b'PARTNER CONTENTImproving Our Soil Health for the FutureBY: RUSSELL JONK, MCCAIN FOODS POTATO GROWER IN BRUXELLES, MAN. A t our family farm, Swansfleet, in Bruxelles, Man. quality has always been the driving force behind everything we do. Lately, that drive for quality has led us to look at what we can do to improve our soils for the long-term.Our first regenerative practices on the farm, like many of our neighbours, was to plant shoulder season cover crops. In the fall following our potato harvest, we started planting rye on dug potato fields to reduce wind and soil erosion. This didnt do a lot to protect the fields in the fall but covered the ground well for high winds in the spring. Weve also spread rye on unharvested potatoes using an aerial applicator and then letting the potato harvester incorporate the seed.This reduced the amount of tillage required to establish the rye but didnt give as nice a stand.These first conservation practices were only done to prevent erosion but as we learned later, having a green cover on the field had many other benefits.Through talking with crop advisors and other farmers, we have learned about the soil microbiome and, the more we learned, the more interested we became in how to improve our soil health overall. We had a lot of great conversations about issues we saw in the field and what we could do to remedy them. In the last few years, we have experimented with onA cover crop of rye and peas following cereal stubble and a field-scale trials of multi-species cover crops planted aheadhard frost in the fall at Swansfleet, in Bruxelles, Man. of potato production. The full season multi-species cropsPHOTO: RUSSELL JONKweve planted have included a sorghum sudan grass base with up to 10 other species such as fababeans, oats andand promote biodiversity. We are experimenting with peas. The purpose of this was to improve biodiversity andusing compost to help us reduce the amount of fertilizer soil structure, while assisting to reduce soilborne potatoneeded for growing potatoes. Were hoping to build better diseases. Full season covers are hard to justify in todaysfunctioning soils that can produce similar yields on fewer high commodity priceswe had to consider what wechemical inputs.were giving up in the budget and what we were trying toMany of the long-term goals of regenerative agriculture potentially gain. We took this opportunity to get creativeare hard to measure. One of our biggest challenges is to add biodiversity without having to give up a full yearweighing the up-front costs of cover crops and system rotation. changes with the long-term benefits of healthier soils. It More recently weve started using cover crops followingisnt always clear what is the best decision for the farm early season harvested cereals in rotation to maximize theoverall. Were trying to focus our efforts more intensely on amount of time we have the ground coveredin Manitobatargeted fields so we can see improvements quicker and we only have a short season to work with. Sometimes afterprove the formula to ourselves. Its easy to measure the cost potato harvest, there just isnt enough time to get a viableof cover crop seed and the time and labour to implement cover crop established before freeze-up. We are looking atthe different approaches that aim to improve soil health but our crop rotation as a whole and trying to reduce tillage andmore difficult to measure accurately increase in infiltration increase the time we have green cover.or microorganisms. Our next project on the farm is to try and reduce ourWere excited to see our soils improve as we find new synthetic fertilizer usage to improve the soil structureways to grow our potatoes.SPUDSMART.COM Winter 202327'