Every farmer knows that one of the most important elements in developing a farm’s productivity is monitoring soil quality. There is a lot that can be done to amend bad soil, and a lot that has to be done to keep good soil producing – but it all begins with knowing what the quality is to begin with. Otherwise you’re chasing black cats in the dark – a lot of exercise, but you’ll only get results by luck. Every farmer also knows that luck isn’t something to be relied on. Soil testing is the farmer’s tool that turns on the lights and makes it possible to get scientific about soil management. Here are some tips on testing your soil this year.

The best time to collect samples, obviously enough, is when the field is idle and you’re not frantically trying to bring in a harvest. Don’t try to squeeze testing in between other farm tasks; wait until you have some downtime. Late fall offers a pretty good window for many farmers, once the harvest is in. You should test no less often than every four years – more often if you’re pursuing an aggressive soil amendment strategy.

The most important element in taking your samples is the variability of your fields. A field that has been manure-spread or had banded fertilization is going to be a lot more variable than a field that’s only had broadcast fertilizer application. Geography and soil type changes across a field can also play into variability – so break down your land into sections that are as internally consistent as possible. If there used to be a fence on the property, use that fence line as one of your boundaries – odds are good that the historical use on each side of the fence varied, and so the soil won’t be the same. Each section should be no more than 20 acres. A map of your sections will be very helpful when you get out into the field to take the samples.

The number of cores to take in each section will depend on your estimation of the section’s internal variability. For manure or banded fertilizer areas, or sections that have inconsistent soil types, take 15 or 20 samples. In a more uniform section, you can get by with 10 to 15. Take your samples along diagonals, not in straight lines, and randomize your site selections to avoid getting too much of one area. Don’t take samples near gravel roads – contamination from the gravel can throw your results way off. Take cores six to seven inches deep, and make sure the soil is moist when you sample – if it’s too dry, some of the soil will come off your auger and you won’t be getting proper cores.

Put the cores from each section into a bucket, and break up the cores thoroughly. Don’t use a metal bucket – they will contaminate your sample with mineral micronutrients and give you worthless results. Mix the soil as well as you possibly can – you want absolute uniformity in each section’s sample. From the bucket, take about 1.5 cups of soil into a sample bag or box – and mark it so that you know which section it came from! (You might think you’ll remember, but if you’re like me, you won’t.)

Now you’ve got good samples from each section of your land, and you can send them off to the private lab or your local ag university’s test lab. Each lab will have its own soil information sheet, which you will need to fill in as accurately as possible – they use the information you provide about field history and your local geography to do the calculations for the recommendations they’ll make.

Soil testing is a science these days – if you give the lab boys a proper sample and the right information, the information they will return to you will be of great use in planning your soil amendment efforts into the future.

With the MLB post season in full force, game day snacks are a hot item.  One of the long standing staples of the game is a good ole bag of peanuts.

Peanuts are a major crop in the Southeast region of the United States.  Georgia, Alabama and Florida are the biggest producers at 60% production for the entire country.  Texas, Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Oklahoma are also growers.

Florida alone has over 100,000 acres planted in peanuts.

Peanuts are what you might call part of the Old South.  They originated in South America and were then transported to Africa.  They came to America as an inexpensive, high protein food and were started in commercial cultivation by farmers in the 1700s.  In 1903 George Washington Carver suggested planting them in rotation with cotton crops.

Over the years, they have been referred to as goobers, groundnuts, ground peas, earth nuts, pinder, pinda, monkey nut, and Manilla nut.  There are only four varieties grown in the US including Runners, Virginias, Valencias and Spanish.

Peanuts actually grow underground, hence the term ground nut.  After the plant flowers, the petals fall off and the “peg” turns to the ground where it penetrates and begins to grow the pod.

About 75% of peanuts grown in the US are sold domestically.  The other 25 % are exported to Canada, Japan and Western Europe.

Peanuts are a legume along with beans and peas.  They are an incredibly healthy food crop, containing 21-36% protein and no cholesterol.  They are also significantly cheaper than other sources of protein like meat and cheese.

Not only are they healthy for humans, certain varieties are an efficient forage source for livestock owners in the southeast.  The nutrition content found in Peanut grass rivals that of alfalfa and is generally cheaper by 5 to 8 dollars a bale.  It is also used as a ground cover in many water deficient areas since it is hardy, disease resistant and requires little mowing.

While you and your buddies are being coaches of the couch take the time to have a little peanut trivia and consider how beneficial they are to a healthy diet.  For more information or to find recipes go to www.peanut-institute.org.

In a post about carbon and farming a couple of days ago, a reader noted that I wasn’t talking about biochar, which surprised me, because I’d never heard of it! That’s one of the great things about farming – there’s always something new to learn. So I did a little bit of research and thought I’d share what I learned with everyone else. Here’s the low-down.

Biochar is a clever idea that has the potential to divert enormous amounts of carbon from the atmosphere and sequester it into the soil. Basically, whenever trees or crop residues burn or rot, they release most of the carbon they contain into the atmosphere. This is a natural process, although one that can be accelerated or initiated by the actions of man. However, this CO2 can be stored in the form of biochar. (Biomass-derived charcoal = “biochar”.)

To produce biochar, you take biomass, any biomass, and subject it to a variety of processes. People have made biochar for thousands of years; pre-Columbian Central and South American farmers used to produce it as a soil supplement to increase their crop yields. It’s also known as dark earth or terra preta. You can make biochar as simply as taking a pile of biomass, setting it on fire, and covering it with soil so that the fire smolders and pyrolysis takes place. (Pyrolysis is heating in the absence of oxygen.) The resulting substance is a very high carbon charcoal-like material that makes a fantastic soil additive. The beautiful part is, once the biochar is mixed into soil, it remains stable for hundreds or even thousands of years. There are huge biochar deposits in parts of South America that go down as deep as two meters – soil that was made by primitive farmers thousands of years ago is still there, still holding on to that carbon.  (continue reading below graphic)

Today biochar is produced with much more advanced techniques, and the most recent development is a proprietary process created by an Australian energy company, BEST Energies. Their “Agrichar” process uses a low-heat pyrolysis that actually produces energy and synthetic gas as by-products. You can buy Agrichar, and other biochar products, or make biochar for yourself. It’s a great soil additive and has literally doubled total yields on test fields. Biochar reduces nutrient leaching, increases bioavailability of soil nutrients, improves water retention, and cuts down on the need for fertilizer. Probably the best part is that creating biochar doesn’t have to be high-tech; it’s a tool that can be used by the poorest and least sophisticated farmers, as well as huge high-tech corporate farms.

Biochar won’t solve the global warming problem on its own, but it does seem like it could be a major tool in getting control of the carbon budget. I will keep up to date on developments with biochar, and will keep you posted.

Additional Reading on this Topic: Discover Magazine Biochar

You’ve probably heard of carbon credits, an idea many environmentalist have promulgated for controlling CO2 emissions by industry and transportation. The concept is simple; if your factory is going to produce a million tons of CO2, you buy carbon credits to offset this emission. Using a combination of regulation and market forces, the idea is to encourage reduction in CO2 emissions by making it more expensive to output carbon, as well as to give the environmentally-minded a way to make a contribution to the carbon problem’s solution by offsetting their own carbon output. The credits themselves are derived from things like carbon sequestration projects or tree-planting operations. Start a factory, plant a forest – the idea is that it balances out.

One of the hindrances to this whole scheme is that there are no objective standards for what defines a carbon credit. Some scam artists have already made small fortunes selling bogus credits to well-meaning greens, credits that don’t go to any projects at all, only to a bank account somewhere in the Cayman Islands. But legitimate credit programs exist, and they need some baselines by which their operations can be judged. Novecta, a joint venture between the Iowa and Illinois Corn Growers Associations, is attempting to create such a standard, and recently held the first meeting of their Carbon Sequestration Standard Committee in Des Moines, Iowa.

The purpose of the committee is to create an industry-wide standard for validating carbon offsets resulting from soil carbon sequestration or greenhouse gas emission reductions at the soil interface. The committee was selected by Novecta from leading agriculture businesses and members of the carbon industry including aggregators, verifiers, exchange traders, soil scientists and others interested in carbon measurements. Novecta Managing Director says that the group “is developing a standard to validate soil-based carbon offset methodologies and systems that will be broadly accepted. This standard is a key step toward rewarding farmers who use environmentally sound farming practices.”

In the first meeting, the committee agreed that their set of standards would include a soil-based standard that addressed net changes in greenhouse gas emissions, including fuel used directly for production on the land, and that encompasses agricultural practices and nutrient management. The committee has completed its first draft, and will be having a second draft review in a meeting in mid-October.

As these standards develop, it will become more straightforward for farmers to apply to have their land registered as a carbon sequestration zone, and to receive payments for good land management practices – a win for the environmentalists, and a win for farmers as well.