INTRODUCTION
Hello, and welcome to another new episode of Global Trends– the agricultural digital talk show for everyone. I’m Ann Helena and I’m your host. Today we are ready to deliver another interesting episode… but, before we dive into today’s topic, let me welcome to the studio our agricultural expert, Adrian Bell
Hello, Ann Helena, isn’t it good to be back?
It’s good to have you back, what an enriching response we had to the previous show! Lots of viewers got in touch commenting on the topic and the way our guests covered it.
But I’m not surprised – agtech and smart farming is really capturing people’s imagination and I can see why. I just love that combination of technology and agriculture, and seeing it in action. By the way, the episode’s still available on bkt-network.com if you missed it.
Now, what about this episode? What Global Trend are we going to explore today?
TOPIC INTRODUCTION
Ok, Ann Helena, let’s make a start. As you know, there has been a special day this month, the fifth of December
That’s right, Adrian: World Soil Day, designated by the United Nations to raise awareness about the importance of soil for our environment. So, I can imagine that the topic of today will be Soil Health, right?
Too right! So given agriculture’s absolute reliance on soil, we thought we’d mark the occasion of World Soil Day by doing a little digging: just why are so many people now so concerned about soil health? And for those of us in agriculture, what do we need to do to meet our responsibilities? Of course, it’s not just about agriculture. Soil also helps with climate regulation, filtration and storage of rainwater, nutrient recycling and decomposition. It does all of this automatically, while supporting a huge and diverse ecosystem of plants and animals and fungi and bacteria, as well as humans.
Please give us some figures, Adrian!
OK…did you know it takes up to 400 years to create one centimetre of soil, but at our current rate of soil erosion it takes only one year to lose a millimetre.
So, it’s non-renewable? If we abuse it much more, we’ll lose it for good.
Well, that’s the ultimate concern. Let’s hope we don’t get there. But irrespective of that, keeping soils healthy simply makes sense, Ann Helena. Healthy soils produce healthy crops – they’re more resilient to pests and diseases, and are more productive. That’s because the chemical, physical and biological properties of the soil are working together in a balance. If we send them out of balance then soil health suffers.
Adrian, soils are instrumental in climate change, which is perhaps becoming the challenge of the 21st century… Why exactly is that so?
You see, the healthier the soil, the healthier its appetite for carbon storage. The FAO says that nearly ten per cent of our carbon emissions could be sequestered – locked-up – in soil over the next 25 years. Scientists and politicians are already suggesting that farmers should be encouraged to help achieve this goal Right, enough from me! Why don’t you introduce our guests?
Ok, let’s find out who today’s guests are, and what they’re going to tell us about this incredible substance we call soil. What can we do to keep it healthy?
GUEST 1 – MICHAEL MCNEILL
Our first guest is an agronomist from the USA. He is also the President of Ag Advisory Ltd, an independent crop consulting service in Iowa that’s been advising farmers for more than 20 years. He is joining us from Iowa. I’m delighted to welcome Michael McNeill. We are honored to have you here Michael – thank you so much for your time.
It’s a pleasure
Over to you, Adrian!
Thanks Ann Helena! Michael, it’s good to meet you and I’m looking forward to hearing more from you! I know this is a topic about which you’re very enthusiastic – which is why we have you here today, of course.
Tell me, what’s the big deal with soil health?
I'm pretty enthusiastic about studying soil health and getting to know a little bit more about it. You say: Why is it such a big deal? Well I like to refer to: What is soil health? Soil health, I think, has been really clearly described by the Natural Resources Conservation Service here in the US They say it's a continued capacity of soil to function as a vital living ecosystem that sustains plants and animals, and humans. I think that's the key piece right there. It is a living ecosystem. With our concentration on input agriculture, we've sort of forgotten that soil is a living organism. We've concentrated on various inputs and what they all can do for us in making farming more effective, more efficient, and easier. In doing so, we have definitely put great pressure on these living organisms.
That's a terrific way to set the scene for our discussions today, Michael. But briefly, let me play Devil's Advocate for a moment. Despite all the concerns about soil health, or indeed the deficit in it, we're still managing to grow crops and lots of them. How do we impress upon farmers both those currently farming
and the new generation as well, something we're going to look at in a future episode, that our attitude to soil needs to change. As you mentioned earlier, we are facing a loss of a lot of the quality of our soils and of the soil itself. But I think probably the fastest way to change our attitude toward that is to show how doing
some of these improvements that increase soil health, improve profitability of agriculture. And there's nothing that will get a farmer's attention quicker than to improve his profitability. You've mentioned 2 things there: profitability, but also quality. Now, Michael, what about environmental quality? Soil health can influence that, too, can't it, in the wider ecosystem?
It certainly can. I think that with this increased interest in carbon emissions and increasing carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, we're overlooking the possibilities that exist in having our soil sequestered. A lot of that excess carbon dioxide can be very effective in doing that. But in doing so, we have to change a few of our practices. It also increases the water infiltration. We're having serious flooding issues, and it certainly can help along those issues as well.
Yeah I'm glad you mentioned that, Michael, because water storage, I think, is a critical aspect. The better the soil health, as you just said, we've got an opportunity to reduce the risk of flooding, haven't we?
We certainly do. As we try to get more efficient in our agricultural production, we've gone to bigger and bigger farm equipment, which is heavier. Heavier equipment puts compaction in the soil. As the soils become more compacted, water infiltration slows way down. In addition, we've seen some things
changing in our climate, where we're seeing a lot more intensive rainfalls over short periods of time. So water infiltration becomes even more important. When you put these 2 things together, it really is important to us to pay attention to good soil health.
You've made a very good point there, Michael, about water and water use efficiency. I know your colleague, Dr. Hatfield, has looked at this in particular and the benefit that an increase in organic matter can do for soil and water holding capacity. But how can we make better use of available water? What needs to be done to get more farmers to adopt practices like those you've just described? I think improving their knowledge of what's really going on in the soil and the things that they can do to improve the water infiltration rate, improve the carbon sequestration. I think a new term that Dr. Hatfield has been tossing around is "transitional agronomist". Helping farmers understand what it takes to transition from a heavily input agriculture to a more sustainable, regenerative agriculture. There's almost another pairing to the transitional agronomist, isn't there? The soil-curious farmer.
Yes, the soil-curious farmer all of a sudden got real interested in: What can I really do with my soils to improve the environment, to improve the soil itself, and to improve the profitability of what I'm doing?
The big question then, Michael, is: How do we put the 2 together? How does a soil-curious farmer find his transitional agronomist?
That is a big challenge. We need to convince our educational institutions to train people along these lines and support them in that training. We need to get funding that promotes the transitional agronomist and instructs him on how to better improve our soil health. So it's a challenge of training and education and that, I think, only adds to the concerns that those of us who work in agriculture have about the big challenge that lies ahead.
Michael, thank you very much for sharing your thoughts on soil health, for that perfect introduction. I know there's plenty more to talk about. I wish we had the time to do so.
Thank you.
Yes, me too, Michael. Thank you for explaining your take on soil health in such an informative and serene way. We would indeed love to go deeper into this, but we will come back to you at the end of the show so please stay connected with us.
GUEST 2 – DIANNA BAGNALL
Adrian, that was an ideal primer to today's show wasn't it? Where are you going to take the discussion next?
Well Ann Helena. For this interview, I’m going to jump back to one of the points I touched on in my introduction: the belief that used more effectively, and with more understanding, keeping agricultural soils healthy can help us tackle climate change. You see, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations says that nearly ten per cent of our carbon emissions could be sequestered – captured and locked-up – in agricultural soils over the next 25 years.
Ohhh everything is falling into place. Who better to help explain it than our second guest. She’s a research soil scientist from the Soil Health Institute in the USA. Welcome, Dianna Bagnall!
Hello Ann Helena, Hello Adrian
We’re glad to have you here with us – We can’t wait to hear what you have to say to Adrian. I’ll leave you in his capable hands.
Thanks Ann Helena. Dianna, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are now 412ppm – that’s 50 per cent more than at the start of the Industrial Revolution, and we’ve seen a corresponding rise in global average temperatures. Some commentators say we’re going to have to bring those levels back down to around 350ppm if we’re to prevent the catastrophe of further warming. So the FAO’s guidance on this subject is quite significant, isn’t it?
Yes, this is a huge shift that we need to make across many sectors. How me manage soil is a part of that both because soil can emit greenhouse gasses and because it can store carbon. Most agricultural soils have lost half of the soil C they had when we started farming them. This is so critical for all the reasons Michael was just speaking about.
As a soil scientist yourself, how realistic do you think those FAO figures are? Can soils really take in that much carbon dioxide?
The capacity of soils to store carbon is significant, but it is limited. The complexity of soil across the landscape and with depth is often not well understood by most people and so it makes sense that we want to know how much C soil can store. But because the answer is so soil specific, we really need local soil carbon targets. That is something that several scientific groups acknowledge and that we at the Soil Health Institute are working on. This site specificity is something that I think we all need to be more aware of and it is why I’ve seen very believable estimates of C storage between a tenth and a half of a tonne of C per ha per year.
How exactly do soils capture carbon?
All the organic C in soil is coming from plants – from their roots, from their stems and leaves. We have to have plants and diverse plants to store soil C. And we have to leave as much of that plant reside as possible. We can sometime visualize C storage as being forever, but C is a cycle. So some C will be left in soil by plants, some will be eat by microbes and go back to the atmosphere. Think this like your bank account, the point is not that a specific dollar remains in your bank account for decades, the point is that the account is growing so that you have more money in you bank each month, even though which dollars are changing.
Can farmers do anything to influence those processes, and make the capture even more effective?
The way we store more carbon is through observing the principles of soil health. Those are to reduce disturbance like tillage, keep our soils covered, increase plant diversity, and keep living roots in our soil as much as possible. We can design practices that go in line with these principles, but they will be slightly different for different farmers and regions. Our farmers need to be able to innovate and find what works for them.
But for the farmer, it can be about more than just the money, can’t it? Isn’t it true that by implementing some of these changes, they’re making their soils healthier in the process?
There are truly mountains of data that support the idea that having more soil C in soils is a good thing. For me, the most compeling evidence is to look at our natural systems, to see that we have degreed soil C compared to that, and to use them as a reference state to tell us how good we can get. There are a lot of reasons to adopt soil health management systems, They are a true win-win-win because they are good for farmers, the environment, and society. I hear farmers talk about many benefits of soil health, including time saved they can spend with their families…
Across Europe and in North America, we’re seeing the emergence of schemes to connect farmers – carbon capturers – with those who still can’t avoid producing carbon – the emitters. How do you see this developing – what are the benefits for both parties, and of course wider society?
Talk about the way it can encourage adoption of more sustainable forms of agriculture – lo-till or no-till, which not only helps capture carbon but which also reduces losses from soil; less intensive production of crops and livestock, reducing other GHGs such as nitrous oxide and methane; added-value for farmers in being able to produce, and sell, crops that are themselves ‘low carbon’, through blockchain marketplaces such as Indigo
Carbon capture and monetization has been described by some as a ‘wild west’ – little regulation, conflicting evidence, concerns about long-term storage ability and so on. And there’s no common consensus, is there, as to how a soil carbon marketplace can work. How can we assure both farmers and emitters that these schemes do work, for soil health and socio-environmental goals?
I know that there are buyers who want to buy soil C. I know that there are farmers who want to sell soil C. To make this work, we need to get the science AND the markets right and we need to be clear on which is which. We have measure, report, and verify changes. Measuring soil C is more difficult and expensive than traditional nutrient sampling because we have to account for the density of soils as well as the concentration of C. Technologies are being developed to make this faster and cheaper (talks about DOE work). I think there are occasionally folks who want to sound the alarm about one thing or another about how we make these markets work. As an example, how long will the C be there…but we can make this work, economists know how to discount… The basic premise is that no, this is not a silver bullet, but the benefits of soil C storage are real, we achieve them through soil health, and this is a critical part of responding to climate change by drawing down C but just as importantly, it makes our food systems more resilient to Climate change.
Sounds like very much a case of ‘watch this space’. Dianna, I’m so glad you could join us today. Thank you for being with us.
Truly eye-opening, Dianna, thank you. I’ve really enjoyed listening to you and Adrian in discussion today.
GUEST 3 – PIERO TORASSA
Now, Adrian, you told me earlier there are three key properties to soil health: chemical, biological and…
…physical, yes that’s right Ann Helena. Besides maintaining soil fertility and ensuring good biodiversity, physical health is the other point of the triangle. Thus for our third guest, I’ve looked a little bit closer to home. Would you introduce him?
O Of course, Adrian! Let’s welcome our very own Field Engineer Manager from BKT Europe. It’s my absolute pleasure to say hello to Piero Torassa. I’ll leave you now with Adrian.
Well, there’s a trend in agriculture towards heavier machinery – in order to be more efficient, have lower costs, and so on, by covering more ground, more quickly. But this extra weight can increase the risk of soil compaction.
And that’s a big problem for farmers, isn’t it?
Yes, absolutely. Remember Michael’s point about keeping physical, chemical and biological balance? Compaction is a threat to soil’s physical properties. When you compact the soil, you compress the pores within it that allow the passage of air and water. That’s the worst thing you can do for crop health. In compacted soils, root growth is restricted, and water saturation can lead to oxygen deficiency too. Moreover, you can also affect the availability of important nutrients like nitrogen and manganese. The net effect is reduced plant growth, reduced yields – and reduced profits.
Piero, there’s obviously no chance that farmers are likely to go back to smaller machinery. So how can they avoid soil compaction?
Well, the degree of soil compaction caused by machinery travel is directly related to the pressure of the tire on the soil. But that’s not only affected by the applied load – i.e. the weight of the tractor or trailer or implement – but also its footprint. What’s the area of the tire in contact with the soil?
OK…so if we can’t reduce the load, what can we do about the footprint?
I was hoping you would ask that! We can increase it, of course. One way to do that is simply to use wider tires, but not everyone wants to do that and take the larger dimensions that come with it. Moreover, there are some regulations and restrictions regarding the maximum machine width when machines run on the road. The alternative is to use inflation pressure to control the footprint. That’s the principle behind BKT’s VF technology
VF stands for “very high flexibility”, right? Do VF tires have a ‘variable footprint’?
Exactly. By reducing inflation pressure, the tire flattens under load on the soil and its footprint increases. In itself, it’s nothing new – farmers have been deflating tires like this for years. The problem has been that a partially deflated tire has a lower capacity for load, which rather defeats the purpose of the exercise. But with VF technology, we’ve changed the design of the tire to allow a decreased inflation pressure while keeping a constant load capacity – thus providing a route for farmers to better protect their soils when using machinery in the field.
Now, how do you know that one tire is better than another for soil protection? That’s quite difficult to measure.
It is – but we found a way! It’s technical, so I won’t go into detail here, but our method is more reliable than traditional tests such as wet sand, while producing a 3D reference footprint and then using 3D scanning technologies for precise measurements. The ratio between tire’s footprint volume and footprint area gives us a clear index of field compaction. With VF, we saw a 15 per cent decrease in soil compaction.
Well Piero, your love of tires truly knows no bounds. Thank you! Stay here, won’t you – we’ll come back to you at the end.
GUEST 4 – SARAH BELL
Right, we’ve heard from the scientists and the experts. But what about the farmers themselves? How do we translate theory into actions? What are the practical steps that put soil health at the top of every farmer’s agenda and routine farming practice? And can modern farming and all its technology sit comfortably with maximising soil health? To answer these questions, our last guest is a farmer a farmer in Rutland, England’s smallest historic county. She’s also an adviser to agri-food companies, so has practical experience at opposite ends of the food and farming chain – and believes in a holistically balanced route to sustainable food production. Let’s welcome Sarah Bell…
Sarah you’re fascinated by soil health, aren’t you?
Thanks Adrian – yes I am! Perhaps I can start with an example from my own garden this year: I had some cause to move some soil that's been under grass on the edge of a piece of woodland for 20 years into my garden. And the difference I've seen between the sunflowers I planted in that soil and the sunflowers just planted in my conventional garden soil, really highlighted to me the difference soil can make. The sunflower in that woodland, beautiful, alive, friable, biological soil are just massive. The plant's massive, the flowers are massive, and they've gone on and on and on.
I think soil health is a really incremental thing when you improve it in the field. When you see an example of that it really sort of relights your passion to think we can make a real difference here. A powerful opening story to start with, but practically, how are you going to apply those findings over more than 1,000 acres?
Yes, that's always the challenge. We're big farmers so we've been committed users of farmyard manures forever, basically. So from the organic matter perspective, our organic matters are reasonably good. But how we have changed the way we physically manipulate soil is a big difference. That's come from a need for resilience. It comes from essentially starting with just reducing the amount we do from a cultivation perspective, from a tillage perspective. We started by moving to a single-pass system that moves less soil. Then we've gone to a direct drill system that moves even less soil. But it's about the whole system and how you manage rotation with that and how you manage the size of your machinery and all of those sort of things.
It sounds like you've come on something of a journey in your discovery of the importance of soil health. Where have you got your inspiration and your knowledge from? And I think importantly, as well, some of your confidence in tackling some of these practices and ideas, which just a few years ago, would've been considerably left field. Was there a specific moment of epiphany?
This has been about small steps, changing something, seeing a benefit, changing something else. You know, we didn't power into this on day 1 thinking we were going to change the world. We made a small adjustment into a single-pass system so we could burn less diesel, so we could use less labor, so we could have more family time. Then it became clear that that was helping. We thought, okay, how do we
take this to the next step and go to a direct drilling system? And that helped. Interestingly, one of the things
we've seen is it's changed the way even weeds grow in our soils. So actually, bizarrely, we have more weeds because they germinate better, because the soil's more fertile.
That's an interesting point, particularly when it comes to our fast reducing armory of herbicides and so on being able to control weeds. How have you done that with a min-till system? Do you still use the plow? How do you balance that with the carbon aspects of using it. Yeah, we do use the plow. We will go in and plow, 1 in 7, 1 in 8, 1 in 10. That's driven by where the weed spectrum is. Because if weeds get too comfortable and they get too much of a consistent environment. We can see them take hold, and we see that change in our weeds spectrum move toward sort of more brooms from black grass and things like that.
Essentially, we use the plow as a tool to just disturb that ecosystem slightly. However, what we have found is that because the soil is healthier, it bounces back quicker from the plow. There are no perfect scenarios in farming. It's a series of trade offs. Sometimes you have to take the rough with the smooth a bit and think which is the least damaging thing you can do?
Going back to your sunflower story from the beginning. You mentioned the chemical and the biological aspects of that story. Tell us a little bit more about the physical side, completing that triangle.
In terms of our soils, we've got some very heavy, very high mag clay soils. Therefore, we sort of have to manage those appropriately. We're in the bottom of a river valley. It floods, the climate's changing. We have more flooding than we've ever had. We're really trying to look at how we put resilience into our soils. Part of that is actually just lifting those soils where we see compaction. We do that with a low disturbance of soil and a low disturbance tying on that. Not at any great depth – it's just about loosening and allowing
that compaction to come out and the water to move better through the soil.
Do you think overall, are you in a good place environmentally and agronomically with these practices?
I think we're in a reasonable place. I never professed to say the journey's done because there's always more to do. However, if I was to do the perfect thing environmentally, I'd probably have a lot of my heavier, flatter lands down to grass. However, it's very fertile. It produces a lot of good crops, therefore it's about managing it in the most sustainable way possible and ensuring that those soils are there for me, there for the next generation, and there for generations beyond.
I think compared to many farmers, certainly in the UK, you're probably ahead of the curve when it comes to managing soil health on your farm. What advice would you give to somebody who's interested or inspired by what you're doing on your own farm?
Small steps, you don't need to be an expert in this. You just need to work with your advisors, work with the people who matter to you and your farm. Don't worry about what your neighbors think. Take those small steps, see the results. If the results aren't what you want have another go. Try something different.
But it really is about doing something that you reap the rewards of as a farmer. Spoken from experience, thank you Sarah.
Yes, thank you very much.
I like the fact that you put the emphasis on the small steps because altogether we can grow toward a better world
Thank you so much
step by step. Thank you very much. We're almost at the end of today's Global Trends.
THE FINAL MOMENT
Soil health is a truly fascinating subject, and I'm very grateful to all our guests for helping us to celebrate World Soil Day here in the studio and to illustrate the significance of soil health. As Adrian and our guests
have explained, soil health is a multifaceted subject, plenty to think about, plenty to consider, and plenty of ways to take action, whether you are a farmer or otherwise involved in agriculture. But before we wrap up this episode, let's go to Trends & Talks and conclude our discussion. Just like in the first episode, Adrian is going to ask our guests one more question. Let's invite back on stage Sarah and Piero. Please join us. Welcome back. Let's also reconnect to Michael and Dianna. Welcome back to you guys as well. Adrian
Thank you, Ann Helena. As we've just heard, yes, I'm going to come back to you with one final question to sum up today's discussion of soil health. A simple question: in your opinion, what's the easiest and any farmer can take to start improving their soil's health? Michael, I'm going to go to you first for the the agronomist's view. What do you think?
I think probably the most effective and easiest would be for a grower to start using cover crops because it provides the food, shelter, and water that our living organisms, in the soil need. I think that would probably
be the first step to take and the most effective.
One vote for cover crops, thank you, Michael.
Now, Dianna, how does your work translate into practical advice for farmers in the field?
If I had to just pick 1 first step, I think it would be locating a mentor, someone who has some experience in your region or your area. We know that biology is local, so I think that's where I would start if I had to pick.
A vote for the transitional agronomist, thank you. Piero, tires?
Adrian, I'll give you an answer related to my sector, tires, of course. I always recommend farmers to be advised by a professional tire dealer who can assist them in any aspect. In this sector, it's essential to have good product knowledge and to know farmer's needs. For farmer's, soil health is the main issue, but it's not the only one. Selection of the best products for the field and machine set-ups will lead not only to soil
Moreover, these will also minimize soil compaction. So Adrian, in a few words, maximize your operations by choosing the right tires. It's the best way to protect your soil.
Expert words, thank you, Piero, Sarah, the final word.
Don't worry what others say is right. Become an expert in your soils and find out what works for you.
Don't worry what others say is right. Become an expert in your soils and find out what works for you.
What stimulating responses and what a fantastic help our guests have been in giving us a better picture of the necessity of soil health. We have now nearly reached the end of the episode. Adrian, can you tell us what you're working on for the next one?
I certainly can, yes. On the next episode of Global Trends on BKT Network, we're looking further into the future. Who will produce tomorrow's food when today's farmers retire in a rapidly urbanizing world population? How can we manage this generational shift?
Well that seems to be another great subject to explore, and I know that Adrian will put together another panel of top guests for all of us. Thank you for that, Adrian. Now, we have really come to the end of this episode. Thank you to our remote guests, Michael and Dianna. Thanks also to our guests here in this studio, Piero and Sarah. You've all given us some illuminating views on soil health. And to our viewers, we'll see you next month. Until then, it's goodbye for me and from Global Trends. Goodbye.