Perspectives on Sustainability

Guest Post By Athena Loos, Field Representative, McCain Foods – During the 3.5 years that I have worked with growers in my role as a Field Representative with McCain Foods, I have met numerous growers who are playing an active role in exploring the biological component of soil health. (Growers generally have a good understanding of the chemical and physical characteristics of our soils.) One of my graduate projects was focused on soil health in the Columbia Basin, which allowed me to gain knowledge on this topic and have these discussions w…

A frequently used—at least, by soil scientists—definition for soil health is “the continued capacity of soil to function as a vital living system to sustain biological productivity, maintain the quality of air and water…

Written by Antoinette Avorgbedor, Intern at Washington State University’s Tree Fruit Research and Extension Center and the Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources. Did you know that people indigenous to the hotter equatorial regions have much lower sweat rates than people in cooler regions of the world? Similar to the ability of the human body to adjust to different climatic conditions, plants have evolved various mechanisms to survive extreme weather conditions. Besides long-term evolutionary modific…

Written by Antoinette Avorgbedor, Intern at WSU’s Tree Fruit Research and Extension Center and CSANR. More likely than not, you have passed large apple orchards in your travels around the Pacific Northwest area and observed nets spanning wide areas of apple trees. Sometimes the entire top and all the sides of orchards are enclosed. A 2017 survey conducted in Washington State to assess the exte…

Soil health – the pursuit that launched a thousand soil tests. I have not actually counted them, but many people are working on many ways to evaluate soil health. Some are looking at indicators of soil biology status, others…

This Changes Everything. That is how everything is presented in today’s media. New cars, new policies, new science. An example of the latter are the recent advances in the field of soil microbiology, or…

Managing crop residue is essential to reduced and no-till farming systems that enhance soil health and reduce soil erosion. And growers in different parts of the dryland Pacific Northwest are likely seeking different residue characteristics. In most areas with less than 12 inches of annual precipitation, wheat is grown every other year, and land is fallowed in between to…

Peptide elicitors are naturally occurring signaling compounds that act within plants to induce and amplify defense responses. If specific peptide elicitors could be identified and synthesized, they could be used to maximize plants’ natural immunity, providing a more sustainable approach to controlling disease caused by pathogens and…

Biochar has the potential to sequester carbon and improve the properties of soils when used as an agricultural amendment. However, biochar will only be a viable option for carbon sequestration if there are uses and…

Picture this future scenario: it’s a hot summer day and you are sitting with some friends on their deck enjoying a cold beverage. You notice they recently replaced their deck and, interested, you ask about the decking material they used, only to find out that it’s made partially out of . . . manure from dairy cows! Surprised? Work done by researchers at Washington State University…