Prairie soil is in good hands, says a soil science professor from the University of Saskatchewan.
Jeff Schoenau said continuous cropping, zero tillage and multi-crop, selective fertilizing have all paid off in the last 30 years.
“We have been able to document that by looking at things like the rate of nutrient release from the organic matter,” he said.
“We can document significant enhancement in the ability of soil to supply nutrients, like nitrogen, like phosphorus, and that relates to build up of organic matter, sequestration of carbon, improvement of the soil biology for conditions for microbial growth, nutrient turnover and nutrient cycling.”
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He said increased organic matter is improving tilth and reducing soil compaction and density. As well, zero tillage reduces the density of the soil and allows for a better rooting environment.
“Those types of changes, or enhancements, have resulted in a lot better soils now than what we had 20 or 30 years ago. That’s a good news story.”
However, Schoenau said producers can’t afford to let down their guard.
“We have to make sure that ability to better exploit and get nutrients out of the soil doesn’t end up being a sort of mining undertaking. To that end we have to look at how we’re going to replenish those nutrients,” he said.
“We need to replace those nutrients over time with fertilizers and organic amendments to ensure that our productivity is maintained. We need to pay attention that if we load up that soil with too much nutrient, we end up with a leaky system that can cause environmental issues.”
Yantia Gan, a research scientist with Agriculture Canada in Swift Current, Sask., studies root profiles down to 120 centimetres deep in an effort to understand how cereal and pulse roots distribute themselves across the soil profile.
He wants to help producers design better rotational systems that will effectively use soil nutrients. Understanding different rooting systems between crop species is key.
Root diameter is one factor.
Pulse crops have a larger diameter root than wheat and some oilseeds in
Prairie soil is in good hands, says a soil science professor from the University of Saskatchewan.
Jeff Schoenau said continuous cropping, zero tillage and multi-crop, selective fertilizing have all paid off in the last 30 years.
“We have been able to document that by looking at things like the rate of nutrient release from the organic matter,” he said.
“We can document significant enhancement in the ability of soil to supply nutrients, like nitrogen, like phosphorus, and that relates to build up of organic matter, sequestration of carbon, improvement of the soil biology for conditions for microbial growth, nutrient turnover and nutrient cycling.”
He said increased organic matter is improving tilth and reducing soil compaction and density. As well, zero tillage reduces the density of the soil and allows for a better rooting environment.
“Those types of changes, or enhancements, have resulted in a lot better soils now than what we had 20 or 30 years ago. That’s a good news story.” zero till conditions, which allows them to penetrate the soil and perform a micro-tillage function.
“That’s why pulses do extremely well under no-till conditions,” he said.
“This is not widely known. Farmers probably notice their crops do very well, but they don’t know the reasons behind that. Micro-tillage improves soil aggregates, improves some of the soil’s physical, chemical and biological properties.”
Research has found a significant improvement in microorganisms in the soil after pulse production compared to cereal crops. This is particularly true in the rhizosphere, which is the soil zone around the root where the root and the soil connect.
Microorganisms play a major role in moving nutrients from the soil to the roots, making nutrients more easily available to the plants.
Gan is also screening and isolating microorganisms from prairie soil that have drought tolerant properties.
“If the soil has more drought tolerant microorganisms, the plant will be more drought tolerant and in a very dry year those plants will remain more productive,” he said.
Soil health plays a major role in plants’ ability to develop roots that can access nutrients and water and influences how much nutrients a plant can take up.
“The rate of that improvement, the extent to which that happens, will very much be variable from farm to farm, depending on the extent to which they’ve (producers) adapted a particular practice,” Schoenau said.
He thinks prairie fields still have a lot of room for improvement.
“In some cases, it appears that it may take 25 to 30 years of that system in order to finally reach the plateau. In a lot of cases, we may be sitting at five, 10, 15 years.”
Schoenau described the process as a chain reaction.
“As we increase the yields of the grain that’s harvested, we also increase the amount of straw that’s produced, the amount of root mass, and that increases the addition of carbon and organic matter to our soils, which will improve those soils,” he said.
Schoenau said some argue that farmers can improve soil quality to a higher level than what it was when the Prairies were settled.
“I guess the quality of the soil always relates back to what its intended purpose is. If its purpose is to support annual crop production, maybe we will have better conditions in that soil.”
