“We have a lot of hills and sometimes you need to be aggressive with them,” he says.

Timmerman’s chair and whip are a Leon scraper and Versatile 4WD. He started training his hills over a decade ago, working on just a few at a time. “I was motivated because I saw these hilltops eroded down to gravelly shale and clay, and I had nearby waterways that were full of topsoil,” he says. “So I borrowed my uncle’s scraper and took soil from the in-field surface drains and field edges and put it on the hilltops.”

It seems so simple, and he says it works.

“I definitely see a difference. By clearing out the water runs, I have better drainage so the low areas are more productive, and I get better yields on the hilltops.”

Timmerman estimates he has rejuvenated 50 acres of hilltops. He puts six to eight inches of topsoil on each hill and then cultivates it to even it out and break up clumps. “Working in the fall, soil can be moist and almost frozen. You need to use the cultivator or a couple passes with the harrows before seeding or you won’t see much benefit that first year.”

As for a time commitment, “it takes me about 30 minutes per hill,” Timmerman says. He also spreads manure from his cattle operation on the hilltops, which adds to their increased productivity.

Keys to regeneration

These steps — adding soil and manure to hilltops — are essential to regenerate our degraded soils, says David Lobb, soil scientist and professor of landscape ecology at the University of Manitoba. “Farms on the Canadian Prairies are still suffering from soil degradation that occurred up to the 1970s and ’80s, and just going to zero tillage didn’t solve the problem,” he says. “We still can’t grow a crop on those degraded hilltops.”

He says farms need something more dramatic than zero tillage, and adding soil to hilltops is an instant and effective measure.

To test the benefit, University of Manitoba graduate student Diane Smith ran four trial sites in Manitoba (including one at Timmerman’s farm) in 2008. Smith found that when soil is added back to the hilltops, seedlings emerged faster and more consistently, and plant population was 60 per cent higher than in the control plots. The yield increase was equally encouraging. At the Timmerman trial site, addition of topsoil increased yields by 31 per cent in the first year post-restoration and by 64 per cent the following year. Yield increases for the other sites ranged from 10 to 133 per cent.

Smith also compared yields in the low areas where soil was removed. She concluded that for the most part, removal from the low areas had no effect on yield because these areas generally have more topsoil than needed. One site did show a 20 per cent yield reduction in the lower slope positions where topsoil had been removed, but the net benefit was a 74 per cent increase in crop productivity within the landscape.

In her summary, Smith wrote “Landscape restoration is an innovative, logical, and practical land management practice to restore crop productivity on severely eroded hilltops and requires further attention from researchers and equal consideration from agricultural producers.”

Lobb says soil conservation measures in Western Canada have not improved recently. “Current high-speed vertical tillage tools and high-speed drills move as much soil as a plough ever did.” He notes that while most of that soil stays on the field, its movement reduces crop productivity. What happens is that the A horizon (best) soils erode from the hilltops and are dragged down to the low areas by high-speed soil disturbance. So the low areas get more and more topsoil and the hilltops continue to lose productivity. That sounds bad enough, but as this process continues, the low-productivity B and C horizon soils on the hilltops erode into the depressions, covering up that extra-thick layer of rich topsoil.

Lobb says some of the worst soil erosion in the world has occurred in the “hummocky land of the Prairie pothole region.” The climate is semi-arid, so the hilltop soils don’t have the moisture needed to support crops. And because yields on these hilltops are so low, crops don’t produce enough organic matter to turn the situation around, even with no till.

“We need to redefine or redesign conservation tillage,” he says.

Lobb is surprised by results from an Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada Farm Environmental Management Survey of 2014. In the section on land management practices, the survey found that five per cent of Canadian crop farms were placing eroded soil back on hilltops. That’s higher than Lobb expected, which he finds encouraging, but it’s still a low number. He’d like to see more farmers taking Timmerman’s active approach to hilltop restoration.

What advice does Timmerman have for farmers who might want to train their hills to be more productive? “Get a scraper, and plan to do a small amount each fall,” he says. “It’s more economical to do a little each year on your own than to hire someone to do a lot of acres all at once.”

The UN soils panel

David Lobb is one of two North American soil scientists on the United Nations Intergovernmental Technical Panel on Soil (ITPS). “For most people of the world, healthy soil is an extremely important resource,” Lobb says. “Without productive soil there is a lack of food, and a lack of food brings political instability.”

The safety and security of most countries depends on good soil. “Soil erosion is considered to be the number one threat to soil productivity and health worldwide,” he says. A major focus of this year’s ITPS activities has been controlling soil erosion through sustainable soil management practices.

“Canada is the only country that has a properly validated erosion model combining the effects of wind, water and tillage erosion, and this model is linked to models of soil organic matter and crop productivity and market values, giving us an accurate assessment of the economic impact of soil loss on crop production,” Lobb says. This information greatly supports the need for practices that restore eroded soils. Moving topsoil back to the eroded hilltops is one example.

The post Timmerman trains the Tiger Hills of Treherne appeared first on Country Guide.

It was during that search that he learned about the CurseBuster, a U.S.-manufactured implement that passively fractures soil up to eight inches deep by way of targeted tillage. Brubacher, who operates Carlotte Farms near Arthur, Ont., immersed himself in the implement, its design and the research conducted on its impacts on soil health. That led him to conduct his own research, and what he found was enticing since the results aligned with soil health teachings.

“We were full-tillage farmers and we knew something needed to change,” says Brubacher, whose rotation includes canola, corn, soybeans, winter wheat and white beans. “When we consider the drastic results of erosion in full tillage practices and soil and nutrient losses, it’s astounding. In 20 years of farming, we saw effects of erosion and the lack of soil health taking place.” That’s when Brubacher decided to purchase a CurseBuster with the machine arriving on the farm in the autumn of 2015. (Note: More recently Soil Regeneration Ltd. and Riteway Manufacturing in Regina, Sask., have also entered into a manufacturing agreement.)

The CurseBuster machine consists of two rows of Eagle tines running on a drum that’s positioned low to the ground so it “hugs” the soil. The tines are eight inches in length and are followed by a Phillips rotary harrow on the back. The first row of tines is set on 10-inch spacing, and those tines enter the ground ahead of the second row of tines also on 10-inch spacing. The tines on the second row enter the same holes as the front row but side-fracture the soil in the opposite direction. The Philips rotary harrow helps flatten the corn stalks and residual cover and levels the soil, providing a more even seed bed. Best of all, the sub-surface fracturing leaves all of the soil relatively undisturbed, even with a cover crop on top. The tines also have a slight drag in speed causing fracture below the tine depth.

“Soil is 50 per cent air and water and by fracturing the soil, we’re de-compacting and opening up any density layers in a very passive way while enhancing the no-till benefits, hence quicker decomposition of stalk material on top,” says Brubacher, adding that to date he’s had no slug issues. “It’s an excellent machine to plant cover crops with and apply liquid manure, if it’s available, after a tillage pass because it causes the manure to immediately soak into the fractured soil. The soil is still firm enough to carry weight and ideal for drag-lining because there’s cover on top and no layer of loose dirt.”

Another benefit for Brubacher is that it meets all soil health requirements for his variable soil types that he farms, which is important to him since he recently joined the Ontario Soil Network. The group is expanding its numbers, encouraging those who are looking to manage their soils as a companion to better-managing their crops. With the use of the CurseBuster, Brubacher has noticed that his worm counts are higher.

“We’re drastically increasing worm populations due to mulching, which keeps the moisture gradient intact to the soil surface, it keeps material on the surface available for foraging and can lower summer soil temperatures near the surface,” he adds. “It also improves water transport to prevent the drowning of fingerlings in spring and late summer, restores soil-gas exchange cycles and there’s no destruction of soil fungal communities below two inches in depth. The results have been worm counts as high as 80 to 90 worms in a shovelful.”

In addition, Brubacher believes the erosion of soil and nutrient losses that came with his previous tillage regimen has decreased with this min-till approach. His soils are more resilient, there’s less leeching and run-off, the soil structure has improved and he finds they’re better able to withstand compaction of any equipment operation. The machine also helps reduce the need to pick stones, since it doesn’t bring them to the surface as often happens with conventional tillage.

From a cost-reduction perspective, he’s been able to cut back on diesel fuel and tractor hours as well as cut back on nitrogen due to a large root system and increased organic matter. He’s also managed to reduce phosphorus-based fertilizers, a result of improved P uptake by plants within the context of microbial transmission.

“Only small amounts of P are in water uptake as soluble P2O5, and soils have the potential with microbiology to supply phosphorus needs,” says Brubacher. “Our tillage practice is allowing the microbial population to expand its presence so that phosphorus availability to our plants is increasing on a regular basis, as well as soil passing through the worm population and increasing measurable phosphorus by at least a factor of three or more.”

It’s been an exciting process for Brubacher and he looks forward to what the next few years will bring under the same management regimen. “It’s a simple way to farm in a sustainable way, growing great crops while keeping soil and nutrients in the field,” says Brubacher.

The CurseBuster was originally designed by a company called Soil Regeneration Ltd., based in Indiana but with distributors operating in other locations. The implement is actually a hybrid, combined with a tine designed in New Zealand more than 30 years ago. According to Brubacher, there are now 13 CurseBusters in operation in Ontario with more sold for this spring.

The post A change in equipment vs. a change in mindset appeared first on Country Guide.

It’s a problem across the Red River Valley region in particular, where soybean producers are used to tilling to manage heavy clay soils. Because soy is a low-residue crop there’s little left on the surface to anchor the topsoil.

“Tillage is a big problem and in these dry years we get especially concerned,” says Cassandra Tkachuk, a production specialist for Manitoba Pulse and Soybean Growers Association.

Tkachuk says that following the second dry year in a row, the association is challenging soybean growers to reduce tillage as much as possible to minimize erosion.

“You want to conserve the moisture that’s already there because there’s no guarantee we’ll get a lot of snow this winter, or rain next year,” she says. “Less tillage is not an easy answer but it’s an answer I would like farmers to consider.”

Interseeding

There is another answer being considered south of the border by North Dakota State University researchers.

Marisol Berti, a professor in forages, cover crops and biomass production at NDSU, conducts annual field trials interseeding cover crops into standing soybeans to minimize erosion.

Berti says wind erosion in soy fields is a huge problem in North Dakota and the reason she started the trials in 2016.

“In the spring, the soil starts freezing and then thawing and that change of volume makes the topsoil particles vulnerable to detachment from the soil structure, especially in high-clay soils,” she explains. “It forms a layer of loose particles. So you can lose soil by wind when it’s not covered by residue.

“For every inch of soil you’re losing through erosion you’re losing productivity.”

Berti’s objective is to determine cover crop biomass, yield and per cent cover when interseeded at two soybean reproductive stages, R4 and R6, and to assess any impacts on soybean yield and quality.

In 2016, four cover crops were tested, including a winter camelina, a winter pea, a winter rye and a forage radish.

The study found that soybean quality and yield were not affected by cover crops interseeded into soybeans at the R4 or R6 stages. It also found that interseeding cover crops such as winter peas, rye or radish after R4 is possible because soon after cover crop planting the soybeans begin to drop their leaves, allowing enough light into the canopy for cover crops to become established before winter.

“Interseeding cover crops during the later soybean reproductive stages is a viable solution for North Dakota producers to mitigate soil erosion after soybean harvest when there is not time for a cover crop to have enough growth to cover the soil before a hard frost,” Berti concluded in a report on the 2016 trial.

No-till systems plus cover cropping works best, Berti says, and if winter-hardy cover crops are used, producers can get on the land sooner for spring planting.

“Soils with a live cover crop in the spring dry faster,” she explains. “You reduce erosion because of ground cover and you have the advantage of moving water off the soil faster.”

In North Dakota, because of strong weather fluctuations in the spring, producers have fewer choices for winter-hardy cover crops than Manitoba growers — even though use of cover crops as an erosion management strategy is more common in the U.S. than it is north of the border, and seed is easier to find.

Berti says the Red River Valley is a difficult place to convince people of the utility of cover crops — farmers have been told that no till will make their soils wet and cold. But her team has worked with a farmer using no till and cover crops in the valley who typically seeds five to seven days before his neighbours.

“When other farmers see that, they get interested,” she says.

Managing moisture

Abbey Wick, an extension soil health specialist with NDSU, works with producers on tackling erosion. She says soybean producers across the state are losing productivity due to erosion in April and after the crop comes off — in the so-called “shoulder seasons.”

Her program is attempting to help producers establish cover crops on the “front end” and also the “back end” of the crop year. For producers planting soybeans after corn, Wick’s program recommends interseeding the beans with cereal rye so the rye will overwinter and offer erosion control right into the spring.

They’re also helping some farmers fly on cover crop seed just before soybean leaf drop, which allows the cover crop to take off after the beans are harvested.

Flying on seed can be hit or miss, says Wick, particularly if soils are hot and dry in August. But in heavy clay soils, some farmers have had a lot of luck with the strategy if there’s enough moisture, she says.

“The alternative is to build up residue with cornstalks and cereal rye. I encourage farmers to go that route. If they can interseed cereal rye into their corn or seed it after wheat, they’ve got something to help them manage the moisture and plant their soybeans into it.”

In the Red River Valley, moisture control, not erosion, is the primary reason many producers plant cover crops, according to Wick, so when producers can accomplish both goals with one cover crop “it’s pretty outstanding,” she says.

North Dakota producers are finding that cover crops require more management, but for many of them it’s worth it.

“The benefits outweigh the risks,” says Wick. “They’re learning how to manage their cover crops and get the right species in the mix.”

Berti cautions that the use of cover crops doesn’t come with an automatic return on investment, at least not in the traditional sense.

“Cover crops don’t increase yield in general. They’ll increase soil health and soil organic matter, but you don’t see that in dollars,” she says.

“But they (growers) need to start protecting their soils because they’ll have to invest more and more in fertilizers and other inputs to keep the crop’s productivity. You never get the eroded soil back. Organic matter takes a long time to build.”

This article was originally published in the Oct 2018 issue of the Soybean Guide.

The post Avoiding another year of ‘snirt’ appeared first on Country Guide.

This field was unusual, however, because even though you couldn’t see it, red clover was sown under the wheat, so there were actually two crops occupying the same space: wheat for harvest this year and seed clover for next.

It’s a strategy that pays off with more biodiversity above the soil surface, and also underneath it.

Soil ecology is still on the frontier of science. We know quite a bit about what soil does, based on our observations above the ground and our knowledge of a few simple elements: nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus and sulphur. But soil itself isn’t simple and we’re starting to understand we have to look at it not as a simple workbench but as a highly complex factory.

“It’s a very, very diverse ecosystem — perhaps the most diverse ecosystem on Earth,” says University of Saskatchewan soil scientist Jim Germida. “Of course, all those micro-organisms are doing lots of different things in terms of ecosystem services, everything from cycling nutrients through the system and helping clean water to helping plants grow.”

The sheer number of different organisms living in a healthy patch of Prairie soil is staggering. If you count the number of stars that you’ll see on one of those clear western nights where even the edges of the Milky Way are visible as a creamy band down the centre of the sky, that’s about equal to the number of different kinds of organisms living in one teaspoon of that soil.

That’s a lot of living things doing a lot of work within a very small space. This kind of diversity and the genetic variability within their populations is called biodiversity, and it’s essential to the proper functioning of any ecosystem.

In 2010, the European Commission published a major report on soil biodiversity, classifying the work of soil organisms into three main functions. The first are the chemical engineers, made up of organisms that decompose dead tissue within the soil and transform it into the nutrient fuel that drives the system. The second are the soil regulators, including the predators and grazers that manage the populations of other soil organisms. These include our soil borne pests and diseases. The third, then, are the ecosystem engineers, the burrowers and tunnelers that move soil particles around and develop the pore spaces that make water and air infiltration possible.

What this means is that in the course of a year, the soil organisms within the area of a soccer field will process material equal to the weight of 25 small cars. This sort of biological activity is important to soil ecology and has a profound effect on agriculture.

But then, agriculture also has an equally profound effect on soil, points out Dr. Tandra Fraser of the Global Soil Biodiversity Initiative based out of Colorado State University.

Monocultures not only reduce biodiversity above ground, they also reduce biodiversity underneath it, Fraser explains. “Then this leads to a number of problems. Soil biota and microbes contribute to the maintenance of soil structure, they contribute to the hydrological process and to nutrient cycling which, in the end, is related to food production.”

Before the Green Revolution, farmers practised diverse crop rotations. Not only did they change fields from one annual to another, they rotated from annuals to perennials. Perennials keep roots in the ground year round for three or more seasons, conditioning the soil and energizing the soil biota. Since most farms were mixed, sections of land were also used for forage for livestock and the animal manure was used as fertilizer. Above the topsoil they had biodiversity over time and this helped maintain biodiversity below ground as well.

The development of farm chemistry and machinery changed all that. It may be said that the Green Revolution created today’s specialized agribusiness and our rotations of annual crops. Livestock farmers became more specialized as well, and there was a separation of animals from the plants. There was no longer any need to rotate to perennials, and animal manure was no longer available to most crop farmers.

This is the system we’ve been working under for multiple generations and it has its quirks. But the news here isn’t all bad either.

One benefit of farm chemistry is the emergence of zero-till agriculture, where leftover crop residue helps to keep topsoil in place. The remaining roots retain moisture in the ground and provide a source of organic matter, which helps explain why we’ve seen soil condition improve under a zero-till regime.

“The soil organic matter helps with stabilization of the soil,” Fraser says. “It provides the carbon source for the soil micro-organisms. On top of that you need nutrient balance between the carbon, the nitrogen and the phosphorus and the other nutrients for uptake. The reduced tillage since the ’80s has been huge.”

As we change land use from a natural grassland ecosystem into a more intensely cultivated system,  however, we need to understand that we are reduceing soil biodiversity, Fraser says, and we really need to learn more about the ecology of living soil, such as knowing what organisms are in there and what they do in a healthy system.

This is the problem. We really don’t know that much about soil biology and biodiversity. Most soil organisms are microscopic and they live in a dark world that’s very difficult to observe first hand.

“The thing that has changed in more recent time is the fact that we have new tools to help us study biodiversity,” Germida says. “Now we’re talking about using molecular tools where we can extract the DNA from soil or from the roots and we can start studying the microbial communities that are there. We can think about it as a sort of meta-genome of all these living organisms and how they work in concert to do these different beneficial things, just like we have the human microbiome. We have all these micro-organisms living on and in us, and these things are very beneficial and help us be who and what we are.”

If this is the same with soil, then we have a lot to learn about how we can use the subtle nuances of its biology to help grow food. Germida begins by saying we need some optimal equilibrium of different organisms. The right mix makes the whole system more resilient. For example, if moisture levels or the pH changes, one group of microbes may fail but another can step in to continue their work. This can involve any number of things such as mineralizing organic nutrients so plants can use them, decontaminating pollutants, or even controlling certain plant diseases.

Take-all is the Pacific Northwest name for a fungal disease that affects wheat along the west coast. It lives in the soil, infects the plant through the roots, and may infect its neighbours. It affects the conductive tissue and restricts water uptake. Too much of it in the soil, however, provokes an interesting reaction.

“We have this thing called Take-all decline and as the pathogen infects the plant, the plant starts to send out chemical signals that stimulate a certain group of bacteria in the soil,” Germida says. “Those bacteria get very abundant and they actually produce antibiotics against the pathogen and the incidence of disease declines after a period of time.”

In other words, nature doesn’t like an overabundance of pathogens either. Eliminating their predators may have made our crops more vulnerable, but by understanding the relationships between soil chemical engineers, soil regulators and soil ecosystem engineers, we may be able to create a food production system that is more sustainable and that makes economic sense as well.

“I grew up on a conventional farm and I understand it from an economic point of view,” Fraser says. “If farmers are not making money or if it’s going to be a huge expense to them they’re probably not going to change their management strategies.”

The post Going underground for soil ecology appeared first on Country Guide.

To be specific, the type of pollution in the headlines is eutrophication. It’s a phosphorus enrichment of waterways, and it creates the conditions for harmful algal blooms.

And there’s little doubt that this pollution is real, and it’s serious.

In 2012, the International Joint Commission (IJC) created the Lake Erie Ecosystem Priority (LEEP), with the goal of responding to what has been identified as a growing challenge in Ontario and in all states bordering the Great Lakes.

The driver was the algal bloom in Lake Erie in 2011, described in the report as the “largest in history.”

The report blamed both rural and urban sources, along with changes in climate and the presence of invasive aquatic species.

These aren’t the first algal blooms on the lakes. Such blooms were on the front pages in the 1970s too, with the finger pointed mainly at municipal sewage treatment plants rimming the lake.

The difference now, the IJC report says, is the combination of intensive farm management and its allegedly heavier applications of phosphorus combined with more severe and intense weather events, such as heavy spring and summer rains.

Make no mistake, there have also been media reports that blame the cities and towns within the Great Lakes watershed. A story in the London Free Press in August 2013 cited Windsor and London as the two worst polluters in the region, with both cities regularly discharging partly treated or raw sewage into adjacent water courses. Sarnia and Toronto were also listed in the study. The combined result of these mismanaged practices was billions of litres of sewage finding their way into the Great Lakes.

• More Country Guide: A historical perspective from 2012: SW Ont. greenhouses warned on wastewater

But then in August 2014, an algal bloom formed at the southwestern end of Lake Erie, forcing the closure of water treatment plant intakes near Toledo, Ohio. According to media reports, scientists and farmers agreed that phosphorus from run-off of farm fields was the primary cause of that bloom. They added that more intense storms are washing away topsoil and phosphorus, turning watercourses and lake fronts brown and murky, and promoting the growth of harmful cyanotoxins.

Not so fast…

One of the paradoxes with that 2014 algal bloom is that sales figures from the fertilizer and inputs sector show that farmers have actually cut their fertilizer use. In the case of the Toledo-based bloom, the stats show that Ohio farmers used less than half as much P-based fertilizer in 2011 as in the mid-1990s.

Another claim is that large-scale livestock operations, particularly along the Maumee River watershed, are flushing more phosphorus into watercourses, a claim which one researcher deems unfounded. He says that without soil tests, there’s no way to determine whether those so-called “megafarms” are responsible.

“If we really want to fix whatever the issue is, however it’s happened, make it very focused on where it’s occurring,” says Dale Cowan, senior agronomist with AGRIS and Wanstead Co-operatives in Chatham, Ont. “These broad, sweeping gestures of ‘We have to reduce tillage,’ or, ‘you have to cut phosphorus levels back’ are premature.

“You often don’t get the desired effect,” Cowan says. “It must be science and technology based.”

Cowan also wants to avoid a witch hunt. He says spring run-off doesn’t come off in waves, but usually from a corner of a field that runs for a couple of days. These areas can be identified, and Cowan asks if it’s possible to put together strategies to mitigate against those areas rather than imposing new regulations on all cropland.

“It’s probably a small percentage of the land base that’s contributing to most of the run-off issue,” Cowan says.

Cowan is also quick to mention the decreasing sales figures in Ohio, and says that farmers are poised to do more with less as long as productivity is increased by way of precision agriculture systems. Gone are the days when farmers ramped up their P applications, and the same is true with nitrogen and potash. There also have been improvements in feed efficiencies for phosphorus with Phytase reducing phosphorus release by 30 per cent.

“It’s not like we’re increasing our fertilizer use every year,” says Cowan. “We’re putting it where it’s needed.”

No single cause; no silver bullet

An emerging consensus is that there is no one single cause, which also means there can be no one single “cure-all” solution. That’s why a collaborative approach to assessing and overcoming the challenges is so important.

Great Lakes pollution is more complicated than farmers and consumers may want to believe, says Jackie McCall, a geographer with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA). For every answer that researchers and industry specialists produce, another question comes to light.

For instance, why are some isolated lakes in northern Ontario and in northern Russia, which are low-nutrient (oligotrophic) in nature, showing signs of algal blooms for the first time in their recorded histories?

Scientists are questioning possible climate change links, but there are also invasive species and the physical structure of Lake Erie itself that may be part of the puzzle. Erie is the shallowest of the Great Lakes, which might make it more prone to phosphorus enrichment, depending on a certain set of weather parameters.

Interestingly, the Lake Simcoe watershed has developed a phosphorus-reduction strategy, and McCall refers to efforts to verify different sources of phosphorus. There have been at least two studies on that watershed, one started in the late 1990s, and the latest in 2011 by the University of Guelph. In the earlier of the two studies, tributary and atmospheric sources were identified as the greatest contributors. Atmospheric deposition of phosphorus attached to windblown soil accounted for up to 49 per cent of the loadings from 1999 to 2000. In the Guelph study, atmospheric deposition was identified as a “major non-point source” with very similar findings of roughly 25 to 50 per cent of the total phosphorus entering the lake.

“That’s controversial because most of the scientific world discounts atmospheric loading of phosphorus as a significant source,” says McCall. “At the time they were collecting that information and making those extrapolations, Lake Simcoe was one of the most heavily urbanizing watersheds in Canada. Barrie was rapidly growing, and Newmarket and Aurora were rapidly growing, and a lot of dirt was being blown around.”

McCall adds that recent research in Ohio has also identified storm events as playing a significant role in phosphorus loading of the lakes, and in particular Lake Erie. In November 2013, the Ohio Phosphorus Task Force issued Phase II of its assessment of the Lake Erie watershed. Although it determined that roughly 20 per cent of phosphorus from the Maumee came from livestock and nearly 80 per cent from commercial fertilizer use, the report also cited major rain events, coupled with pre-existing short-term land and soil conditions, as key factors in phosphorus deposition.

“That’s maybe a new piece of science that we’re trying to grapple with,” says McCall. “How do we incorporate that new information into the way that we’ve traditionally done best management practices in agriculture?”

Variety of measures

Some may recommend on-farm projects such as berms, buffer strips and riparian zones as helpful measures to reduce phosphorus contamination. Yet there has been some recent research, albeit in Manitoba, that suggests buffer strips and riparian areas are not as effective filters as previously believed. It needs to be emphasized that Manitoba has different watershed dynamics compared to Ontario, and that research in that province has found the on-farm constructs are less effective in spring; it doesn’t say that they do not function at other times of the year.

There are also conflicting opinions on the value of tile drainage, and whether it’s a contributor to pollution in general and phosphorus loading, in particular. In the past three years, there have been stories in U.S. farm media sources that place the majority of blame for a seasonal “dead zone” at the mouth of the Mississippi River on overuse of fertilizers and tile drainage.

Dr. Merrin Macrae is an associate professor at University of Waterloo’s department of geography and environmental management, specializing in research on the movement of nutrients in water and soil, including the use of tile drainage. Like McCall, she believes there are many potential contributors to eutrophication, including golf courses and urbanizing landscapes, in addition to agricultural lands. But she also contends that it’s more difficult to pinpoint the exact percentages that each may contribute. And as non-farming interests line up and demand answers, she says, nothing happens quickly.

“If you look at the last three years for example, we have had very different weather from year to year,” says Macrae. “The fact is, in Ontario, and really anywhere around the Great Lakes, our climate is so incredibly variable that you can get a huge range of temperatures or rainfall, and yet it’s all within the range of the norms that we get in this region. This variability is why it often takes many years to be able to answer questions with confidence.”

Another important point is that phosphorus loading — when it comes — isn’t like a dripping tap. These rain events that have been identified as major contributors are not always predictable, and a storm may occur in one region but not another. So the idea of doing research in one place where a heavy rain event is occurring sounds simple, but it isn’t.

“We often find that what comes out of one field may not come out of a different field, whether or not you are in agriculture or urban landscapes. You go from one place to the next, and you can find a lot of differences,” says Macrae. “We have to make sure that we capture this range in conditions in our water sample collection to get a good picture of what is really happening in watersheds.”

There’s also the notion that these studies are easy to fund. Cowan proposed a paired watershed study to the provincial government years ago. He recommended getting a set number of farmers to follow an optimal plan for reducing run-off, while a second set of farmers worked their ground as usual. Then, water quality would be assessed, and after five or six years it would be possible to determine which practices work best.

There are two problems though, says Macrae. One is money. The second is variability. Besides, it’s a lot to ask farmers to commit to such a project, especially during a five- or six-year period.

“We do have some paired study sites that have been sampled now for three or four years, and even with that, you can have two fields or plots within a field that seem to be perfectly identical but they’re not always,” says Macrae. It is important to be certain that differences between sites are caused largely by management and not just natural variability. She adds that the complexity of measuring and gathering relevant data increases once you take the research out of a lab to a “real farm” setting, but notes that capturing data from real farms is highly valuable.

Over or under?

Much of Macrae’s work focuses on the use of tile drainage, and when it comes to managing run-off, she maintains that it’s best to help water flow under the soil rather than over it. Whatever farmers can do to reduce the loss from erosion at the surface is the best plan, she says, and tile drainage may be one of those measures.

“Tile drains are controversial because there have been studies that have shown that tile drains can lose a fair bit of phosphorus,” says Macrae. “The question is, is that something that’s happening here in Ontario? It is true that you may catch blips of phosphorus in tile drainage following a summer thunderstorm, but how do those losses compare to very wet periods of the year such as springtime when the potential for run-off over the surface is high, since those wet periods are when most run-off and phosphorus are lost?”

What Macrae finds is that the phosphorus losses are low from sites where farmers carefully manage their fertilizer application, they’re careful with their tillage, and they apply their fertilizer in bands, rather than surface broadcasting. These growers are using multiple bundles of BMPs, using everything available to them.

Macrae stands firmly behind the science associated with tile drainage. Much of what has been learned and documented, and the practices that have resulted in the past 10 to 20 years have done more to keep the water on the land and avoid or at least reduce surface erosion.

That’s a sentiment that Cowan echoes. “Nothing’s better for the environment than high-yielding crops, and what drainage has done is to improve our land quality, so we actually have less run-off,” says Cowan. “Certainly people argue that we’re now allowing more through the tile, but it’s a very small amount of water that actually ends up going through the tile. And the soluble P — and that’s one of the main contributors — is a very small amount.”

Cowan adds that increased soil testing would help, to match a plant’s nutrient demand with available soil nutrient levels. This is one of the tenets of the 4R Nutrient Stewardship program being supported by many stakeholders who are embracing the idea of source, rate, time and place of nutrient applications. More farmers are banding and incorporating their fall P applications, there’s more interest in no till or zone or strip tillage, and there’s the move to precision placement of fertilizers.

From her vantage point, McCall advocates for an “all for one and one for all” approach, noting that one significant change has to take place, and that is the finger pointing that may be occurring between all interested parties. Urbanites want clean water, she says, but so do the farmers, and everyone involved wants workable solutions.

“All sectors have to talk to each other,” Macrae says. Not only do we need more science on how we as humans contibute to the problem, climate change may be a factor too, she adds.“If that’s the way things are going, we have to collectively get around a table and say, ‘OK, we’re in a new world here.’”

This article was originally published as, “The sick lakes” in the October 2014 issue of Country Guide

The post Working together to find solutions to algal blooms appeared first on Country Guide.