Author: Andrew McGuire
Nitrogen Fertilizer and Soil Organic Matter: What Does the Evidence Say?
Does synthetic nitrogen fertilizer burn up soil organic matter? Whether you are focused on soil health, soil sequestration, or soil carbon credits, this is an…
Putting Numbers to the Difficult Task of Increasing Soil Organic Matter
You may know that it is difficult to increase soil organic matter, but how difficult is it, with numbers? First, your crop harvest removes up…
What’s so Good about Biodiversity in Crop Production?
In a 2012 book, Donald Maier asked, “What’s so good about biodiversity?” He describes how difficult it is to critique principles of biodiversity because all…
Sagebrush Shrub-steppe or Cheatgrass Prairie?
Although I work in irrigated agriculture, the views on my morning commute are all sagebrush, or the shrub-steppe as this native plant community is called.…
Meeting Food Demand through Agronomic Engineering and Incremental Transformation
In a realistic scenario, where not everyone gives up eating meat, where some in the developing world eat more like us, and where food waste…
The Benefits of a Reductionist Approach
I have been called a reductionist quite a few times. I never know how to respond. Am I a reductionist? If so, is that a…
Water Use Limitations of Cover Crops in Dryland Cropping
I have seen it work. As a graduate student, I researched cover crops in a California dryland wheat system, comparing a wheat-fallow system to one…
Potato Cropping Systems to Manage Soilborne Disease
Long-term cropping systems research is expensive, difficult to manage, and therefore rare, especially for vegetable crops. So when results are published for potato cropping systems,…
A Problem with Soil Inoculants
As I wrote in my last post, the focus and excitement around soil biology leads many to believe that they have a soil biology problem.…
Don’t Overthink Your Soil Biology
I am not sure of the causes. Perhaps it’s the demand for soil health information which far surpasses the supply of science-based content? Or maybe…