Author: Andrew McGuire
Cover the Soil for Quick Benefits
As noted in colleague Chad Kruger’s informative posts about soil carbon sequestration (1, 2), it takes a long time to reap the benefits of building…
Forego a Hamburger, Feed a Person
I eat meat. More specifically, I eat feedlot beef from major supermarket chains and generally enjoy it. Nonetheless, the implications of a recent study have…
Change your crop, change your soil
When I was a college student, almost every ag-related class I took mentioned the benefits of the "rotation effect" (better yields, fewer pests, etc.). However,…
Study Shows Soil-Building Benefits of Manure and Crop Rotation, so why didn’t they say so?
Here is the secret to building soils - manure and diverse crop rotation. Underwhelmed? Researchers in Iowa (Delate et al, 2013) came to this conclusion…
Are You Micromanaging Your Soil?
mi·cro·man·age: to manage or control with excessive attention to minor details. As a means to improve soil management, I commend the high interest in soil…
Mixing the Perfect Cover Crop Cocktail
Last November, at the WSU Building Soils for Better Crops conference, farmers from Kansas, North Dakota, and Colorado all spoke on the benefits they were…
No-till Does Not Reverse Soil Degradation?
A recent paper (Olson, 2013) finds a number of long-term studies were wrong about no-till practices building soil organic matter and thus sequestering carbon. The…
Hamstrung by Ideology
Last summer, I visited an organic farm in the area. The farmer showed me various parts of his operation, one of which was a field…
How to kill your soil
I recently saw an infographic that stated, “There are no life forms in the soil, which is sterilized…” What was it talking about? Soils on…
Organic Farming Reliant on Synthetic Nitrogen
A number of studies have recently suggested that organic farming better addresses issues related to climate change than non-organic farming. Many of the reported climate…