Perspectives Search

Andrew McGuire examines the limited evidence behind claims that high leaf-sap Brix protects crops from insect pests.

Organic and conventional systems can build soil when their practices support the dominant drivers of organic matter.

Research shows why most soil inoculants struggle to establish in field soils and rarely deliver consistent crop benefits.

Romanticized “pop ecology” oversimplifies nature and leads to costly mistakes in real-world crop management.

Many cash crops outperform conventional cover crops in key services.

The film “Common Ground” promotes a narrow, organic-only vision of regenerative agriculture, relying on anecdotes while ignoring scientific nuance.

Rhizophagy and quorum sensing are fascinating soil processes, but evidence does not show they meaningfully replace fertilizers in crop production.

Cover crop benefits depend on biomass, with higher biomass needed for soil improvement and effective weed suppression beyond basic erosion control.

Comparing cropped soils to natural ecosystems is misleading; food production exports biomass, fundamentally limiting soil organic matter recovery.

Efforts to “mimic nature” in farming often fail because natural ecosystems and crop production operate under fundamentally different goals and constraints.