Page 41 - RealDirtENG2020

Livestock are a part of healthy soil
Healthy, living soil is critical for growing productive crops in a sustainable way—and livestock play an important part. Farmers apply manure to the soil to put natural fertilizer back into the ground, and sheep or cattle graze grasses and cover crops. It’s also common for farmers who don’t have livestock of their own to buy manure from neighbouring farmers to put on their land.
A living ground cover
One way by which farmers keep their soil healthy is by growing cover crops—plants like clover, rye, sun ower, radish, and others that farmers plant in the eld after they’ve harvested their main crop. Their job? Just as their name says: to keep the ground covered. This step reduces soil erosion, keeps moisture in the soil, and keeps nutrients from fertilizer and manure from being washed away into streams, lakes and rivers.
Some farmers use cover crops as animal feed by letting livestock graze in those elds in the fall.
A long-term approach to soil health
Part of sustainable farming means leaving behind productive land for future generations. Some farmers have adopted an approach to soil health referred to as regenerative agriculture87. Here, the emphasis is put on taking steps to improve soil health over time. Key principles include minimizing soil disturbance, integrating livestock to improve soil health, maximizing crop diversity and soil coverage to improve the water and mineral cycle, and reducing the impact of climate change through more carbon sequestration. During photosynthesis, plants release oxygen and remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This captured carbon dioxide can be stored in organic matter in the soil—a process called carbon sequestration88.
Jasmin Bautz
Career Pro le
Sheep & Beef Farmer
Stuart Chutter
Stuart Chutter knows the value of diversity both on and off the farm. As a gay man working in agriculture, he is aware of the stereotypes that are placed on farmers and rural communities. “Just like there is no one way to farm, there is no one way to be a farmer,” said Chutter.
He raises sheep and cattle on his farm near Killaly, Saskatchewan, but if you ask him what he farms, he would tell you it’s ‘soil’.
He practices regenerative agriculture, which focuses on soil health, something that Chutter believes is vital to raising healthy animals and producing high quality protein.
His animals graze a mix of forage species including oats, turnips, millet, radishes, clovers and sun owers. But regenerative agriculture isn’t about a speci c set of rules says Chutter, “It’s a way of thinking that focuses on soil health as a complex system, and how plant and livestock species have an important role to play in that system.”
Chutter believes that diversity in agriculture will make it more resilient and better positioned
to attract new people to the industry. “In my experience, rural people and farmers make world-class neighbours and allies.”
Photo courtesy of Jenna Loveridge Photography
Chapter 6: Environment, climate 41 change and sustainable farming
Planting radish in strips, also known as “biostrips”, loosens the soil where crops will be planted next spring without using mechanical tillage.
Cameron Ogilvie