect soil microbial populations. “You can’t take the genetic base, essentially, like the DNA… Read More

 

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