Global CA-CoP CONSERVATION AGRICULTURE COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE

for sustainable agriculture and land management


Dear Subscribers,

Please see herebelow the Solvita September Newsletter.

Apologies for any cross-posting.

Amir Kassam

Moderator

e-mail: [log in to unmask]      
URL:
www.fao.org/ag/ca

 

Conservation Agriculture is an ecosystem approach to sustainable agriculture and land management based on the practical application of locally adapted  three interlinked principles of: (i) Continuous no or minimum mechanical soil disturbance (no-till seeding/planting and weeding, and minimum soil disturbance with all other farm operations including harvesting);  (ii) permanent maintenance of soil much cover (crop biomass, stubble and cover crops); and (iii) diversification of cropping system (environmentally, environmentally and socially adapted rotations and/or sequences and/or associations involving annuals and perennials, including legumes and cover crops), along with other complementary good agricultural production and land management practices. Conservation Agriculture systems are present in all continents, involving rainfed and irrigated systems including annual cropland systems, perennial systems, orchards and plantation systems, agroforestry systems, crop-livestock systems, organic production systems and rice-based systems (more at: www.fao.org/ag/ca).



---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Woods End Laboratories/Solvita <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, Sep 5, 2018 at 3:34 PM
Subject: Solvita September Newsletter
To: Amir Kassam <[log in to unmask]>


September 2018 Newsletter
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Soil CO2 Respiration Methods in the Spotlight
Solvita is a leading test for soil CO2 respiration and is often used as a framework for comparison to other newer respiration methods. A new study compares selected long term No-Till vs conventionally managed soils across 9 regions of Oklahoma by using Solvita compared to Gas Chromatography.
Results were split to other labs running Solvita and two types of IR methods.  So far, Woods End Lab and the University of Maine have independently obtained virtually identical results for the same soils raising interesting questions about miniaturizing microbial tests ... Read full blog
Universal Soil Health?
Pitfalls lead to Progress.
Soil health testing is popular, but less popular is scoring everyone's soil against the same yardstick –  without taking account of the soil eco-region. Presently, that’s common practice with labs offering soil health tests according to Woods End Lab. A new approach offered with Woods End’s Soil Health Audit modifies the
"A summary of 1,000 soil tests covering 8 climatic zones and 9 soil orders gave the remarkable result that most farms were scoring close to their expected soil health benchmark."
Will Brinton
generalized “universal” ranking or indexing adding a calculation that takes account of the soil’s eco-physiographic zone. The result is a region-specific scaling for the test, making it more accurate.
There are in the USA 12 Soil Orders each with many sub-orders, arranged more or less vertically across multiple horizontally expressed climatic zones, making for much local variation within the same soil type. Woods End subdivides the country into ... read more
 Watch No-Till Farmer webinar with Doug Miller from Midwest Bio-Tech to learn more about the
Solvita Soil Health Suite
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