Massive Farm Protest in Belgium

[chuckChuck]

There still areas on the prairies where there is a fair amount of tillage. Heavy crop areas in the red river valley and around portage for example. Ontario also has lots of tillage still.

But they are a tough fit in the drier zero till shorter season areas.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Catch crops or cover crops can be either legumes or not or a mixture They can capture nutrients, reduce leaching, reduce surface erosion and nutrient loss. etc.

Regenerative ag talks about cover/catch crops all the time. I am surprised you haven't heard of the concept as many of the mixed farms across the prairies have been talking about cover crops for many years.

A lot of Europe is still using intensive tillage and intensive amounts of fertilizer. So cover crops have potential to protect the soil and manage nutrient loss.

Thank you Chuck for a well reasoned, mature post, entirely on a topic relative to agriculture, completely devoid of insults. In hopes of encouraging such reciprocity, I will respond in kind.

As you correctly point out, legumes can fix nitrogen, and cover/catch crops can retain nutrients and the soil which contains them, which may otherwise erode, blow or leach away. Conserving them for future crops. A very beneficial solution for areas which would otherwise lay fallow during the growing season, or require intensive tillage.

My purpose in responding to the regenerative ag poster as I did, was trying to see if he would acknowledge the limitations of such practices, or if he is one of the true believers who believe that such practices negate the need for nutrients all together.
There exists a school of thought, which seems to have infected many western governments, and organizations such as NFU, that regenerative ag/organic/sustainable etc. work like magic, and can somehow negate the laws of physics. That mass balances no longer exist etc. The soil can be mined indefinitely if we just use cover crops and apply natural snake oils.

The best a cover crop can do is retain the existing nutrients. P,K,S and micronutrients cannot be fixed from the atmosphere. Using cover crops to mine previously unavailable nutrients, or nutrients from deeper in the profile is still mining nutrients. It is not sustainable in any long term ( and to be fair, neither is applying finite nutrients from actual mining).

The only actual solution is closing the loop on nutrients, every nutrient that is exported from the farm has to be recovered and come back to the farm. Everything else is just a short term feel good band-aid.

And as a side note, if anyone knows of a cover crop that will work in my climate, I am very willing to try it. We typically harvest after a killing frost, and often with snow on the ground, and seeding starts shortly after the last snowbank has receded far enough. I think it has to be a perennial which can be suppressed early in the growing season, then allowed to recover later in the summer.

[WiltonRanch]

Think for a good majority of the prairies our soil conservation practices we have been doing for 40 years and widespread adoption in the at least 25 past years mitigates a lot denitrification, leaching, and ghg emissions. We might be a bit myopic as to farming practices elsewhere. Farming practices which we perceive as ultimately bad for us here are a necessary evil for other areas until better economical solutions are presented. Zero tillage could work but a ban on glyphosate makes it impossible in certain countries. Some fields have been farmed for centuries and it is amazing anything grows let alone ratcheting back fertilizer. Cover crops definitely has soil health and environmental benefits but economic benefits are what ultimately determines if they last from one societal zeitgeist to the next. If you really want to curb ag emissions start in the cradles of civilization with education as to proper farming practices. China even realized they have a problem with excessive fertilizer use leaching into waters. Average use is approaching 400# product per acre done in the most inefficient means. Their soils are poor and do require high fertility to get any yield but hand bombing it in the heat of the day loses a lot. India is about the same as well. The ideal thing would be long term covers to hopefully build the soils but you know where that goes. As globalization withers and our world population declines the need for our higher production will follow. This is 50 years out so we might as well take advantage of present demand rather than falling on our swords.

[blackpowder]

Not sure if this fits here or should be a thread starter of it's own.
Today sat through a presentation on proposed N reductions by an industry rep who was in the room near the beginning of this process.
It is incomprehensible how little our law writers know about agriculture foreign or domestic, chemistry, world trade or the basic laws of economics. The latter the most concerning. I came away truly speechless. And our powerlessness leaves me a little numb. Even after discounting the usual East-West bias at play.
The climate change bogey man isn't going anywhere. But the current path by the ruling class is headed for an iceberg. And we're in steerage.

[chuckChuck]

Only a small percentage of farmers are soil testing all their fields and applying fertilizer rates on each field based on the soil test results. Which goes against the 4 Rs of fertilizer management.

Right Source, Right Rate, Right Time, Right Place.

So if farmers aren't soil testing and are putting the same rate on most fields whether they precisely know what is needed or not, how can this be considered good fertilizer management?

Right Source

Select the correct source of nutrient for your soil ensuring a balanced supply of essential plant nutrients including granular or liquid fertilizers or manures.

Right Rate

Consider the availability of nutrients from all sources (eg. livestock manures, commercial fertilizers and atmospheric nitrogen fixed by legumes).
Perform annual soil testing.
Apply nutrients to meet crop requirements while accounting for the nutrients already in the soil.
Calibrate application equipment to deliver target rates.

Right Time

Avoid fertilizer or manure application on snow or frozen soils.
Carry out nutrient management planning on an annual basis.

Right Place

Respect recommended setback distances for nutrient application near waterways.
Place nutrients below the soil surface where they can be taken up by growing roots when needed.

[chuckChuck]

https://www.producer.com/news/emissions-reductions-possible/

Emissions reductions possible
By
Karen Briere
Reading Time: 5 minutes

Published: September 1, 2022

Research has shown that reducing emissions from fertilizer by 30 percent is attainable. Work now is focusing on how to apply newer technologies across Canada’s many soil and climatic conditions to make sure yields don’t suffer and farmers remain profitable.

Dr. Mario Tenuta, a researcher at the University of Manitoba, said he is puzzled by the controversy over the federal government’s 2030 target.

“They looked at our data and everybody else’s data and they said 30 percent is achievable,” he said in an interview. “They didn’t pull it out of their ears. It’s a realistic number that’s actually fairly conservative.”

Tenuta is the senior industrial research chair in 4R Nutrient Management and heads the Applied Soil Ecology Lab at the university.

He said research in Manitoba has found several practices to be extremely effective in reducing nitrous oxide emissions.

Nitrification inhibitors, split fertilizer applications and legume crops all reduce emissions significantly.

Producers are already using nitrification inhibitors, although not widely, he said. But producers who adopt the products could be eligible for financial assistance through the federal government’s On-Farm Climate Action Fund. Organizations such as the Canola Council of Canada, the Manitoba Association of Watersheds and the Saskatchewan Association of Watersheds are operating these programs on behalf of the federal government.

This is one of the ways the federal government is encouraging emissions reduction.

Split applications of nitrogen help make sure the fertilizer is available when the plant needs it, rather than allowing it to convert to nitrous oxide. Tenuta said more data is needed to prove out the best split application method because there are so many combinations and variations of application methods, products and rates.

He said growing a legume is actually the most effective way to reduce emissions.

“If we increase the proportion of those pulses in rotation then overall for that rotation it brings down the emissions,” he said.

Models showed that when Manitoba growers moved heavily into soybean production, the province’s nitrous oxide emissions stabilized.

A product that has been shown to provide mixed results across Canada is polymer coated urea, commonly known as ESN. The federal program is not offering subsidies for growers who use this product because it isn’t effective everywhere.

“Where it’s wet during the growing season it’s been found that ESN can have as high emissions as urea,” Tenuta said. “It’s because ESN delivers its urea nitrogen later, and if it’s still wet when it’s being delivered, you can get nitrous oxide emitted.”

Prairie farmers found that ESN works on that landscape because it’s generally drier into the growing season and Tenuta said the product did reduce emissions in Manitoba research. But the government wants technologies that work everywhere as part of its 30-percent emissions reduction goal.

At the University of Saskatchewan, Rich Farrell is leading similar research. He is the agriculture ministry’s strategic research program chair in soil biological processes.

He said it’s clear reductions in nitrous oxide emissions are possible.

“It’s unfortunate it’s become sort of political,” he said. “That’s a very simplistic view of everything. Yes (reducing fertilizer use) would achieve the emissions reduction but that’s not going to help maintain yields and profits.

“I think a 20 percent reduction is going to be relatively easy to get to, and then the next 10 percent is going to be a little more work.”

Farrell said his work on enhanced efficiency fertilizers found emissions reductions between 15 and 60 percent.

Nitrification inhibitor products were more consistent in results and tended to have higher reductions, he said.

“Things with urease inhibitors or slow-release products tended to be a little less consistent, more impacted by weather than some of the others, but you were still seeing reductions with them.”

The 60 percent reduction in emissions came with no impact on yields, Farrell said.

Nitrification inhibitor products do cost more, but Farrell said companies have suggested farmers could apply 20 to 30 percent less. They could save money on inputs while reducing emissions and maintaining yield.

“The reality is farmers get paid for their crop, not for reducing emissions, so unless there’s some other incentive from the government to reduce emissions, everything is going to be based on yield,” he said.

Farrell said the message to farmers from researchers for the last 10 years has been that if they follow best management practices to get the best agronomic outputs, they will also get the environmental benefits because they are using applied inputs most efficiently.

Micro-organisms in the soil compete with plants for nitrogen and Farrell said farmers clearly want the plants to win. Synchronizing nitrogen availability with when the crop needs it allows that to happen.

Farrell said more research is needed in all aspects of nitrous oxide reduction. He is part of several projects currently underway for funding from the next round of government funding.

“We need more information on when these things are going to work,” he said.

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In last year’s horrible drought, studies that compared regular and enhanced efficiency fertilizers showed no difference.

“There was no impact whatsoever because the whole system crashed because of the drought,” he said. “Under those conditions you would have paid extra for the fertilizer and you’d have gotten zero benefit.”

This year a large study looking at canola production with an enhanced efficiency product at the fertilizer recommended rate and at 10, 20 and 30 percent below that recommendation will examine optimum yield potential and emissions reductions. Data will be coming in this fall.

Farrell said the same practice won’t work everywhere and that’s why research is so important.

A good example is no-till. Although in the West it’s well known that the practice has reduced emissions, he said research in Ontario has shown no-till results in higher emissions.

“That’s because the soils are different, the climate is different, the systems are different,” he said. “What works here doesn’t work there and I think it’s going to be the same with some of these products.”

He also said sampling one field once a year won’t give a true picture.

“We’re out in the field 35, 45 times a year taking measurements and trying to sort of catch emissions events,” he said.

Farrell pointed to fall fertilizer application as a concern because 60 to 70 percent of an entire year’s worth of emissions can occur in a two-week spring thaw period. Yet, producers want to apply in fall because they have time then, so there might be a role for enhanced efficiency products in fall applications.

Both Farrell and Tenuta said gathering more data is key.

Tenuta this year helped start a project to develop a network to gather nitrous oxide research from across the country and help make models more accurate.

Farrell said models have to be used because the research would require so much testing. It is already costly and requires a lot of people to do properly.

Gathering all the information, putting it into machine-learning algorithms and using artificial intelligence will improve the models and develop better recommendations as the 2030 reductions target nears.

Tenuta also said the economics of the technologies and practices requires more research. He encouraged farmers to know the costs of adopting new products on their farms. He suggested they can test a part of their field by using regular fertilizer and a new product to see what happens.

He said farmers already expect nitrogen losses at the rates they use now.

“We’ve been putting the (recommended) rates on expecting losses,” said Tenuta. “If you reduce your losses, now you have to reconsider your rates. I advise them to try out reducing the rate of nitrogen to cover the cost of the practice. I’m not advocating 30 percent here; what we’re talking about is eight percent, 10 percent, 12 percent, something like that to cover the cost of these more expensive practices like inhibitors.”

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Thank you again Chuck, for more civil posts related to agriculture.

Your cut and paste highlights some valid points and research.

One practice I take issue with is split application.
Works great on row crops where it can be side dressed. Or under irrigation where it can be washed in with irrigation water. For dryland solid seeded crops, neither of those are an option. Even treated products can be up to 100% loss when broadcast with no possibility of incorporation.

Pulses look great on paper. This year, according to the AFSC yield magazine, peas yielded approximately half of what my wheat did, at the same price per bushel. Yielded the same as my canola, at half the price per bushel. That isn't economically sustainable, even at high fertilizer prices. Government can't wave their magic wand and double the price of pulses.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Not sure if this fits here or should be a thread starter of it's own.
Today sat through a presentation on proposed N reductions by an industry rep who was in the room near the beginning of this process.
It is incomprehensible how little our law writers know about agriculture foreign or domestic, chemistry, world trade or the basic laws of economics. The latter the most concerning. I came away truly speechless. And our powerlessness leaves me a little numb. Even after discounting the usual East-West bias at play.
The climate change bogey man isn't going anywhere. But the current path by the ruling class is headed for an iceberg. And we're in steerage.

All of the malicious incompetence you observed being perpetrated on the fertilizer file is also occurring at government departments affecting all aspects of society.
All of the same hubris and condescending authoritarian
arrogance and ignorance is behind the destruction of our energy sources, electricity grids, transportation sector, Justice system, education system, military, law enforcement, environmental regulation, immigration, etc.
Big brother knows best.
These decision-making positions are infested with blind ideologues and useful idiots. Far too smart to ever consult with the lowly boots on the ground proletariat, just consult the computer models.

[blackpowder]

We can all tell he doesn't rely on his living from a commercial enterprise. He certainly doesn't grain farm in Western Canada if he even read that whole article.
30% emissions reductions started discussion as 30% total usage reduction by the way. The Honorable Minister had no clue.
We produce 11.8 MMTCO2, the world is 52300. 30% reduction would be 3.5 MMT of the 52,300. We average 66kg N/ha China 198 (some double cropping) India 111
Eastern provinces far more emissions per tonne than here in West. Read that again. Our (zero till) current sequestration rate is not discounted from our (western) totals.
Latest study shows 20% fert reduction=10% less crop.
Not going to fact check, sorry, but something like 0.007% of GHGs
Broadacre dryland cover crops are called long term pasture. But...no money in cows haha. Peas here need an 8 yr rotation from disease.
Low hanging fruit is soil testing, section control and VR. Wow, thanks for that!!!
Western Canadian fert efficiency is already nearly the highest in the world!!! Proven. Sales losses in the billions by 2028 if this goes ahead as planned. Note I said planned, not proposed.
Latest was $110/t extra for ESN?
Even dual inhibitors just slow down volatilization and that's dependant on moisture, time, and temp.
RDAR pays you only for the extra cost and only if you haven't used before. A sick joke. A sick joke as I've tried to make them pay here and alas, they do not.
If all the people who wish to ignore economic reality for 0.007% GHGs are willing to buy me out at full market rate and farm the Farmers for Climate Solutions way, they have my blessings. After I have my check.
I am already as efficient with my resources as I can possibly be as a matter of course, let alone the economic reality under which I reside.
Constant defiance of the laws of economics, under which the planet resides, and by which innovation evolves, pushes us closer to a tipping point.
Constant governance by people who have no idea what I'm talking about is certain, eventual ruin. Be alarmed, get vocal.
And don't tell me our Commissions are as vocal as the old WCWGA or WBGA were. Govt lobby groups my arse!
Phew! Luckily I don't write for the Seducer and need a mental health day off now.

[blackpowder]

That was more a PSA and belongs in the adult section. I definitely was not concerned with acknowledgement through rebuttal of any poster in the children's section.