Pasture management is always important, but it is especially important following a drought.
Tag Archives soil testing
Post-drought pasture management called vital
Knowing how perennial plants function can help producers make better management decisions, especially following a drought
Organic farms also need to use soil testing
Take a page from conventional farming and test for soil nutrients and benchmark progress, says Manitoba research tech
Organic crop farmers may be missing out on a valuable source of data by not sampling and testing their soil for nutrients.
Taking the mystery out of soil and tissue tests
Agronomists, soil scientists on what they offer, and what the differences between the tests are
Soil tests assess the potential availability of nutrients under optimal conditions. In contrast, tissue tests indicate actual uptake under variable field conditions.
Soil pH levels can help make planting decisions
Levels in Manitoba tend to be on the higher end of the scale, with most soil testing in the neutral to alkaline range
Managing soil pH is a crucial but often overlooked aspect of soil health and crop productivity, says Marla Riekman, a land management specialist with Manitoba Agriculture.
Quantity, depth, location key to fall soil testing
Pulling cores from areas with low productivity can help identify issues weighing on the overall productivity of a field
Glacier FarmMedia – Fall soil sampling can be supercharged using tips from the Canola Council of Canada. The big ones include collecting a lot of sub-samples in each field, tapping soil depths and sampling known unproductive acres. It’s typical to collect one benchmark composite sample based on a field’s most productive acres. However, the council […] Read more
Eastern Prairies slow to adopt precision soil sampling
Soil scientist says it likely hasn’t caught on because flatter regions still have enough variability to warrant zone sampling
Glacier FarmMedia – John Brecker, soil scientist at Agvise Laboratories in North Dakota, says Manitoba’s soil testing trends echo what he sees in his state. About half the samples processed from both North Dakota and Manitoba are feeding into precision systems. “But in other areas, like South Dakota, Minnesota, or even Saskatchewan, about 80 per […] Read more
More producers use soil testing in their fields
One prairie company says it has seen sampling increase to around 1.4 millions acres from 150,000 acres 14 years ago
LANGHAM, Sask. — “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” That quote is usually attributed to Peter Drucker, an American management expert and business guru. Some Canadian farmers must have heard that quote, or are listening to similar advice, because more growers are now using soil tests to measure and manage their crop nutrition needs. […] Read more
FCC announces new 4R incentive
Farm Credit Canada is prepared to pay farmers up to $2,000 to adopt 4R nutrient management practices using AgExpert, it announced Jan. 10. “We see an opportunity to reward FCC customers who follow Fertilizer Canada’s 4R Nutrient Stewardship Program,” said FCC president Justine Hendricks in a news release. “Streamlining the data management and verification process […] Read more
Variable rate technology adoption faces hurdles
Variable rate technology is a powerful tool and it will be the way of the future, but for now most producers don’t believe it’s worth the time, effort and money.
Minimum tillage continues to pay long-term dividends
Senate ag committee’s soil study told that carbon levels in the soil have continued to increase 30 years after zero till was adopted
Prairie soils store carbon each year, even after widespread adoption of conservation tillage, a Saskatchewan farmer told the senate agriculture committee last week. Jocelyn Velestuk farms near Broadview and has a master’s degree in soil science. “Long-term studies, such as the Prairie Soil Carbon Balance Project, have found that there is still incremental positive carbon […] Read more
