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What do you mean, increase soil fertility? (slrpnk.net)
submitted 2 years ago* by [M] to c/memes@slrpnk.net
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That's what my guy at Cargill is for!

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[–] 25 points 2 years ago (8 children)

Imagine being this condescending to professionals in a highly complicated field. Farmers know this shit, hell they helped invent it you fucking prick.

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  • [–] [S] 6 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    Don't kid yourself, there is still an assload of convention tillage and monocropping going on, at least in my neck of the woods.

    I've surveyed large swaths of agricultural land; hundreds of inspection points, and the B horizon has been completely lost due to annual tillage. In one case I had two pits 200 m away from each other. One was in the field and one was in a stand of trees they didn't clear. The field profile had maybe 15 cm of A horizon with no structure over a calcareous C. The bush profile had 50 cm of well structured A horizon, and another 20 cm of B overtop of the same calcareous C. It was beautiful.

    In another field, a guy was moldboarding... This is just one of the surveys I've been on.

    There's a lot of guys out there who know what they are doing, and they do it well, but at least in my opinion, regenerative Ag needs to catch on more. From my perspective, there seems to be resistance, though, and I'm not sure if it's from economics, generational practices, or a combination of factors.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Yeah I know this is just an AI generated meme, but people who look like this are actually pretty solar punk, in my experience. I first heard of fracking radishes from a 70 year old farmer, 15 years ago. This meme just promotes culture war bullshit.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    I know, I grew up in a farming town. One of the few reasons I accept how fucking angry rural people are is because of how the internet and urbanites treat us, it doesn't matter who I'm talking to as soon as I let my accent slip you can see their opinion drop as now they just see a country hick

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 2 years ago (2 children)

    Fracking radishes

    Wut?

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    You use super long daikon radishes to break up the soil and then disc them in. Breaks up soil naturally without plowing and acts as winter cover.

    https://www.restorationseeds.com/products/fracking-forage-radish

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 2 years ago

    Hey that's super cool!

    We looked at using a paratill that injected manure pellets behind it for the same thing, with the idea that the manure would encourage deeper rooting/long term break up. It kind of worked, but not really. It was also really labour intensive and expensive.

    Throwing something like this into your rotation would probably work a lot better given that an article I read (Raper et al 2001, I think?) found that while subsoil tillage works, you need to do it at least every 3 years; not a one time treatment like we were doing.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago*

    I saw it and just moved on because I was going to get pissed off arguing with assholes that have never seen a tractor first hand.

    We put hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of land into legume fallow and cover crops in order to increase fertility. We plan for weeks ahead of every planting season to understand soil tests and come up with strategies that get a crop off and built organic matter. We spend hundreds of thousands on equipment to reduce tillage and encourage soil biomes.

    But I guess we're still stupid fucking assholes to everyone. Kinda gotten used to the hate.

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