Arable Food for Thought

[grassfarmer]

What was the source of N in the organic example cited?

Peas, alfalfa and livestock - that's 3 out of the 4 component parts of his rotation.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

There are so many synergies available to adding livestock to a grain operation. A typical grain farm could run a lot of cows for nearly no feed cost. Pasture all the sloughs, potholes, bush and unproductive land. graze stubble, feed straw and off grade grain, hailed out crops, frozen crops etc. And if you feed it the right way and the right place, rebuild worn out soils.

Yes it is a lot of work at all the wrong times, but there are a lot of cowboys and wannabe cowboys with no land of their own, work out a share arrangement whereby they look after the cows, help eachother out during the busy seasons, and they get a generous share of the cattle profit. Which could be virtually pure profit for the grain farmer for very little work of their own. Or maybe provide room and board for his cows in exchange for looking after yours.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Another issue is manure. It is a disposal headache as it costs more in labor and fuel to move it to where it can do good than the nutrients are worth most of the time which is because it is not a great source of N. efficient.

I would have to disagree. Bedding manure hauled from a confined feeding area is a poor source of N . Feeding directly on the land is a great source of N, and requires no additional cost or labor to get it there.

On my heavy clay soils which have had the OM farmed right out of them, manure is worth it's weight in gold. That is the only thing that brings them back to productivity. More so the organic matter content of the manure, than the nutrient content.

On a challenging year like last year when we went from severe drownout to extreme drought in the same year, the difference between land with heavy manure and the same soil without was easily 50 Bu of canola per acre. from 30 to 80+ where the manure started. For >$500 per acre in additional profit per acre for years to come, I can and do spend a lot of time, fuel and money on sourcing and hauling manure.

[WiltonRanch]

Our cows are wintered on the fields where the green feed is made. Used to drop straw and let cows rummage through it while feeding grain as well. If I ever get to it one day I am going to build a box to make little chaff piles. Things like this don’t cost any extra but keep the poop and more importantly the pee out in the fields. There is no doubt rotational grazing, poly crops, cover crops, legumes etc have many benefits. It’s just the extra cost of time, pissing around, or foo foo berry overpriced seed blends versus actual soil health benefits and jingle in your jeans. Each to his or her own but you need to do your own experiments over a number of variable seasons before you can impart your wisdom without pontificating.

[Blaithin]

I enjoy all these replies! Thank you gentlemen I find it very interesting when some of these more alternative methods are talked about, most people seem to know someone who's doing/done something similar or does some small variation of it themselves. It's encouraging and I think helps other farmers think they may want to read up on it more too. It's hard if someone, like me, who just has more cattle and pasture experience tries to say maybe it will work with crops as that opens it to "No, stick with pastures.". But when other arable guys say, yes, it can have benefits, I think everyone can learn more!

Definitely has limiting factors in the idea. Location, weather, crops, markets, initial input and output costs.... But these affect every management style really so it's just going to come to who's willing to invest/risk in what. I've also noticed many of the, lets call them soil entrepreneurs, are younger farmers. This could come down to it being as simple as many may be new farmers and not stuck in the idea of "well this is how it's done" or, I think even more likely, don't have the ability to invest in large equipment and land amounts. As an example, I don't really have the capital or want to invest in a manure spread and tractor to cart my cow poop around and fertilize with it. Much easier and beneficial to have the cows spread it themselves, they're labour in exchange for food. Similarly if newer farmers can get the soil to produce and manage itself better, with fewer input requirements like N, then they aren't going to need to invest in the equipment for application, paying someone to apply it or the N itself.

Pros and Cons to all approaches for sure.

Blaithin, it appears as though youare leaning toward Milpa farmingthat was practiced in the Yucatan Peninsula. Historically they plant in a hole, a bean or pea for nitrogen to feed a corn plant that in turn provided shade for a melon. A complete system, Interesting!

Yes, the Iroquois did the same in the Great Lakes area. I learnt about it way back in elementary school sometime and it's stuck with me ever since. Native cultures without their knowledge of why it really worked, could still see it does work. It's a fairly good visionary example to use for companion planting so I like it for that. We do better as a species when we can visualize something.

This summer I want to try the cotton underwear experiment and see what that visualizes. I'll choose a couple of locations around my place where plant growth is good, poor, mediocre, etc and bury some white, cotton underwear. The experiment revolves around how active is the soil biome, the micro fauna living and helping the health of the soil. The healthier and livelier the soil, the quicker the underwear will decompose. I'm also hoping to get a couple local crop guys let me bury some in their fields. "Excuse me sir, can I bury some underwear in your barley?" Who here is in Central AB? Lol

Soil is just so complex. It doesn't always matter if you're supplying a nutrient if the plants can't access it in that form. If it's not healthy and functioning normally you may be able to supply it with everything you think it should need but it may not be able to use it well or at all. My cow comparison is giving a cow oral CMPK when she's in milk fever. If her rumen isn't functioning then supplying something orally won't be any help, you have to supply it in another form, such as IV.

[GDR]

Blaithin, you may have stopped your thread dead with the underwear talk, now you got all us guys nervous! LOL.

To expand your thought further, you can do the same with your cows. On the same pasture you can add sheep without reducing your cow numbers and your animal units per acre go up. Yes they do both eat grass but the sheep prefer the weeds and woody plants and cows prefer the grasses.

On the crop side my father used to grow peas with his oats on clean ground, worked good and peas stood up.

Lots of options but most are not suited well to the large scale of farms these days.

[farmaholic]

Blaithin, here in the Sahara Slum of the Ghetto when you dig up those undies they will be as good as the day you planted them.....moisture being the catalyst is in "short" supply.....

[burnt]

Blaithin, here in the Sahara Slum of the Ghetto when you dig up those undies they will be as good as the day you planted them.....moisture being the catalyst is in "short" supply.....

Top of your game this morning!

"I'll have what he's having..." LOL!

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Blaithin, you may have stopped your thread dead with the underwear talk, now you got all us guys nervous! LOL.

To expand your thought further, you can do the same with your cows. On the same pasture you can add sheep without reducing your cow numbers and your animal units per acre go up. Yes they do both eat grass but the sheep prefer the weeds and woody plants and cows prefer the grasses.

On the crop side my father used to grow peas with his oats on clean ground, worked good and peas stood up.

Lots of options but most are not suited well to the large scale of farms these days.

Then you can add chickens to the cows and sheep and they will eat the waste from both the cows and sheep and bugs, and further increase your AUM.

[sumdumguy]

You must mean, “Edible Undies at Amazon.ca”.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

I'm in central AB, and willing to help you try the experiment. We have no-till, tilled, perenial hay land, pasture, and even virgin land to experiment on.

I can't wait to tell my wife that a lovely young lady is bringing her underwear over to show me, and that we are going to experiment. I think it will go over very well.

I'm actually quite interested in the results, since when I plow land that hasn't been plowed deep since it was broke 50 to 80+ years ago, I turn up all sorts of undecomposed wood, since no oxygen gets that deep.

[Blaithin]

I'm in central AB, and willing to help you try the experiment. We have no-till, tilled, perenial hay land, pasture, and even virgin land to experiment on.

I can't wait to tell my wife that a lovely young lady is bringing her underwear over to show me, and that we are going to experiment. I think it will go over very well.

I'm actually quite interested in the results, since when I plow land that hasn't been plowed deep since it was broke 50 to 80+ years ago, I turn up all sorts of undecomposed wood, since no oxygen gets that deep.

Hah who said anything about it being my underwear?! All photos in the trials I've seen are mens

I think you're fairly close to me so I will definitely let you know if and when I have packages of undies to bury. Might have to actually start writing down different conditions I want to try and make it into a more professional like experiment instead of me just taking pictures and trying to remember what the heck was done to the field in each photo.

Another one I'm thinking of doing is a poop patrol of sorts. My cattle's patties disappear fairly quickly on the acreage so I'm assuming I have a fairly healthy population of dung beetles kicking around. Although they don't seem to like the horse poop as well. So I'm thinking of recording how long it actually takes them to take the poo down into the soil. I was only going to do that in the pasture but when I thought about it a bit more I could probably take some poop into a field and see if there's much of a visible dung beetle population in arable fields. I'm assuming not as there isn't much out there for them to eat... but they probably eat something other than dung so who knows!