The research is the first to measure the relative importance of microbial processes in the soil carbon cycle. The study’s authors found that the role microbes play in storing carbon is at least four times more important than any other process, including decomposition of biomatter.

Earth’s soils hold three times more carbon than the atmosphere, creating a vital carbon sink in the fight against climate change.

The study, “Microbial Carbon Use Efficiency Promotes Global Soil Carbon Storage,” published May 24 in Nature, describes a novel approach to better understanding soil carbon dynamics by combining a microbial computer model with data assimilation and machine learning, to analyze big data related to the carbon cycle.

The method measured microbial carbon use efficiency, which tells how much carbon was used by microbes for growth versus how much was used for metabolism. When used for growth, carbon becomes sequestered by microbes in cells and ultimately in the soil, and when used for metabolism, carbon is released as a side product in the air as carbon dioxide, where it acts as a greenhouse gas.

Growth of microbes is more important than metabolism in determining how much carbon is stored in the soil.

“This work reveals that microbial carbon use efficiency is more important than any other factor in determining soil carbon storage,” said Yiqi Luo, the Liberty Hyde Bailey professor in the School of Integrative Plant Science in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and the paper’s senior author.

The new insights point agricultural researchers toward studying farm management practices that may influence microbial carbon use efficiency to improve soil health, which also helps ensure greater food security. Future studies may investigate steps to increase overall soil carbon sequestration by microbes.

Researchers may also study how different types of microbes and substrates (such as those high in sugars) may influence soil carbon storage.

Soil carbon dynamics have been studied for the last two centuries, but those studies were mainly concerned with how much carbon gets into the soil from leaf litter and roots, and how much is lost to the air in the form of CO2 when organic matter decomposes.

“But we are the first group that can evaluate the relative importance of microbial processes versus other processes,” Luo said.

In an example of cutting-edge digital agriculture, Luo and colleagues developed a method to integrate big data into an earth system computer model by using data assimilation and machine learning.

The model revealed that overall carbon use efficiency of microbe colonies was at least four times as important as any of the other components that were evaluated, including decomposition and carbon inputs.

The new machine learning approach, which made this result possible for the first time, opens the possibility for applying the method to analyze other types of big data sets.

The post Microbes key to sequestering carbon in soil appeared first on Farmtario.

Quebec-based ChrysaLabs is an agtech startup that uses cloud computing, artificial intelligence and machine learning for precision soil sampling in real time. It has teamed up with EarthOptics, a soil measurement and mapping company from Virginia that won the AGCO Innovation Challenge Award at the World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit last year. 

[RELATED] New path to monitor soil carbon

Why it matters: The soil’s ability to sequester carbon has long been considered a climate change mitigation solution, but so far, it’s been difficult to quantify carbon levels in an affordable, accessible way.

The goal: combine ChrysaLabs’ real time soil measurements with EarthOptics’ high-resolution sensor measurements for faster, better decision-making on the farm – and to open up carbon market opportunities for farmers.

The carbon market is there, and land can lock in a substantial amount of carbon, noted ChrysaLabs co-founder and CEO Samuel Fournier in announcing the partnership. The main challenge is making it financially viable for growers.

That’s because carbon quantification requires huge volumes of data, and since traditional soil sampling requires payment per sample, it quickly becomes cost prohibitive.

[RELATED] Data needed to cash in on carbon credits

ChrysaLabs, which uses spectroscopy to measure soil nutrients, was founded four years ago, evolving out of a PhD project in Biomedical Engineering at Polytechnique Montreal.

“Every nutrient has its own wavelength so it’s possible to measure them in the soil based on 100 per cent light,” says Philippe De L’Étoile, marketing manager at ChrysaLabs. “This is patented technology and ChrysaLabs developed a probe based on this technology.”

Developed to be its own cutting-edge lab, the handheld probe can sample soil as deep as 36 inches with its optical technology, compared to traditional testing that focuses primarily on topsoil.

In less than a minute, it can provide real-time measurements of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, soil pH, moisture, organic matter, micronutrients and cation exchange capacity – the soil’s ability to hold positively charged ions. These results are uploaded to a management dashboard, and every test can be geo-referenced to create fertilizer maps.

[RELATED] Working soils deeper moves carbon lower

According to De L’Étoile, the ChrysaLabs technology lets the company’s clients do as many samples as they want for a flat rate subscription instead of having to pay for each individual soil sample that’s sent to a lab for analysis. More samples mean greater data density, which in turn means better, more effective decision-making that ultimately can save growers money.

“Our probe is easy to use and one of the least expensive ways to get into precision agriculture,” De L’Étoile said. “With higher data density, it’s easy to grid fields and create maps for variable rate fertilizer application – and you can adjust during the season and apply what’s needed instantly.”

Data can be a gamechanger when it comes to managing fertilizer use, he adds. Not only is the time of application crucial for maximum efficiency, but so is applying the right amount – for both the bank account and the environment.

“Lowering fertilizer use even one to three per cent has huge impact on lowering costs, especially given the current cost of fertilizer, and there’s less environmental impact too,” he said. “Knowing exactly what is happening on your fields and in your soil invariably leads to sustainability.”

ChrysaLabs has been working with farmers, agronomists and researchers in Quebec and Western Canada as well as in the U.S. Midwest, California, Mexico and Chile to develop use cases and gather more data to help the artificial intelligence system behind the probe provide more accurate, precise results.

The current ChrysaLabs probe is a handheld unit, but a static probe is also in development that could be used in high-value orchard crops like tree fruit and nuts.

“Carbon is very interesting for the future. The way our planet is going, we need to do something and we know we can help growers realize benefits,” he said. “It’s in our DNA to make the benefits of being sustainable possible to growers and to agriculture.”

The post Low cost, real-time soil carbon quantification could be a game changer appeared first on Farmtario.

This makes it difficult to accurately compare carbon concentrations as a dilution factor must be considered, say researchers at the University of Guelph. 

“That is not the only factor contributing to that decrease in carbon concentration but it’s important to take into consideration,” says James Warren with the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of Guelph. 

Why it matters: The concentration of soil organic carbon contributes to the health of the soil and its ability to grow healthy crops.

It has been decreasing for many years and large amounts of that may be attributed to the dilution of the carbon into a larger volume of topsoil. 

While redoing the soil maps of Ontario in 2016-18, Adam Gillespie, assistant professor with the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of Guelph, and other researchers, noticed a consistent increase in the depth of the plow layer over a span of almost 70 years. 

The plow layers were almost 30 centimetres deep, says Gillespie. A lot of the time topsoil layers are only considered to be 15 centimetres deep, or six inches. 

Increased size of equipment over the years has contributed to the increase in plow layer depth. As the equipment becomes larger, so does the tillage depth. 

Researchers began to wonder, “if your topsoil is getting deeper, what does that really mean for carbon content?”

Even though carbon concentrations have dropped by 0.5 per cent over the past 70 years, the carbon stock levels have stayed relatively consistent as the topsoil horizons have increased in size by about 40 per cent. 

These changes equate to a 0.008 per cent decrease in soil organic carbon per year over the past 70 years with the average thickness of the plow layer moving deeper by 0.1 cm per year. 

As outlined in a paper written by Warren, Gillespie, and Dan Saurette, pedologist with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, their findings show that a soil sample containing four per cent organic carbon in a 0–15 cm thick topsoil in the 1950s would equate to two per cent organic carbon today with a net loss of zero carbon. 

The decrease would be attributed to a dilution because of the increase in cultivated topsoil.

“This observation demonstrates that direct comparison of organic carbon levels on a percentage basis with time is not an accurate means of comparison.” 

It is suggested by researchers in the paper that comparisons of soil organic carbon over the past 70 years should include a depth component and “should be expressed on a carbon storage basis” such as tonnes per hectare.

Although the levels are staying consistent, the dilution of the carbon does not create ideal growing conditions for plants or soil health. 

“As we dilute the carbon into a deeper plowed layer, we’re not getting the benefits that we want to see from organic matter. If it is less concentrated it’s impacting things like your nutrient supply or your water-holding capacity,” says Gillespie. 

The conversation around managing soil carbon is still important. 

“I think what we’re finding is that the idea of the carbon stocks being built up isn’t as dire as we might have thought. Nevertheless, we’re still working to try and keep those carbon numbers going up. You can still get those benefits from having higher organic matter in soils,” says Gillespie.

The post Working soils deeper moves carbon lower appeared first on Farmtario.

Terramera on Monday put forward a $730 million proposal for an initiative it calls the Global Centre for Regenerative Agriculture, which would oversee efforts to help Canadian farms and ranches reduce atmospheric carbon, by “incentivizing regenerative farming practices.”

Terramera said its Global Centre would enable Canadian farms and ranches to pull 78 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent out of the atmosphere by 2050, stimulate 2.5 million new jobs and generate over $8.7 trillion in new economic activity “over the coming decades.”

The company said its $730 million plan would combine private investment “along with applications for federal and provincial support” to build and scale the technology needed.

The technology proposed would “reliably quantify” soil carbon sequestration and compensate farmers by establishing a sustainable carbon credit market, the company said.

The funding needed would go to create “the world’s largest regenerative agriculture initiative, building multi-purpose facilities including labs, greenhouses, offices and classrooms in British Columbia and integrate field testing sites across Canada.”

Assuming funding goals are met, Terramera said its plan is “shovel-ready and ready to staff in 2021, with sensing studies and facility construction extending through 2025.”

Terramera is no stranger to public-private partnerships, having spearheaded a $6.9 million project which earlier this year scored support from Canada’s Digital Technology Supercluster. Privately held Terramera, which formed in 2010, was one of the founding members of the digital supercluster.

Its supercluster project aims to use computational biochemistry, genomics, machine learning and robotics to develop new pest and pathogen controls, reducing the use of synthetics and improving the efficacy of so-called “natural” alternatives.

In the Global Centre proposal, software giant Microsoft is expected to play a “central” role, providing Microsoft Azure storage and computing services for Terramera’s proposed artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) platforms.

Microsoft FarmBeats would be used to provide a data collection platform that integrates field data from IoT (internet of things) sensors, drones and “many other sources.”

Using that technology, Terramera proposes to scale up Canadian regenerative agriculture, which it defines as “a set of practices that pull carbon from the air and sequester it in the soil, improving plant and soil health and resulting in higher farm profits, reduced pesticide and fertilizer use and a dramatic reduction in atmospheric carbon dioxide.”

“Microsoft Azure is perfectly suited to enable our AI/ML platform to perform at the national and global scale the Global Centre will entail,” Terramera chief technology officer Travis Good said in the company’s release. “With Azure, we can deliver impactful, human-centric solutions to farmers and provide Canadian leadership in technology, climate change and agriculture.”

“Microsoft has a long-standing commitment to sustainability and the work Terramera is doing with AI will go a long way to help farmers and ranchers fight climate change,” Microsoft Canada’s national technology officer John Weigelt said in the same release.

“Leveraging Microsoft Azure supports a scale that would be impossible to achieve without the cloud. We look forward to seeing the outcome of this initiative and see potential to apply the learnings globally.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

The post Tech firm aims to boost regenerative ag through A.I., machine learning appeared first on Farmtario.

Farmers in this country are not only paying carbon taxes on many of their farm inputs, they are not receiving any credits for the carbon sequestered in their soils.

Meanwhile, American legislators are working on a mechanism that would pay farmers who adopt regenerative practices, including carbon sequestration.

Why it matters: Farmers are the original carbon recyclers, pulling energy from the sun into plants, the remains of which are returned to the soil. Yet while Canadian regulators have put a price on carbon, they methods to quantify and reward that contribution are in their infancy.

Canadian farmers get some exemptions from carbon tax for fuel, but they pay the tax in many other ways, through surcharges from suppliers and in barn heating and grain drying.

Industry sources say that while the U.S. is forging ahead with new ways to use the carbon conundrum to subsidize its farmers, there are no such plans in Canada.

And even if there were, they might not be of use to farmers in Ontario, where climate, soil type and the stubborn continuation of conventional tillage mean that there could be little carbon sequestration to claim.

For example, Claudia Wagner Riddle, a professor in the School of Environmental Studies at the University of Guelph, says that no-till planting in the West has been shown to sequester carbon because of the more arid nature of the Prairies. In fact, according to federal government accounting, the sequestration of carbon in the West might be enough to make agriculture carbon-neutral there.

In Eastern Canada, where it is humid, it hasn’t been as easy to show that effect with no-till. Carbon has been shown to be captured in Eastern Canada through the use of cover crops, pasture and diverse crop rotations.

“Soil carbon accumulation is the result of a number of complex processes,” she says. “Farmers say look at all the carbon in my corn, but that is only the first step.”

A complex process

The carbon in the plant material has been created by photosynthesis, minus the respiration of the plants.

Then, carbon is removed at harvest. In corn, that’s about 50 per cent of the above- ground biomass. The carbon, in the form of grain or stover, is removed and consumed by animals and people and returned back to the atmosphere by decomposition of feces and by metabolism.

So that carbon is not sequestered by the original plant growth. That’s only the start of the process, says Wagner Riddle.

The rest of the soil carbon sequestration is based on everything from soil type to microbe levels in the soil.

By the time corn is broken down, for example, there could be no net sequestration.

That’s why cover crops are valuable, as they add more carbon sequestration options to the mix.

“Carbon in the soil is quite fickle,” she says.

U.S. credit system proposed

In early June, U.S. senators introduced a rare bipartisan bill – sponsored by Republicans and Democrats – that would help farmers to generate carbon credits when they use practices that absorb carbon.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)-certified program aims to create another source of income for American farmers hit by trade uncertainty. That would create another source of subsidy for American farmers that Canadian farmers don’t get, which is already an issue with the large subsidies provided by the Trump administration.

What’s happening in Canada?

The federal tax on carbon, and similar provincial programs have allowed large companies to purchase carbon credits that offset their carbon production. That includes things like tree planting and other practices that are considered carbon friendly. This has provided revenue for those who can create the credits for polluters to purchase.

In Ontario, the previous Liberal government was well into the process of determining agriculture carbon credit potential, although well after the cap and trade system for carbon was introduced.

In 2015, it hired an organization called Climate Action Reserve, which manages carbon credit systems such as the one in California, to create a carbon credit system that included soil conservation and taking steps to limit emissions from fertilizer use.

The election of the Ontario Conservative government resulted in the elimination of that program.

Since then, the federal carbon tax system has been imposed in Ontario. It doesn’t include offsets for agriculture practices that store carbon in soils.

Keith Currie, president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, says that in Canada, carbon taxes and trading systems were created without enough of a plan. The taxes were imposed, but the credits side has not been developed.

“The federal government is scrambling to get a system in place for carbon credits,” he says. “It’s hard to get them to understand the value of agriculture and forestry, which is where the big sequestration takes place.”

Alberta has a program whereby farmers can qualify to earn carbon credits due to soil conservation efforts.

The program, however, is complicated. The program’s website says that “while the Alberta offset system provides a market for carbon, it comes with a number of limitations. As well as building up carbon or reducing greenhouse gas production, an activity to be approved as an offset protocol has to be beyond business as usual, proven by scientific research, quantifiable and verifiable. A problem in any one of these areas can prevent an offset from going ahead. This has happened with forages and trees.”

That raises the question about how much complexity and regulation farmers will tolerate. If the work to qualify is larger than the return, then the initiative doesn’t stand a chance.

Recognition for more than just carbon

There are other ways for agriculture to get recognition for its ecological services, including carbon sequestration as one of the services, that can avoid the complexity of measuring and managing soil carbon.

A broader program, such as the Alternative Land Use Services (ALUS) model, could make more sense, says Wagner Riddle.

Currie says that a broader environmental program is more acceptable and prized by society and food companies.

“If we look at it holistically from an environmental perspective, no-tilling isn’t just about sequestering carbon. It’s about economic efficiencies, creating better soil health, soil structure, and nutrient retention. These will play a big part in climate change going forward.

“There’s mounting frustration in the farm community that we’re not being recognized for what we’ve done.”

Take the example of farmers who have no-tilled crops for years. They’ve been storing carbon for years. Wagner Riddle says a challenge of the system is how to benefit the farmer who already has worked to create higher organic matter, compared to a farmer who has had poorer soil health practices.

The farmer starting with low carbon in the soil then can qualify for higher payments due to making quicker improvements by changing practices. “If farmers are already looking after the land, they will have a harder time to increase the carbon,” she says.

Currie says the concept of paying for good practices already in place is hard to sell to the government. But he says a no-till drill that’s 30 years old isn’t the same as a 2020 no-till drill, and costs remain, even if the farmer has been using a practice for years.

Instead of focusing on the challenge of measuring carbon in soils on individual farms, Currie and Wagner Riddle say incentives for practices known to provide soil health and store carbon may make more sense.

“Overwhelmingly globally, agriculture is still converting a lot of forest and wetlands to agriculture and whenever you do that you’re losing carbon,” says Wagner Riddle.

“On the landscape level, there are other things that could be done in the agriculture sector in terms of restoring wetlands, converting non-productive areas and all of that. That would be a big burden to put on producers to do themselves.”

Large landscape changes on agriculture land would be easier to monitor and track than soil carbon, with tools like phone apps and remote sensing that could reduce the paperwork burden.

Wagner Riddle remains optimistic that some sort of system can be developed. With the Americans moving in the direction of paying farmers for carbon sequestration, the clock is ticking.

“Will you see a cheque in the mail for sequestering carbon? Probably not, but there is some understanding of environmental goods and services and that society is OK with tax money going to those sorts of things,” says Currie.

Debate over practicality of carbon sequestration remains vigorous

The American proposal to pay farmers for good carbon saving practices has set off a debate in the United States about the best way for farmers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The World Resources Institute, a global research organization recently published an article that said that while the broad practices that fall under regenerative agriculture are good for the soil and the environment, its experts are skeptical that sequestering carbon through crop production is a viable route to reducing agriculture’s impact on climate change.

“Regenerative agriculture has become the darling of many policymakers, food companies and farmers. Advocates claim a triple win: climate change mitigation, increased profit for farmers and greater resilience to a changing climate. Our view is that the practices grouped as regenerative agriculture can improve soil health and yield some valuable environmental benefits, but are unlikely to achieve large-scale emissions reductions,” says the WRI report.

Large companies such as General Mills are working with their farmer suppliers to adopt climate-friendly practices, which in turn will look better in General Mills’ sustainability report.

The WRI report expresses several concerns with carbon sequestration in soils including:

• Manure is a good way to increase carbon in soils, but manure application isn’t practical or feasible across enough acres to make a large difference. Manure is also challenging as it usually brings carbon from other farms, which means that carbon isn’t being replaced where the manure originated.
• Permanence of the carbon storage is difficult to manage. It can be affected by stage of pasture lifespan and if a farmer who has no-tilled crops for years decides to plow up a field, releasing much of the stored carbon.
• The challenge of accounting for carbon. If land is turned into pasture, where do the crops come from that used to be grown on that land? If other land is deforested to grow it elsewhere in the world, then the carbon benefit would be negated.
• The conversion of organic matter to carbon also requires significant levels of nitrogen, which may have to be provided, including by fertilizer, which has an impact on atmospheric carbon levels.
• Scaling across millions of acres is challenging, and if that’s not done then the impact won’t be significant.

Others say that the end goal of being able to store carbon in soil is worth the challenge of developing a process.

A group of seven soil scientists from the U.S. and Europe put together a rebuttal to the WRI report.

“Unfortunately, we believe the WRI post confuses rather than clarifies the scientific and policy issues concerning the role and potential of regenerative agriculture to contribute to climate change mitigation,” says the report from the soil scientists, led by Keith Paustian of Colorado State University.

The report says that there are decades of research validating the ability of practices like reducing soil disturbance, keeping residues on the soil, increasing the amount and diversity of organic residues returned to the soil and maximizing nutrient and water use efficiency by plants to increase carbon levels in soils.

They said that there is plenty of room to sequester carbon in soil, even if external amendments, like manure, are excluded.

They also argue that there is significant unused nitrogen in soils around the world now and that large volumes of synthetic fertilizer won’t be required to increase soil carbon sequestration. — J.G.

The post Looking for carbon sequestration answers appeared first on Farmtario.

Using the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan, scientists from across the United States investigated the plant root mechanisms that control long-term storage of carbon in deep soil. Their findings will have ramifications for global industries such as agriculture, which have touted the benefits of carbon sequestration as their contribution to fighting climate change.

“The significance of our work is we not only show that plants are conduits of carbon into the soil, but the roots also regulate how much carbon the deep soil can store or lose,” said Dr. Marco Keiluweit, a biogeochemist at the Stockbridge School of Agriculture in the University of Massachusetts.

Although root-derived organic compounds such as decaying roots, plant stems and trunks are recognized as an important source of soil carbon, the role of roots as a weathering agent that breaks down rocks and primary minerals has been overlooked, according to Keiluweit.

Not only does root-driven weathering help to sequester carbon on soil minerals for centuries or longer, but it can also release stored carbon from minerals, which is then lost to the atmosphere as climate-active carbon dioxide.

Climate change influences how plants interact with soil, Keiluweit noted, with the increased concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide leading to faster plant growth and producing more root growth and root biomass.

“What we are showing here is that roots influence the formation of helpful mineral-organic associations by providing some of the minerals that can engage with organic matter, but then at the same time can destroy or disrupt some of these protective associations in later years,” said Keiluweit.

“The role of the CLS in the project was critically important because it helped us resolve micron-scale mineral-organic associations,” Keiluweit said. “The CLS enabled us to identify both the nature of organic matter and the nature of minerals, and their physical arrangement together in mineral-organic associations.”

As for the impacts of the finding, Keiluweit points to the agricultural sector as an example. When you consider root activity in deeper soil, the question becomes one of the net effect — are you forming protective mineral-organic associations or destroying them? he said.

“Periodic droughts impact agriculture systems and, currently, a lot of effort goes into developing and planting crops that are deeper rooting to access water,” he said. “Deeper roots are better for yields, but it may release carbon that has been protected at depth.”

“On the flip side, our findings can also identify soils with potential for increased carbon storage at depth. Then you can have crops that not only extract water but also help deep storage of carbon,” Keiluweit added.

He hopes their study will help the agriculture sector to consider what crops and soil will be best for combatting climate change.

Keiluweit’s research was published by ScienceDirect.

The post Study looks at how soils hold carbon appeared first on Farmtario.

The report recommends better soil carbon level monitoring and 10-year programs to financially encourage farmers to adopt soil-healthy production practices. It also suggests linking crop insurance to soil carbon levels as healthier soils have lower risk of crop failure.

This summer’s inconsistent rainfall in Ontario plainly showed the value of better soil health with average or strong yields on healthy soils with water-holding capacity and lower yields on poorer soils.

Environmental commissioner Dianne Saxe said in an interview that the issue of soil health is “very important. The opportunities in agriculture are important and exciting and can have so many ecological benefits.”

Saxe’s mandate is to provide guidance to provincial policy makers.

The report pointed to modern agriculture practices as significant contributors to soil degradation in Ontario, including the use of fertilizers, pesticides and tillage, instead of focusing on farming systems that emphasize the maintenance of healthy soil through crop rotation, cover crops and organic-based soil amendments such as manure and compost.

The Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) has neglected to focus on soil health, Saxe said.

“OMAFRA admitted they had let the issue slide and lost expertise and did not have a plan to deal with the catastrophic loss of 30 per cent of organic matter in a generation.”

OMAFRA is currently in the process of developing a soil health strategy for the province and is looking for comments on the first draft until Nov. 27.

The environmental commissioner’s report acknowledged the current rapid movement in Ontario toward more use of cover crops and minimal tillage, but it suggested such practices need to be adopted even more widely.

Saxe acknowledged farmers are making changes to their practices that are building healthier soils. “It’s exciting, isn’t it? If farmers make all of this unnecessary because of the things they do, all the better.”

She noted the rate of decline of soil matter has slowed in Ontario recently, due to some of those production practices.

The report profiles farmers in the U.S. and in Ontario who are creating changes in soil health and sequestering increasing amounts of carbon in the soil. Those farmers include the Belan family near Inwood, Ont. and the Rogers farm at Lambton Shores.

Both have shown increased soil carbon by maintaining growing roots year-round, through cover crops and other practices such as strip tillage.

Saxe pointed to the French-led 4/1000 initiative, a global program that is based on the belief that by increasing soil carbon by four per cent per year, the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can be halted, and global climate change slowed. Governments and organizations around the world have signed on and she encourages Ontario to do the same.

Farmers shouldn’t have to bear the burden of stopping climate change, which is why Saxe has included a recommendation of 10-year funding for farmers moving to healthier soil practices.

Not much in the report will be new to farmers; many are using some of the methods identified as best practices in the report. They include:

• Conservation tillage
• Crop rotation
• Cover crops
• 4Rs of fertilizer application (right source, right rate, right time and right place)
• Composting and compost utilization
• Livestock integration with farms (producing manure for crops and including use of pasture and forage crops in rotations)
• An ecological approach to grazing management

A unique recommendation of the report encourages the government to tie crop insurance premium and risk assessment to soil health. Saxe said healthier soils reduce risk of crop failure and those with healthier soils should have advantages when it comes to crop insurance.

Saxe encourages farmers to read the report and form their own opinions. Farmers were consulted on the report and reviewed the drafts.

“I hope you notice that I didn’t tell farmers what to do. I am certainly not trying to tell farmers how to grow their crops. That would be foolish of me. It is my job to comment on government policy and this is an area that needs a tuneup.”

Saxe’s report is the latest in a number of initiatives in the province around soil health, including the Great Lakes Agricultural Stewardship Initiative (GLASI); OMAFRA’s renewed interest in soil health; a $2 million soil health monitoring project at the University of Guelph; and a significant focus by the Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association on soil health research projects.

— John Greig is a field editor for Glacier FarmMedia based at Ailsa Craig, Ont. Follow him at @jgreig on Twitter.

The post OMAFRA seen needing a soil health ‘tuneup’ appeared first on Farmtario.