Microbes

This current heat wave has put considerable stress on our crops. Under stress, crops become less efficient in processing nutrients as their metabolism (photosynthesis, respiration, and the synthesis and degradation of organic compounds) slows down.

Higher nighttime temperatures are especially concerning. It has been known since 1939 (Laude, et al.) that plants’ response to heat stress fluctuates between day and night – if you apply heat stress to a plant during the middle of the day, it is much more likely to survive than if you applied the same heat stress at night. Plants’ daily cycle of heat resistance is a strategy that protects plants from the hottest parts of the day while saving energy at night.

There is a debate whether synthetic fertilizers impact soil biology in a negative way. I think it’s a discussion worth having but it doesn’t tell the real story that needs to be made clear. In defense of synthetic fertilizers, 48% of the human population would not exist today without chemical fertilizers. It defeated hunger in the world. It has become the standard of agriculture for the last 70 years, brought about by nitrogen production for weapons used in WWI and WWII.

Lignin is made up of carbon-based aromatic rings with various side chains found in the hard secondary cell walls of vascular plants. Soil organic matter (SOM) stores carbon in complex compounds like lignin, and releases carbon as CO2, primarily through microbial decomposition but also through abiotic factors.

The problem with lignin is that it takes time to break down and become useful in a soil environment or profile. In a wooden match burning, the lignocellulosic structure of the wood breaks down quickly into vapors comprised of phenols, carbon, and organic acids which are immediately lost to the atmosphere in the burning process when exposed to air.

Pesticides encompass herbicides, insecticides and fungicides. They’re chemical compounds designed to kill, each with their own targets and modes of action. As little as 0.1 percent of an applied pesticide interacts with its targeted weed or pest. The remainder contaminates the soil, air and water and can cause significant collateral damage throughout the ecosystem. Pesticides can undercut regenerative agriculture goals by harming soil communities and altering critical biochemical processes in the soil. By disrupting soil communities, pesticides can cause significant changes in the composition, diversity and basic functioning of important soil microflora.

As we go into our second year of drought, we need to look back at some of the lessons we learned from the 2012-2016 California drought so we can come out of this thing successfully. Droughts in California can be long and uncertain but, like all forms of disaster, preparation greatly diminishes drought losses, and organization is central to effective preparation and response.

Urine contains many nutrients that are beneficial for plant growth, such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Many cultures around the world have used urine for centuries as a fertilizer. Given the skyrocketing pricing for synthetic fertilizers like urea, is it time to give some real consideration to this idea?

Plants are one of the most successful forms of life on earth, despite their inability to move about. Since they can’t flee inhospitable conditions, they have evolved numerous physical and biochemical coping mechanisms, enabling their own pollination and seed dispersals, combating variations in climatic conditions, deploying herbivore deterrents, creating barriers to pathogen invasions, and mitigating biotic and abiotic stresses.

Primary metabolites are involved in nutrition and the basic essential metabolic processes inside the plant. Secondary plant metabolites (SMs) help the plant adapt to changing conditions. Secondary metabolites may also inhibit the growth of competitor plants (allelopathy). Pigments (such as terpenoid carotenes, phenolics, and flavonoids) color flowers and, together with terpene and phenolic odors, attract pollinators. It makes sense for growers to promote the production of secondary metabolites to naturally make the plant more “bulletproof.”

The DTN Fertilizer Index, a weekly survey of more than 300 retailer prices, showed dry urea averaging $873 per ton in the first week of December 2021. With 920 pounds of nitrogen provided to a crop from each ton of urea, that’s $0.95 per pound of nitrogen. With liquid UAN-32 fertilizer priced at $661 per ton and 640 pounds of nitrogen available from each ton, that’s $1.03 per pound of nitrogen.

These prices don’t seem to have any chance of declining, but there are viable options for reducing synthetic fertilizer costs by incorporating biological products into your crop program. The integration of biological products can deliver a greater ROI by reducing the cost of inputs and increasing quality crop yields.

Today’s biofertilizer market is $1.2 billion to $1.5 billion. Biologicals are projected to have a growth rate that’s two to three times faster than the traditional crop protection market. Bio-controls and bio-stimulants will have global sales of more than $15 billion by 2027!

I'm proud to introduce From the Ground Up, a book comprised of five years of essays, organized by topic or category, about leading-edge agricultural practices. Since 2016, Andaman Ag has been sharing research in twice a month newsletters to educate the agricultural...

Many of the biological farming practices that we are just now implementing today were very much a part of the landscape as far back as 12,000 years ago. Climate change at the end of the last glaciation produced thick forest soils. Over thousands of years the soil grew several feet thick depending on the region. Soil erosion began only after the introduction of the plow.

The ancient Greeks and Romans knew that manure spread on fields helped crop production. Early Arabic civilizations collected written knowledge about farming complementing nature. By 1815, England was importing bones from around the world, as bone meal had been recognized as a benefit to agriculture. This included many human bones, from the Empire’s brutal colonial wars. Bird droppings, known by the Spanish name guano, became popular fertilizers in the U.S. in the 1800s. Darwin discovered that worms not only helped make soil, but they also helped move it. Francis Chaboussou, an agronomist at the French National Institute of Agricultural Research, in 1985 wrote “Healthy Crops: A New Agricultural Revolution.” In reviewing numerous studies stretching over nearly 50 years, he demonstrated that the nutrient balance of crops affects their susceptibility to pests and disease, and increases in diseases were tied to heavy nitrogen fertilization.