Ending a long fight with congestive heart failure, Henry died Friday in Saskatoon at age 83, having continued to write until very shortly before his passing.

Born in 1940 at Milden, about 100 km southwest of Saskatoon, Henry studied agriculture at the University of Saskatchewan, earning a master’s degree in soil science in 1968.

Earlier this year he recalled how, in the wake of the financial and agronomic devastation of Prairie farming in the 1930s, “my dad showed me the cheque that cleared the mortgage (and) added, ‘there will never be another mortgage on this farm.’ I respected that decision but it was part of the reason I went off to U of S after two years on the farm.”

At U of S, he joined the soil science department in 1968 as an assistant, en route to becoming a full professor and extension specialist there in 1980.

The Saskatchewan Agricultural Hall of Fame, into which Henry was inducted in 2004, said his research on irrigation and on crops’ potassium requirements “showed the way to increased production” while his research on the underlying cause of soil salinity “provided a major breakthrough in the management of saline soils.”

Although Henry retired from the U of S in 1996, his outreach to farmers continued in Grainews, where his soils column has appeared regularly for the past 48 years. Former Grainews editor Kari Belanger in 2022 hailed Henry for his “extraordinary ability to take complex information about soils and convey these ideas in a manner anyone can understand.”

His contributions to Grainews have included a Prairie stubble soil moisture map, released annually since 1979 and used as a reference tool across the industry.

His published works also include Henry’s Handbook of Soil and Water, which has undergone multiple printings since its first appearance in 2003, and for which the copyright was recently transferred to Saskatoon-based Croptimistic Technology to continue its publication.

In 2000, Henry also wrote and published Catalogue Houses: Eaton’s and Others, a book about the “catalogue homes” or “kit homes” sold to Prairie customers by Eaton’s and other retailers in the first half of the 20th century.

Henry also continued farming on three quarters at Dundurn, about 30 km south of Saskatoon, often describing that site as a “field lab” for his further research. He also continued consulting privately in Canada and overseas, including in Tanzania, China and Eswatini (then called Swaziland).

In his professional life Henry also served as president of the Saskatoon branch and provincial council of the Saskatchewan Institute of Agrologists, president of the Saskatchewan Agriculture Graduates Association and chairman of the Saskatchewan Advisory Fertilizer Council.

Other accolades for his work included an honorary doctor of laws degree from the U of S (2022), honorary life membership in the Canadian Society of Extension (1994), fellowship with the Agricultural Institute of Canada (1989) and the Agronomy Merit Medal from Western Cooperative Fertilizers (1985).

At Henry’s request, a private family interment will be held with no funeral. Before his passing, he wrote that “anyone wishing to connect with the spirit of the deceased” could watch his 2022 convocation address to the U of S College of Agriculture and Bioresources and Western College of Veterinary Medicine (roll ahead to about the 46-minute mark) — and/or listen to this.

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Here, the scene is a field, the farmer is the hero, and the bad guy might be a hidden crop disease that the farmer can arrest because DNA samples warned him it was there.

Trace Genomics is an Iowa agronomy company that bases its services on DNA soil mapping. It has a distribution network across Canada and its flagship product, TraceComplete, integrates biology, chemistry and carbon data to generate over 10 million data points across every field to which it is applied.

“So many advances in computational biology, machine learning and even soil sciences have come a long way in our understanding of some of the areas we know about soil DNA today,” said company CEO and co-founder Poornima Parameswaran.

Algorithms for computational biology have advanced to the point that soil microbes can be identified and scientists can understand what they do.

“This is really important, especially in terms of placing the right biologicals on the right fields and the right acres, knowing what soil function is, how your soil supports crop health stress, the phosphorus cycle, the nitrogen cycle.”

The goal is to provide detailed soil health insights to the farmer, along with recommendations on disease prediction, seeding, seed treatments, crop protection, crop nutrition and “nature-positive biologicals,” she added.

“It’s very similar to a blood test, where you get a readout for your red blood cells and it tells you ‘this’ is the normal range and you’re high, medium or low.”

Taurus Agricultural Marketing, based in Calgary, is among the U.S. firm’s distributors. It has offered TraceComplete and other Trace products to Canadian customers since last fall.

It’s “game changing” technology, said Taurus president Craig Davidson, noting tremendous interest from growers, retailers and agronomists across Canada.

Part of the reason could be recent reductions in crop prices. Lower income expectations might encourage farmers to seek precision solutions to protect profit margins, he added.

“This is actually a good time for an innovative solution like DNA sequencing to come along to help us better understand what we have to work with in our soil and make better decisions.”

The science

The process begins by extracting DNA from multiple soil samples taken from the same field. That DNA is converted into a format that can be read by a sequencer. The resulting data points are mapped against a reference set of organisms and functions in the soil, creating indicators that producers can use to make decisions.

“We run one (test) to determine who’s there in the soil and another one to determine what the functions are in the soil,” Parameswaran said.

To make it work on the Prairies, characteristics of the region must be considered in the analysis. The company has databases throughout the U.S. and Canada to provide this data, and Parameswaran says it is working to add more countries to the network.

“We contextualize this data and tell our customers if they are high, medium or low for each indicator, based on other crops that are grown in other fields in their region,” she said.

“So, when a farmer or their agronomist sees the data, they can map it to their own risk, how they (prefer to) manage risk, and determine whether they need to take any action based on the high, medium or low value.”

Customers receive reports digitally through either the company’s TraceView web portal or software intermediaries that allow compatibility between applications. The latter is handy for customers who want to integrate the new data with their own farm management software systems, said Parameswaran.

“TraceView allows our customers to engage and play around with their data, whether they want an eagle’s eye view across their entire operation or they want to double click on fields and really dive into their high, medium and low production zones within event-specific fields.”

Getting buy-in

Awareness of DNA sequencing in soil is gaining traction, Parameswaran noted, but most producers are unaware of how the technology can be applied to precision agriculture.

“I think we really need to spread the word that this technology and these insights are available today. It’s not just the future, the future is here now.”

For Taurus, the choice to distribute Trace Genomics products related to synergies between the products’ promise and the Canadian company’s values, Davidson said.

“Our direct passion is around agronomy and fertility,” he said. “We’ve spent 23 years really trying to find innovative solutions that have a bit of a sustainable feel that actually help growers be better at what they do.”

From a financial and sustainability angle, the deal seemed to make sense. It’s also in “a little bit different league” than other technology out there, Davidson said.

“It can impact decisions, from rotation to variety selection to fungicidal seed treatments to crop disease management to nutrient cycling or nitrogen management to rhizobium concentrations to phosphorus management. It’s all-encompassing.”

Cost of the service depends on the user’s goals.

“You’re probably looking at a few hundred dollars per sample to get that information. But there could be a multitude of things that you decide to change in your operation and every one of those decisions could be worth thousands and thousands of dollars per field if you get it right or get it wrong.”

Davidson used the example of aphanomyces root rot.

“If every grower in Western Canada knew where they had aphanomyces, would they ever grow peas on those fields that have a background level of aphanomyces? They wouldn’t, because the risk is so great that if you get infection, it wipes out the crop.”

For a few hundred dollars, that knowledge is worth it, he said.

It’s doubtful that DNA sequencing will quickly replace current, chemistry-based methods for soil testing, Davidson noted, although a few more years of progress may tell a different story.

“It’s new. Trace has been around for a few years and they’ve spent their time developing and commercializing this technology in the U.S., which we’re thankful for. But that doesn’t mean it’ll just happen overnight.”

“We need people that want to make a difference, want to have an impact for the better. Disruption never happens in hours or days or weeks. Disruption usually happens in years.”

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“A great deal of our agriculture industry’s success comes from research and skill development,” said federal ag minister Marie-Claude Bibeau in a news release, Tuesday.

Bibeau and Derek Johnson, Manitoba’s minister of agriculture, and Sarah Guillemard, Manitoba’s Advanced Education and Training Minister, announced Tuesday that the two governments would provide up to $6.4 million to establish the Prairie Crops and Soils Research Facility (PCSRF) at the University of Manitoba.

This adds to some $7.7 million from agriculture groups and companies such as Nutrien Ag Solutions, the McCain Foundation and the Manitoba Canola Growers Association, the University of Manitoba said July 5 on its website.

Thanks to the cash, “UM scientists will be able to accelerate soil and crop research far beyond what is currently possible,” the university added.

The current facility at the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences at the University of Manitoba is nearing the end of its lifespan, the government news release said. This new facility will expand and modernize agronomic research and training.

The PCSRF will improve the quantity, quality, and efficiency of seed, soil, and plant sample processing, analysis and archiving, and will integrate soil, crop, entomology, livestock, and engineering research.

“This is a significant investment that will greatly enhance our capacity for research, education programs, and collaborations with producers for more sustainable crop production,” said Martin Scanlon, the university’s dean of the faculty of agricultural and food sciences, in a statement.

“The PCSRF sets the stage for our researchers to develop an integrated approach to robust agronomic systems that will benefit Western Canadian producers and consumers across Canada for years to come,” Scanlon said. “At the same time this will allow our students to become the next generation of agri-food leaders.”

The PCSRF will improve students’ ability to get hands-on experience, the University of Manitoba said on its website.

The total budget for the PCSRF is $20.7 million, the federal-provincial news release said. Manitoba Advanced Education and Training is providing funding of up to $5.9 million in capital investment over three years, and the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership (S-CAP) is providing up to $500,000.
The new facility is slated to open in June 2026.

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Dubbed the ‘vitamin supplements of farming,’ there are a wide range of biostimulants and they work — or don’t — in a host of different ways.

Sometimes they’re worth applying and sometimes not, suggests a three-year study by Farming Smarter.

“We did see an increase in yield for some crops, especially field peas,” said Gurbir Dhillon, a soil scientist with the farmer-directed regional ag association.

Occasionally, the results were spectacular — a bump of 10 to 15 bushels for peas in 2020 at its Lethbridge and Forestburg plots when using a product called Alpine. Two other treatments, Penergetic and Stoller, also showed good results, said Dhillon.

But that sort of big increase wasn’t seen every year.

“For field peas, there was an average increase of about three to five bushels per acre,” said Dhillon.

Products used on wheat had an even lower batting average.

“For wheat, we saw an increase in only one out of six site years,” he said. “It was about 12 to 15 bushels an acre, but the other five site years did not show an increase. For canola we did not see any treatment effects.

“However, the last year there was severe drought, so the yields were low across the board.”

A range of things are touted as biostimulants, including: humic and fulvic acids; protein hydrolysates and other nitrogen-containing compounds; seaweed extracts and botanicals; chitosan and other biopolymers; inorganic compounds; and beneficial fungi and bacteria.

All are different from the usual way of boosting yields, Dhillon said during a recent Farming Smarter field school.

“Generally, biostimulants don’t provide any additional nutrition, so they are different from fertilizers in that way. If we are to think of fertilizers as like the food we eat, then biostimulants are more like the vitamin supplements that we take that don’t really help much on the nutrition side.”

So, what do they do?

Again, it depends. Some purport to improve plant metabolic efficiency or nutrient efficiency. Others say they increase root biomass. And still others say they offer boosts in areas such as water efficiency, soil health or tolerance to soil salinity.

“There is a lot of variability in the number of products that are considered biostimulants,” said Dhillon. “There is a lot of variability in whether they are effective.”

His message to farmers is simple. Don’t expect biostimulants to work every year in all conditions for all crops.

And users can expect to have to sort through a lot of product claims.

Biostimulants have been available for years but the market expanded significantly five years ago and was accompanied by a big advertising push, said Mike Gretzinger, Farming Smarter’s research coordinator.

“We’ve had enough time for the marketplace to sort itself out,” he said. “Anybody who has really overpromised and underdelivered probably isn’t making good business at this point.”

In fact, some agri-science companies with biostimulant products are asking Farming Smarter to investigate whether their products work, Gretzinger added.

“They’ve already got a product to market and then they are coming to us and they’re saying, ‘We need to make sure this works,’” he said. “Talking to some of the companies we work with, they maybe oversold and underdelivered in some respects and I think they are aware of that.”

The bottom line is that there had better be a bottom line, said Melvin Nielsen, who attended the June 23 field school.

“It’s a lot of extra expense and maybe Mother Nature is not all that friendly with you as we saw last year,” said Nielsen.

“It’s kind of wait and see. I don’t think it’s too common in my area yet, although some guys may use it on peas.”

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The University of Saskatchewan announced Wednesday it has named soil science professor Angela Bedard-Haughn as the dean for its College of Agriculture and Bioresources for a five-year term starting Aug. 15.

Raised on a family farm in northeastern Saskatchewan, Bedard-Haughn studied at the University of Saskatchewan and University of California-Davis.

As dean, she replaces animal sciences professor Mary Buhr, who has held the post since mid-2009.

Currently the college’s associate dean of research and graduate studies, and formerly department head and graduate chair in soil science, Bedard-Haughn is known for research work in wetland soils and in predictive soil mapping. She has taught field courses on soil and landscape classification at both the undergrad and graduate levels.

“We are lucky to have such an enthusiastic and engaged group of students, faculty, staff and stakeholders,” she said in Wednesday’s release. “I hope to ensure that we are providing the training and research that the community needs, both here at home and around the world.”

Her appointment follows the university’s announcement Tuesday that it will continue “primarily remote online learning” for its fall term starting in September, combined with “limited classroom, laboratory, clinical and physical instruction only where warranted and where circumstances permit.”

The university said it plans to post more information about its COVID-19 pandemic response and decision-making processes as related to academic programs and research activity “in the coming weeks.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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But the Soil Your Undies campaign has a very serious purpose: To show people that microbes are critical to soil health and, more importantly, that not all soils are healthy.

“People have found that a more biologically active soil will do a lot more damage to cotton shorts than one that has been tilled and had its microbial communities and structure shattered,” said Greg Sekulic, a Canola Council of Canada agronomist and a director with the Soil Conservation Council of Canada.

“We’ve got producers and agronomists showing off their soil health by their demolished undies.”

It’s impossible to say how many pairs of whitey tighties are being buried, but the annual event gets a lot of attention on social media, and the soil conservation council estimates 1,000 or more people participated this spring.

“This is important to us and to our industry because it’s the biggest chance we have every year to talk to all Canadians about the need for soil health and soil conservation,” said Jim Tokarchuk, the council’s executive director. “These are not issues that generally capture a lot of attention with the general population of Canada because they are so removed from the ag business. It’s a real opportunity for us.”

The council wants the public to understand that soils are living, breathing entities — and that they need protection.

“The real interesting thing is the interest we’re getting from urban audiences, which is really important to the whole cause of soil health,” said Tokarchuk.“We are definitely seeing growth in people outside the ag industry who are taking an interest in this.”

For more on the campaign, see the Programs section of www.soilcc.ca.

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The 110 monoliths are vertical cross-sections about one metre long that show soil from a variety of regions in its natural state. Long been housed at Agriculture Canada’s Lethbridge research centre, the soil monoliths have been appraised at $240,000, but are worth much more, say college officials.

“It’s priceless as a way to show our students the greater diversity of soils from a much larger region than we could visit on our own,” said Edith Olson, Lethbridge College Agriculture and Environmental Sciences instructor.

“They have practicality, which ties in beautifully with the educational goals of the college, which is presenting the strong theory, the science, and the physical learning environment so that we can actually help in the real world.”

The collection, containing eight out of the 10 official orders of soil, come from across Western Canada. The value of the collection as a teaching tool was first recognized by longtime college soils instructor Ken Perl, who has frequently taken classes to the Lethbridge research centre. He was involved in the initial talks to bring the collection to the college, a process that took many years.

“I would take students over there on field trips in our soil classification and taxonomy class,” said Perl. “It was integral to my course to show the students that soil isn’t just something you dig up and arbitrarily manipulate, it has many different classifications.

“If you stretch your imagination, soil really is a living, breathing organism like a coral reef and really just as complex.”

The history of the collection is something of a mystery. It’s believed that federal and provincial soil surveyors likely created the collection over a number of years in the 1950s and 1960s, but there is little historical documentation about the collection. The soil samples are largely from southern Alberta, but also include soils from elsewhere in the province as well as from Saskatchewan, B.C., and the Yukon Territory.

Each one is as unique as a fingerprint, and the effort that went into creating the collection was enormous.

“A considerable amount of resources, staff, labour, travel, and time would have been invested in building this collection,” said Jim Miller, a federal research scientist at Lethbridge centre. “Some of these would have been remote locations. You’ve got to travel to the sites, dig a huge soil pit and carefully cut out and excavate a large intact soil monolith.”

The process of mounting the monoliths is also arduous, as each has to be carefully placed on a backboard while preserving its physical features — a meticulous combination of art and science.

“It is a very slow and delicate process to excavate an intact soil monolith and a lot can go wrong and then you might have to start over,” said Miller. “In addition, it is a very laborious and delicate process to fill the soil pores with epoxy resin or glue back in the laboratory to ensure the soil structure remains intact and doesn’t fall apart.

Miller likens the collection to a form of taxidermy.

“A soil monolith collection is analogous to a natural history museum, but instead of preserved animals or plants, you have preserved intact soil monoliths,” he said. “Soils are not classified as species like animals and plants because there is a gradation of soil types in natural landscapes and soils are not discrete units like animals and plant species.”

To Perl, the monoliths’ value is their ability to fill in the blanks where a literal field trip — when he and his students would dig into the ground — falls short.

“We could only do one or two soil types on a field trip,” he said. “But these are fantastic because they represent all of southern Alberta and beyond.”

After taking so many classes to see the monoliths, Perl is now recognized as the resident expert on the collection.

“People would say, ‘That must get boring,’ but I would say, ‘No, every time I look at those, there’s some other detail, some value-added insight,’” he said. “It’s amazing how you can look at them in a different light and say, ‘This is what that profile is telling us, not only about the soil resource, but also the climatic and ecological conditions that shaped the soil, and in turn how the soil affected the related ecosystem.’”

The collection is now on display on the third floor of the Cousins Building, right outside of the college’s soils lab.

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“For the first time in history, we have the technology and tools to produce food in a sustainable way, yet farmers and their influencers cling to old ways and values,” said Don Lobb, an Ontario farmer and a longtime leader in the no-till and soil health movements.

“Our soil indicates that we are beyond business as usual. What action is needed to move the majority of farmers and the larger agricultural community onto the soil restoration path?”

Lobb made his call for change at the Farm Forum Event here earlier this month — a conference (now operated by Glacier FarmMedia, the parent company of this paper) that focuses on innovation but often in terms of advancing traditional agronomic practices.

However, Lobb, a prominent soil advocate since the 1980s, argued agriculture needs a radical shift in focus to make soil health the top priority.

“Productivity is slipping away in spite of crop production improvements,” said Lobb. “Soil productivity has not been lost because we farm. It has been lost because of how we farm.”

The various components of soil — organic matter, nutrients, water-holding capability, and amount of carbon — need to be in balance, and that’s not happening, he argued.

Lobb said organic matter has dropped nearly in half since 1950 (most of that in the last 15 years), and with every one per cent decrease, soil’s water-holding capacity drops by about 27,000 gallons per acre. As well, the weight of field equipment has increased by about 900 pounds a year every year since 1960 and that means more compaction, which reduces both levels of soil organisms and water infiltration.

“All of this has been happening while crop production improvements have brought real crop yield increases,” said Lobb. “Those increases have temporarily masked soil health decline.”

But that can’t go on forever, he warned.

“There’s a critical point where declining water availability and biological activity cannot support a profitable crop,” he said. “How we manage the soil determines where that critical point will be.”

But practices won’t change until attitudes do, he said.

“Will we choose change in soil and water management, and a change in our attitudes and ethics? Is it not time that soil be treated as a critical natural resource?”

Soil aggregates and tillage

The adoption of low-till or no-till practices is a positive, but most farmers don’t understand that even a little is too much, he argued.

“Tillage, like smoking, is a terminal bad habit. The more we do, the worse the outcome. Tillage destroys soil aggregates and disrupts the bioprocesses that are essential to nutrient retrieval, to carbon sequestration, and to soil aggregation. This results in loss of water, nutrients, carbon, and sediment.”

Soil aggregates — the crumbly bits of bound-together mineral and organic matter — are “our lifeline to the future,” said Lobb, citing a long list of benefits, including greater water infiltration and storage, increased nutrient levels, resistance to compaction, aeration of the root zone, and reduced erosion.

“While carbon and water are at the centre of our food production system, soil aggregates provide the most certain measure of soil health and productivity,” he said. “I will continue to harp on the importance and the role of aggregates. Aggregates are essential to healthy, productive soil.”

Restoring soil aggregates will require an end to tillage and aggressive direct seeding, said Lobb.

“There is no other way to sustainably produce food on fragile land, and we must use fragile land to satisfy the (planet’s) growing food needs.”

Fixing the crisis

But that’s only the first step to reversing soil degradation.

What’s needed is a holistic approach that considers preserving organisms, enhancing organic matter, capturing moisture, reversing compaction, and returning nutrients back to the soil, he said.

Planting a diverse crop mix and keeping the land covered is one way to do that. Incorporating livestock is another. But these changes require a change in thinking.

“Collectively, these measures can allow us to sustainably support a growing population, and we can move off that soil degradation curve — if we employ intensive, scientifically sound, and responsible soil management,” said Lobb.

“For many, all of this means real change. Change usually comes with risk.”

He managed the risk on his farm by comparing various management practices in small-scale field trials the first year he tried the no-till approach. Each trial differed in yield, and as the years went on, he found that if he changed one component, it would impact some or all of the others, “often in a chain reaction.” He spent years determining what caused his yields to rise or fall.

“Success with no till came when I assembled the best combination of practices,” he said.

“If I had simply used a prescribed formula or recipe to try no till, I would almost have certainly failed… Clearly, we need multiple years of experience to make good decisions and make valid comparisons.”

In the end, his no-till fields were outyielding his tilled land three years out of four in side-by-side comparisons, and generating 35 per cent higher profits.

“For me, the most conservation-effective practices were also the most profitable,” he said.

But every farm is different, and what worked for him may not work on other operations.

“Each of us must develop our own crop management system, and we each must make unique changes,” he said. “Change does bring risk, but it also brings opportunity… I managed risk by focusing on the details and taking time to get my system right.

“It paid, and my soil improved.”

The greater risk is doing what you’ve always done, he said.

“We know the consequence of complacency. Are we prepared to accept responsibility for no change? The choice is ours.

“We must do better. And we can do better. It’s essential to our survival on the last frontier. Soil matters, and we have work to do.”

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“It’s a great year to talk about cover crops because in order to maintain our moisture in the soil, we are going to need organic matter, which cover crops build. We are going to need cover on the soil to stop the run-off,” said Anne-Marie Bertagnolli, supervisor of the county’s community and agriculture production services.

• Read more: Specialist offers tips for grazing cover crops

The county seeded 12 varieties of cover crop on June 20 and over the next few years will be seeing how they affect nutrients, grazing regrowth, and the need for soil amendments. County officials also plan to test different ‘cocktails’ for cover crop blends.

“Historically in agriculture, we’ve become very cognizant of soil physics and soil chemistry,” said Ken Ziegler, a retired provincial beef specialist. “We have not spent a whole lot of time and effort understanding soil microbes and the whole biology that is down there.”

Understanding soil biology is critical to sustainably managing soils, he said.

“What we are doing from a soil cover perspective will invariably enhance soil biology,” said Ziegler. “We know it does, so which crops can we use that will do that well for us, and that we can harvest for our personal benefits?”

Whether land is used for annual crops, pastures, or forestry, there needs to be “a living ecosystem beneath our feet,” said Greg Paranich of Performance Seeds.

“For maximum soil health, you want to have maximum soil cover and crop residues,” he said. “That’s to lower soil surface temperatures. Keep it cooler and a more hospitable environment for all those micro-organisms we want to promote.”

This can be accomplished by planned rotational grazing and integrated pest management, as well as proper selections of plants.

“There’s not just one linear type of solution,” said Paranich. “One hec­tare of soil contains about 20 pounds of healthy micro-organisms.”

Cover crops also reduce erosion; increase soil structure and organic matter; boost water infiltration and water-holding capacity; and capture nutrients. But the mix of cover crop species matters a lot, he said.

“Some plants have nitrogen fixation, some have nitrogen scavenging. Some cover crops suppress weeds for weed control. Others reduce compaction.”

Other cover crops can be used to create livestock feed, and habitat for wildlife.

“The biggest thing is the increased crop yields year after year,” said Paranich. “We can increase that and actually increase soil health.”

Cover cropping is a system, where plants are grown in non-growth periods between crops to capture sunlight, feed the soil organisms, and sequester carbon.

“You want to capture the nutrients that are farther down and bring them up to the surface, making better use of resources,” said Paranich.

Cover crops include grasses (both warm- and cool-season varieties), brassicas (such as turnips, kales and collards), and legumes — but there’s no simple recipe for which blend to use.

“The neat part about some of the cover crops that are coming to Western Canada is that they are annual legumes,” he said. “They’re annual covers that give you the benefit of a legume without having to have a permanent cover on it.”

The county is starting small in its cover crop trials and is aiming at a two- or three-year rotational plan to begin with.

“If you’re going to do something, let’s do it right, let’s do it well, but maybe not do it over 500 acres,” said Paranich.

Producers may want to have fields of different cover crop mixes, he added.

“Ideally, having a mixture of all of them together can give you a mixture of different benefits and bring it into your soil health. The definition of that is to increase and create as much life below ground as we see above ground.”

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“Soil sampling gives you an evaluation of the nutrient levels in your soil,” said Mark Cutts of Alberta Agriculture and Forestry’s Stettler office. “If you know that you need nitrogen or phosphorus in the crop, then you can counter those when it comes time to put your blends together or get it from an agronomist.”

Soil sampling can also determine soil pH, soil solubility and organic matter, he added.

And while some producers are thinking about other soil health factors such as soil aggregation, water infiltration rates, and other attributes, it’s still a minority who are taking soil samples.

Cutts isn’t sure why that is.

“From my perspective, that information is very helpful in figuring out your requirements for the next crop,” he said. “Soil pH and organic matter is very good information to have.”

Agronomists do a fairly high number of tests, often using sampling or coring machines while many producers use hand augers. Whatever the method, it’s important to get enough samples, said Cutts.

“The key with soil sampling is to collect from representative areas of the field,” he said. You should stay away from areas in the field that are extra wet.

And, of course, you have to act on what the soil tests reveal.

“If there are samples (of fields) that are low yielding, make sure that you can figure out how to manage them,” he said.

While labs aren’t doing soil sampling that differently, there have been some changes in technology. GPS allows producers to go back to the same area of the field and sample again, which produces a more consistent dataset, he noted.

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