Sep 20, 2024

Earth-friendly practices reinvigorate land, aid grower efficiencies

Trent Graybill is a regenerative agronomist and co-founder and owner of Soilcraft Inc. The Zillah, Washington-based agronomic crop consulting service, works with growers on changing their farming practices to be less harmful to the environment.

Despite lacking a real definition or regulation of the phrase, regenerative agriculture is becoming better known globally among growers as well as consumers, Graybill explained.

Regenerative agricultural practices renew degraded systems and involve growing healthier plants by taking proactive steps through improving soil health which reduces pest and weed pressures.

The willingness and hunger of growers to adopt new ways to solve old problems is much greater than in the past, Graybill said.

“A lot of producers are interested in regenerative agriculture,” he said. “Because a lot of things that they’re doing, obviously, have worked. But some things aren’t working as well as they used to. There are a lot of issues when it comes to resistance with certain diseases and insects and weeds and different things, that the same old chemistry is not quite cutting it like it used to. They know that it’s not necessarily good. But, what other options do they have? Because of that, farmers are becoming more open to try new methods, new ways of looking at some of the same old problems.”

Boosting efficiencies

With lower returns and higher operating and input costs, grower efficiencies become even more important. If products possessing less variability increase soil efficiency and can reduce the number of times growers must go across fields, regenerative practices can make a big difference to grower’s bottom lines, Graybill said.

Regenerative practices also help improve the quality of crops to where if they store longer, the crops can be sold into other or better markets that pay premiums, said Graybill, a certified crop advisor (CCA) and agricultural pest control adviser (PCA) who works on crop fertility products including organic, biological and conventional. “It starts with the soil,” Graybill said. “As we regenerate and build that up from a biological and mineral standpoint, there are fewer inputs that have to go down the road upfront.”

Because soil that has been beaten up for so many years must be repaired, adopting regenerative practices may not initially reduce the need for a necessary product and may not always be accomplished for little cost, he said.
As growers learn and understand more, they realize some of the early agronomic practices they thought were good aren’t, requiring them to take a step back and consider how they can change things.

New tools

New testing methods, including sap analysis and biological soil analysis, can help growers identify deficiencies or toxicities that cause problems growers face, Graybill said.

Through remediating and buffering some of the longtime cropping system practices, growers can reduce chemical usage. As growers begin to see some improvement in practices, for example, including adding carbon to nitrogen applications, the improved efficiencies may mean growers can apply less nitrogen. However, such practices may not save them money, but instead, increase expenses. Through reducing input application levels, growers could gain more out of the change, he said.

As healthier plants with less disease emerge, growers can add different types of compounds into their foliar sprays or fertilizer mixes, which can lower disease in a biological manner rather than through chemistry. That can lead to experimenting with practices including cover cropping — measures that don’t necessarily remake grower systems, but in the long run can improve crops, Graybill said. Regenerative practices can also ultimately lead to growers replacing some of their chemical or pesticide inputs with biological inputs, he said.

“The biological world is very exciting because now we realize that these germs, so to speak, that we’ve been taught for most of our lives that are all bad and aren’t really necessary aren’t all bad,” Graybill said. “It’s more of an imbalance between the good ones and bad ones. So we begin to experiment with and utilize biologicals, microorganisms, bacteria and fungi and the compounds they produce because these organisms are responsible for producing all kinds of antibiotics, growth hormones and minerals. We realize we can use these natural organisms in cropping systems to increase or enhance and/or outcompete a lot of the so-called pathogenic organisms.”

To help growers start regenerative practices and explore advanced management concepts through a biological paradigm, Soilcraft has scheduled its sixth annual regenerative agriculture conference Jan. 21-23 in Coeur D’ Alene, Idaho. More information is available at soilcraft.com/soilcraft-educational-conference.

Written by Doug Ohlemeier, Assistant Editor