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
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
It’s time to talk soil health, nutrient management, and more on Day 5 of Ontario Diagnostic Days! The annual Ontario field crop diagnostic days held at Ridgetown, Elora, and Winchester are again virtual in 2021. Cover crops, soil compaction, topsoil sampling and soybean fertility are the focus of this episode. We’ll kick it off with cover… Read More
Members of the Ontario Soil Network are inviting complete strangers onto their farms — virtually, of course. Mel Luymes, communications and community director of the Ontario Soil Network, says that the Soil Road Trip allows farmers, researchers, or just those who are curious, to tour up to 100 fields and discover what each farmer is… 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
There are plenty of buzzwords in farming and agriculture. More than just a word, however, is soil resiliency: what does it mean to have “resilient” soil? For this episode of The Agronomists, host Lyndsey Smith is joined by Anne Verhallen and Marla Riekman to discuss what makes a healthy soil, what makes up soil quality… Read More
Long-term field research, conducted by the University of Guelph, has confirmed Solvita Soil Tests as valuable testing tools for evaluating soil health. Research results show that Solvita tests enabled a high level of certainty in “useful” cropping comparisons and correlated with soil carbon levels and total soil nitrogen. Solvita tests have the ability to capture… Read More
Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food Marie-Claude Bibeau has announced $2.6 million in federal funding for the Canadian Forage and Grassland Association (CFGA) to support three projects that will assess and improve alfalfa growth using artificial intelligence and develop a carbon offset system for grasslands. Some of the funding announced July 19 will also be used… Read More
The Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef (GRSB) has announced its plan and commitment to sustainability goals by 2030. Focused on three areas — climate, land use, and animal health and welfare — the plan outlines the roundtable’s “commitments to advance and improve the sustainability of the global beef value chain.” Specifically, GRSB aims to globally reduce by… Read More
Regeneration Canada is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to raise awareness and catalyze systems of change towards regenerative land stewardship in the country. Through workshops, online education, and information materials available to the general public, farmers, ranchers, and land stewards, Regeneration Canada hopes to engage with all stakeholders involved in decision-making regarding land. But… Read More
Weather is the ultimate source for small talk, and rainfall is perhaps the most talked about — from how much, to when, to not enough, and on too much. For this episode of the Corn School, Bernard Tobin asks Dale Cowan, senior agronomist at AGRIS C0-operative, about how much rain a corn crop needs throughout… Read More
In the uncertainty of a national carbon strategy and how a carbon offset system will work, farmers’ contributions to sequestration and carbon emission mitigation efforts are frequently minimized. It seems the more knowledge there is about the exact amount of carbon sequestered in agricultural land, the more power farmers may have in lobbying for exemptions… Read More
What does it take to be a soil champion? If you’re Laura Van Eerd, professor at University of Guelph, Ridgetown campus, it means being curious about soil biology and crop production and constantly fascinated about what we have yet to learn about nutrient cycles, microbes, and more. Van Eerd considers herself lucky to be able… Read More
A series of three meetings were jointly held last week led by the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association (CCA) and Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC). The purpose of the meetings was to discuss grazing livestock and their role in building a sustainable food supply system. The meetings and consultations were held in preparation for the United Nations… Read More