Hundreds of farmers owe a big debt of gratitude to a small 20 acre plot of land southwest of Edmonton.
It was on the Breton Plots, established in 1930 near the town of Breton, where farmers learned how to successfully farm grey-wooded soils.
Unlike the rich loam soil across much of the Prairies, grey-wooded soil, or luvisolic soil, has a thin layer of topsoil, is low in organic matter and difficult to farm.
Through the Breton Plots researchers learned grey-wooded soils could be successfully farmed with the addition of fertilizer and a steady rotation of forages.
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Jim Robertson, University of Alberta professor emeritus and former head of the university’s soils department and Breton Plots, said many farmers would have abandoned their farms if it weren’t for the early research.
Frank Wyatt and John Newton, early members of the university’s soils department, had three goals when they established the plots: undertake a soil survey of the province, learn how to control wind erosion and learn how to manage soil fertility.
“The Breton Plots grew out of the observation by Wyatt and Newton that grey-wooded soils existed,” Robertson said.
Most luvisolic soil in Canada is found in northern Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. The largest area is in Alberta and 15 million of its 50 million acres are arable.
They account for 15 percent of Alberta’s cultivated land.
“When they found the grey soils, they realized they were difficult to manage,” Robertson said.
Newton made several sketches in the winter of 1929-1930 of how the plots could be developed. They are still in the university archives.
Breton farmer Ben Flesher provided the land and did most of the field operations until the 1960s. The university bought the land in 1946.
The plots were not the first longterm soil research plots. Agriculture Canada established such plots at many research centres as they were established.
Long-term research plots for dry-land and irrigation farming on dark brown soil were established at Lethbridge in 1911. The same year, long-term plots were established at Scott, Sask.
Plots on the black soil zone were established in 1957 at Indian Head, Sask., and others were set up near Swift Current, Sask., in 1967 and 1987.
However, the Breton Plots are the only long-term plots on grey-wooded soil.
Internationally, the oldest agricultural research station in the world is England’s Rothamsted Research Centre, where long-term soil research is still ongoing 167 years after plots were established in 1843.
Elwin Smith, manager of Agriculture Canada’s long-term research plots at Lethbridge, believes longterm plots are a valuable tool to agriculture.
Most projects last three to five years, which doesn’t provide time to look at the implications on the soil. Research from long-term plots led scientists to understand the importance of farmland to carbon sequestration.
“We don’t know what questions will be asked 30 years from now. These plots could play a significant role in answering these questions,” Smith said.
Information emerges
In the 1930s, farmers were having a difficult time coaxing crops to grow in the newly broken grey-wooded soil. Research at the Breton Plots revealed the importance of fertilizer, crop rotation and the inclusion of forages in the crop rotation.
“There were fairly striking results from the plots that allowed farmers to stay on the land and make a living,” said Robertson, who began his career at the university in 1955.
The original crop rotation was wheat, oats, barley and forage. Amendments such as manure, lime, nitrogen, phosphorus, potash and sulfur fertilizer were added across each plot.
Newton had identified sulfur within fertilizer as one of the key reasons for successful production. At the time, sulfur was more of a fertilizer contaminant than a believed benefit. The most striking results from sulfur resulted when it was added to legumes.
Wyatt believed nitrogen, phosphorus and potash were the important additives and did not believe there was such a benefit from sulfur.
His colleague, Newton, came from the University of California, where he had studied the benefits of nutrients.
“He was more prepared to accept there could be something more than NPK,” Robertson said.
By 1937, he had convinced Wyatt. “Once revealed that sulfur-containing fertilizer was so beneficial, farmers adopted it quite readily.”
The second discovery was slow acidification of the soil with the addition of ammonium-based nitrogen products.
Luvisolic soil is already slightly acidic, but adding ammonium based fertilizer such as 21-0-0, 34-0-0 and 46-0-0 accelerated the acidification process.
Soil became more acidic over time and crops such as alfalfa, which was already difficult to grow on greywooded soil, became impossible.
“That is something that would not have been observed over the short term,” Robertson said.
Instead of struggling to grow alfalfa, farmers switched to red clover, which grows readily in acidic soil. The addition of the legume helped increase organic matter and soil tilth, which are still important lessons for modern farmers.
The first field day was held at Breton in 1931.
Local farmer Lou Hendrigan, a strong supporter of the plots, believed researchers should emulate Mother Nature. He felt grey-wooded soil was more suited to livestock than crops and lobbied to add additional plots to demonstrate what he believed was the benefit of non-cropping systems.
The Hendrigan plots were introduced in 1980 and included continuous barley with straw returned to the plots, continuous fescue and white clover and a new eight-year crop rotation that included fababeans, barley and forage. However, no additional fertilizer was added.
The Breton Plots were funded from the university’s soil science budget, but it became more difficult to maintain them as costs increased over the years.
Other ways of funding the plots were needed, including the Breton Plots Endowment Fund established in 1983.
Robertson said long-time plot manager Dick Puurveen was skilled at finding free fertilizer and seed to help stretch the budget.
However, the $60,000 earned annually in interest from the endowment fund is not enough to fund the plots.
Robertson and other committee members are hoping to increase the fund to $2 million through donations.
Robertson said the Breton Plots are like an outdoor laboratory that attracts researchers from around the world to study them and their long-term research findings.
“One of the most important research projects is what the soils look like after 80 years,” he said.
“It’s not just a matter of getting better crops, but when you do that, what are you doing to the soil and therefore the sustainability.”
