Living lab: The Solutions
Thank you again to those of you who attended the Soilcrates Solutions session with us on June 14th - I think we can all agree that we gained huge insight into what farming practices would address our various soil problems - a really valuable session!
Just to note some of the things we covered:
Lena and Shane led a discussion around the practice sheets and the suggested trails / solutions to the farmers soil challenges.
Listed were 34 suggested soil solutions in total – focusing on the most common issues which are:
Compaction
Erosion
Water management
Soil salination
Pollution
The idea is to cross reference the soil problem with each of the practices that will address them, thus Improving biodiversity, improving soil carbon content, farm nutrient cycles, soil resistance, improving draining and water management and increasing organic matter.
Deriving from the feedback forms, the survey and indeed general conversation with our group of farmers - compaction was cited as the most overall common issue, with many other issues stemming from that.
For example, we had a discussion around what addresses compaction:
Increasing organic matter
Deep rooted crops Hemp / Barley
The use of Bio Char
Agri forestry
Integrated growth management
Rye Grass, Clover or plantain fixes nitrogen by about 70%
And that is just to mention one of the topics & multiple solutions for it that were discussed - it was such a productive session overall.
It was noted that even if you didn’t get selected for a project we will be testing up to 30 farmers soil so as a participant of the Living Lab you will be eligible to put yourself forward for that.
We can test different locations of the farm – representative areas of the farm – so the farmer can get a good overall idea of how it is performing.
Important timelines for the project & soil measurements:
Applications open first in July - Deadline for Applications in August and September
Testing will start next spring for baseline testing and planning for the experiment
