Sustainable farming Small farms fit References Small family farms are the backbone of a community, a nation, and of society as a whole. A landscape of family farms is.

One of the main images most Americans have of farming is of a plow being pulled by a tractor (or in more antiquated images livestock) turning the land. Technically speaking this act is referred to as: the preparation of soil for planting by mechanically turning it over. Today, most global farmland is prepared in this way and has been for several millennia. But tillage has many side effects that injure both farmland and the environment. In the push to make farming more sustainable, an increasing number of conservation-minded farmers have turned to what is called no-till agriculture. But the technique is not being universally embraced.

Because of the entrenched views of many organic farmers, the group one would think would be most embracing of this tool are shunning it. In contrast, farmers that are growing genetically modified crops are its biggest proponents, and it's helped contribute to a sizable reduction in the release of greenhouse gases in farm fields. How did this odd situation come about? Tillage is primarily a form of weed control. When a farmer plows, depending on the crop, as much as a foot deep of soil is overturned, leading to a loss of 90 percent of the crop residue (the decomposing plant from the previous year) from the top soil. The benefit of this high turnover is a disruption of the lifecycle of any pre-existing weeds and pests. Tillage is labor intensive, and often a plot of land needs to be tilled several times before planting commences.

The practice damages soil and leaves it exposed to erosion, particularly by wind and water. The detriments of tillage were on display during the Dust Bowl (from 1930 - 1939), a time in which severe windstorms and droughts combined with eroding topsoil to ruin crops and farms. This period of hardship for many midwestern farmers have led to some to rethink tillage based farming. How no-till works No-till farming, a type of soil conservation farming, prepares the land for farming without mechanically disturbing the soil. The previous year’s crops, referred to as the crop residue, are chopped off and left on the topsoil. A no-till planter then only slightly punctures the ground to inserts a seed. To overcome the lost advantages of herbicide and pesticide that tillage bring, safe and effective herbicides are applied to the land before and after planting.

There are countess benefits to the land, the farmer and the environment from adopting a no-till system. First and foremost, by leaving the soil mostly undisturbed and leaving high levels of crop residues behind, soil erosion is almost eliminated through no-till farming. The USDA’s National Resources Inventory credits the 43 percent reduction in soil erosion in the United States between 1982 and 2003 to the increase in conservation tillage. The utilization of crop residues in no-till farming also drastically increases water infiltration and therefore retention (i.e. Less evaporation) by the soil. This means there is less runoff of contaminated (by fertilizers, pesticides, etc.) water, as well as a reduction in the amount of watering necessary for a given crop. Some estimates suggest crop residues provide as much as 2 inches of additional water to crops in late and the Natural Resources Conservation Service states that no-till farmed soils have a water penetration rate of 5.6 inches per hour, twice as much as for conventionally tilled This makes no-till farming an excellent opportunity for drought stricken areas like California.

Furthermore, because the soil is not being frequently agitated, no-till farming promotes biodiversity in and around the soil. Organisms like mycorrhizal fungi, which make commensal (i.e. Benefit both the plant and fungus) associations with crop roots, and earthworms, which increase the water retention of the soil, are allowed to flourish through no-till. The farmer also significantly benefits by the adoption of no-till farming, in particular through a reduction in labor. Conventional tillage practices require sometimes as many as five passes over the land with a plow, however, no-till requires just a single pass—to plant the seeds.

An estimate by Purdue University calculates that a farmer will save 225 hours of labor per year for a 500 acre farm; the equivalent of four 60-hour work weeks saved a. Another study estimated a reduction in labor by as much as 50 percent compared to tillage. Climate change benefits The benefits in reducing farming's global warming footprint are immense.

Fuel costs saved by running the tractor less, one estimate suggests, no-till can reduce fuel usage by as much as 80 percent. In addition to the reduced carbon emissions from mechanical equipment used in no-till farming, there are several other benefits to the environment. No-till farming, often when paired with (a technique in which a crop is planted for the express purpose of soil health), reduces carbon emissions through greater sequestration of carbon dioxide by the soil. Over half of the potential from farmlands comes from conservation tillage.

Carbon dioxide isn’t the only greenhouse gas reduced by no-till, the release of nitrous oxide, a very dangerous greenhouse gas, is also reduced through no-till. As more nitrogen is immobilized in the soil there is a reduced need for the application of. Although, the benefits of no-till farming are robust, there has yet to be widespread use of the technique. As of 2009, only 35 percent of U.S.

Farmland had at least some dedicated land to no-till practices, almost all of it in farms growing GMOs. Furthermore, the USDA reports that no-till practices are increasing at just 1.5 percent and only 10 percent of farms are considered.

Why haven't all farmers adopted it? No-till has some. For starters some crops need to be planted on tilled lands, such as root crops (e.g. There are also obstacles to adopting the practice, in particular start up costs which include new no-till equipment (the planters) and chemical herbicides. A steep learning curve is also an obstacle as no-till practices can breed different pests, infections and weeds than those that are found in traditional till based farming. However, the major argument (often advanced by the movement) against no-till farming is that it increases the use of chemical herbicides and pesticides. Tilling the land is mechanically biocidal and no till must compensate by using chemicals.

'[W]hile these practices can effectively meet farmers’ soil conservation and work reduction goals, they rely on herbicides for weed control, and as such, cannot be directly adopted for use in organic production systems,' the Rodale Institute, one of the leading organic research centers and an organization virulently opposed to genetically engineered crops. But this is a simplistic characterization and evaluation of the technique. Scientific advances in agriculture have reduced the need for the dependence on the most toxic (e.g. Organophosphate and carbamate) to humans and replaced them with much safer options. Moreover, the total amount of herbicides is trending down and the total environmental impact due to herbicides has decreased. And the use of insecticides has all but been eliminated, in some instances, with the introduction of genetically engineered Bt crops, which incorporates a natural insecticide that organic farmers have been spraying on their crops for decades. Per acre toxicity of chemical usage on American farms (EIQ or Environmental Impact of Pesticides) has dropped since the introduction of genetically engineered crops almost 20 years ago. Based on research by PG Economics published in 2013 in the journal, and confirmed by numerous other studies.covering the period 1996–2011, GM traits have contributed to a significant reduction in the environmental impact associated with insecticide and herbicide use on the areas devoted to GM crops.

Since 1996, the use of pesticides on the GM crop area was reduced by 473.7 million kg of active ingredient (an 8.9 percent reduction), and the environmental impact associated with herbicide and insecticide use on these crops, as measured by the EIQ indicator, fell by 18.3 percent. The volume of herbicides used in GM corn crops also decreased by 193 million kg (1996–2011), a 10.1 percent reduction, while the overall environmental impact associated with herbicide use on these crops decreased by a significantly larger 12.5 percent. This highlights the switch in herbicides used with most GM herbicide-tolerant (HT) crops to active ingredients with a more environmentally benign profile than the ones generally used on conventional crops. Even with the reduction of harmful chemicals that science has provided, genetically engineered crops represent a way to reduce chemical reliance in no-till farming. A in the Journal of Agrobiotechnology Management & Economics found that herbicide tolerant (HT) soybeans have aided farmers' adoption of no-till practices. Furthermore, farms that use both no till and HT soybeans have a significant reduction in chemical herbicide use.

There is also evidence that practices like and the crop residue themselves can reduce weed germination from Despite these misconceptions about no-till farming, research into the technique continues and is expanding to many areas of the country. In Washington state, for example, where wheat is grown on fairly arid land, a into farming of wheat there has shown that no-till matches (and possibly ) yields compared to traditional tillage. Although, we may not be able to convert all cropland to no-till farming, the more we do the better it is for the environment, the farmer, and the land. Nicholas Staropoli is the associate director of GLP and director of the Epigenetics Literacy Project. He has an M.A. In biology from DePaul University and a B.S.

In biomedical sciences from Marist College. Follow him on twitter. Are organic growers committed to no-till or do they just not give a hoot? Unless an organic grower has a little garden of 10 acres or so instead of a farm (hundreds of acres or more), I cannot see how an organic farmer could possibly do no-till. A thousand workers getting crap wages hand-picking weeds? Would really love to hear some realistic no-till methodologies from some organic farmers here. And I mean farmers, not gardeners.

And burning weeds does not count; that’s horrible for the environment. Other no-till methods, organic guys?

Your point of view is based upon ignorance. Show me the “GMO-ness” in a corn kernel or soybean. Why aren’t you railing to see the entire genome of what you’re eating? You deserve to know all the “A’s”, “T’s”, “G’s” and “C’s” that you’re eating, right? It would take a really big sticker on your produce, but you deserve to know, right? Since you’re so goddam smart How many genes do you think are in a corn plant?

Are the number of genes in a corn plant more or less than what’s in your own bod? Where did those genes come from? If I buy a corn hybrid that has resistance to Gray Leafspot or Northern Corn Leaf Blight, you deserve to know that, right? How does that change the, “A’s”, “T’s”, “G’s” and “C’s”? What if my corn hybrid has less NCLB resistance in its genome and I use a strobylurin fungicide? Do you think you deserve to know that? How does that fungicide affect the, “A’s”, “T’s”, “G’s” and “C’s”?

Or does it affect them at all? What about Goss’ Wilt? That’s a bacterial infection.

What is your right to know in that case? Ewwwcorn with a bacterial infection. Sounds gross. Don’t you have a right to know? What is the point of just picking the cob? If he means picking the ear intact, certainly there is a machine.

It is called a corn picker. It picks the ears whole with cob, kernels, and husk intact. We had a 2-row corn picker on our farm.

It had no grain storage; we had to pull a trailer behind it and the corn ears were shot from an elevator chute into the trailer. I often had to ride on the trailer and keep the ears spread out so they didn’t all pile up in the center of the trailer. If we wanted shelled corn we had to hand husk it and then shell it with a hand-cranked sheller mounted on the side of a wooden box. The sheller would take one ear at a time, grind the kernels off the ear, and spit the cob out the side. Then there is today’s more common combine that picks and shells the corn so that the kernels are harvested and the cobs and husks are discarded out the back of the combine. We called it a sweet corn harvester or a sweet corn picker.

Nothing fancy in the naming! Even a standard combine picks the corn on the ear & then moves the ears to the back of the combine where machinery then shells the dry grain off the cob.

Take out the machinery to shell the dry grain and you have an ear corn picker. And a lot of old timers and farmers out east (Pennsylvania) still harvest dry dent corn on the ear and store it on the cob for cattle feed.

You certainly can harvest corn on the ear! From the article: “Although, the benefits of no-till farming are robust, there has yet to be widespread use of the technique.

As of 2009, only 35 percent of U.S. Farmland had at least some dedicated land to no-till practices, almost all of it in farms growing GMOs. Furthermore, the USDA reports that no-till practices are increasing at just 1.5 percent and only 10 percent of farms are considered “continuously no-till”.” So apparently the majority of all U.S.

Farmers “reject” no-till. But rather than delve into the practices and choices of the majority of all farmers, the article chooses to attack organic farmers (who comprise less than 1% of farm operators and farm acreage). And it does so with absolutely no evidence cited that organic farming practices are actually doing a worse job than non-organic farmers at soil conservation. The Rodale Institute did pioneer work in “organic” (i.e. Herbicide-free) no-till systems – this work continues to be picked up, refined, and adapted by a number of farmers, universities, and research institutions across North America. And there are a whole range of soil-conserving technologies and techniques between clean, deep-tillage and pure no-till that continue to be adapted on farms of all types, organic and conventional. We could talk about all this, and possibly even advance our understanding and level of knowledge on these issues, but if you’d rather continue to throw rocks at organic farmers and organizations (and each other) with ad hom attacks and guilt-by-association smear campaigns, have at it.

Rob, I think the issue is the environmental and carbon benefits if no till agriculture. If there are organic practices that address these specific issues as regards tillage, then let’s discuss them. This article was one authors analysis. We’d welcome another perspective. Could you write it up or suggest someone else write it up to balance the scales.

The editorial @pages” are wide open to all points of view. I think the other point here is that the opposition to synthetic pesticide use by the organic standards comes across as an ideological conviction rather than a sustainability commitment.

Shouldn’t the goal be sustainability and not an arbitrary support fir or against a particular method based on rules agreed to–without necessarily considering what is ecologically best in each unique situation? Hi Jon, Thanks for the comments. To address your last points first, I think that Marc Brazeau and I covered much of this ground a few months ago in posts on GLP, although more exploration of the organic standards as ideology versus sustainability commitment is certainly needed. As you well know, I’m doing my best to offer my perspective on important topics while meeting the rest of my personal and professional commitments. I’ll add these ideas to the list.

For now, here’s a link to some older reflections on tillage in a slightly different context: •. What kind of break would you like, Joe?

You said “No-till is just one reduced-tillage method.” I said “And there are a whole range of soil-conserving technologies and techniques between clean, deep-tillage and pure no-till that continue to be adapted on farms of all types, organic and conventional.” So we appear to be in complete agreement. I didn’t quote Rodale – I made a factual statement about their activities. That would only appear to damage my credibility with those who put more stock in logical fallacies than facts and data. To which I would say “those who matter don’t mind and those who mind don’t matter.” Personally speaking, I split-apply N to my vegetables using a fish-based fertilizer applied via drip irrigation (resulting in water conservation and nutrient delivery direct to the crop plants).

Field crop farmers have the option of injecting liquid manure as a side-dress, or using liquid or solid compost-based products: I recommended a couple of options to an organic corn farmer just the other day. “I said “And there are a whole range of soil-conserving technologies and techniques between clean, deep-tillage and pure no-till that continue to be adapted on farms of all types, organic and conventional.” And how many organic corn and soybean farmers are using strip-till, Rob? “I didn’t quote Rodale – I made a factual statement about their activities. That would only appear to damage my credibility with those who put more stock in logical fallacies than facts and data. To which I would say “those who matter don’t mind and those who mind don’t matter.” And if the Rodale Institute had anything useful to offer, they’d publish in peer-reviewed journals.

But they don’t. Maybe you can tell me why. “ I split-apply N to my vegetables using a fish-based fertilizer applied via drip irrigation” And I’m sure the fish that gave their lives were organic fish, caught by organic fishermen and processed by organic fertilizer processors, right?

“Field crop farmers have the option of injecting liquid manure as a side-dress” Not when there is any concern about federal law or for the customer, Rob. “Raw manure requires an interval of 120 days between application and crop harvest, where the edible portion of the crops destined for human consumption are in contact with soil, and 90 days for crops whose edible portion does not have direct contact with the soil surface or soil particles (24).” •. You’re dancing and backpedaling more and more, Rob. Doesn’t matter.

Organic Nitrogen production can never exceed organic manure production. Which is about 8% of animal waste. Too bad for you that 23% of U.S. Pork is produced in Iowa.

So, I’ll always be able to buy swine manure for less than you. In fact, I don’t usually pay for the pig poo, just the application.

And those little piggys made their poo from GMO soybeans and corn that I grew. Fleece your customers as long as you can, Rob. You can’t fight the math. Probably won’t see much of this in the real world, due to poor plant health. There was a study out of California regarding high refractometer/Brix (as a measure of photosynthetic capacity) reading of plants (in orchards) and reduced insect pressure, it concluded there was no correlation between sugar reading and insect pressure, however the study failed to find plants that had a Brix reading over 10. Theory is after 14 brix there should be no/minimal insect damage.

In the real world I’ve compared within a crop (lentils, peas, canola, durum, winter wheat and alfalfa), heavily damaged plants lightly damaged plants and non-damaged plants, and there definitely is a measureable difference in Brix. The highest reading I’ve come across is 10 in an alfalfa sample in crops surrounding our area. I firmly believe there is merit in the belief a high brix reading translates into a healthy and insect/disease proof plant. Haven’t done any sap pH comparisons yet. Obviously, there’s not going to be any one solution.

What really interests me is the question “how much total N (as an “external input”) is needed for agriculture?” I’m starting to hear conventional ag researchers suggest that maintaining high levels of organic matter and high-functioning soil biota can practically eliminate the need for N-fertilizer. Even in corn crops. We’re just starting to recognize the potential for soil biology to supply a lot more N than we’ve traditionally given it credit for (beyond ENR from OM and legume-fixation). Are we talking about actual fixing of atmospheric nitrogen or releasing already fixed nitrogen in the organic matter left over from the harvesting (which would reduce losses but would still need to be replaced)? I ask this because, from what I read, fixing nitrogen is an expensive proposition for any organism, requiring a large share of its energy budget. Why would free living bacteria with the capability fix any more than what they, themselves, need and where would they get the energy to do so? I am considering converting my dairy farm to organic after farming no-till for at least 10 years now.

I love the benefits of no-till and it has been my biggest obstacle to going organic. The soil is so important to me that at one point I thought if I went organic I’d put the whole farm into grass and buy in my grain needs. In fact, that’s still one of my options.

The other option is minimum tillage using a rototiller just before planting seed. I would only go in 2 inches or so to kill the previous crop.

Aside from pasture and alfalfa rotations in my fields. I would mostly need to terminate a crop when going from triticale to forage sorghum. I was wondering what others thought about this since this is a post on organic versus no-till. Show me the data, guys. Prove to me that organic farming is ruining the soil. Prove that my soil test results are lying to me. Provide links to studies that refute ones like this that show “Enhanced top soil carbon stocks under organic farming” Matt and I were exchanging ideas, and I offered an explanation to Joe’s question about using a rototiller on a farm and not a garden.

When you can provide the evidence to back your accusations (and maybe find the courage to post using your real names), we can talk some more. As I said before, I simply answered Joe’s question. I’ve never advocated rototilling as the one and only answer (in fact, I presented Matt with a number of alternate suggestions). Having said that, there’s a world of difference between terminating a solid-seeded crop with a 2″ deep tiller pass at the correct speed, and pulverizing mostly bare garden soil to a depth of 6 or 8 inches with a walk-behind tiller. Just about any tool can either enhance or damage soil health – it depends on the skill of the user, not the tool itself. Hi Matt, A farmer I know built a machine with overlapping, wide flat sweeps that ran about 2″ deep to terminate clover in the fall. Others have switched to vertical tillage machines.

Timing would be critical on your shallow tillage to get a good kill, but if you’re going into sorghum you’re likely to do well – any volunteer triticale will be of minimal concern, especially once the sorghum gets established. The other option would be to graze the triticale really hard (or mow very close to the ground), then plant the sorghum with a no-till drill: assuming you’re doing this early summer, the sorghum is going to be much better suited to fast germination and growth at this point than the triticale. (A slightly off-topic aside – from a profitability standpoint, you’re much better off producing as much of your own grain needs as you can (assuming you have the land and equipment): unlike in the conventional sector, the market price for organic grain is going to exceed your costs of production the majority of the time.) •. Thanks for the reply Rob.

To the others, comments like you guys are giving don’t help. They divide the organic versus conventional sector. I think both are important to the future of Ag.

Organic has it’s problems like JoeF and hyperzombie stated. But organic thinks outside the box sometimes. Organic promotes crop rotation and crop diversity more than conventional. On the other hand conventional has it’s problems. It’s just corn and soybeans.

Whenever the price of those two crops is down, the farmers complain to everyone that we need more ethanol, exports, etc. But conventional has it’s benefits, it isn’t bound by ideals or ‘moral’ boundaries. Conventional promotes no-till which organic can only match with continuous grassland. It also has less paperwork and isn’t guided totally by people who may have never set foot on a farm. Rob, you stated the reasons I am using sorghum.

It canopies faster and therefore would control weeds. I won’t grow organic corn because I refuse to cultivate the soil multiple times with wide rows like corn. I agree with hyperzombie that the rototiller isn’t ideal, and if I can no-till into triticale stubble with sorghum I’d certainly do it without the rototiller. Rob, your comments on the grain. My 10 year average for corn is 110bu/acre. I don’t have the best land and rain is hit or miss. (therefore no-till is perfect for my farm) I would buy in grain because I can use that land to support more cows.

At $1000+ profit per cow, I don’t think it would be profitable to grow corn that would sell for a profit of $1000 per acre. My yield would certainly decrease. There are several financial benchmarks used in the dairy industry. Cost/CWT is on very common benchmark because it is where the rubber hits the road. Net income per cow is a common benchmark especially for financial accounting and statements for bank loans because it captures return on investment for the cattle, a major asset.

If I were reviewing a dairy farm I would probably use some more granular data like a standardized 305 day production per cow, feed cost/cwt, labor cost/cwt etc. There are dozens of financial and production benchmarks used in the dairy industry and it depends on how deep you go and whether you are making financial decisions or management decisions. Long term or short term. How about the damage to soil caused by the pesticides used in conventional farming, is that no concern of yours? Maybe because you are less aware of this it does not bother you. Synthetic pesticides do cause soil erosion, as you should be aware. They also cause low nutrients and this all means one thing; low yields, less money.

And this is not to mention the wildlife and other environmental impacts. Let alone the health of people that consume these in their final form. You’ll just continue to have weak soil and weaker crops, year in year out, eventually. Organic farming also results in 30% less energy use. Anyway, the choice is your but in the end it will eventually result in negative consequences, not just for others and the environment, but your pocket too. Every point you make is pure hype. You think we’re stupid, that we have less yields and less money??

Have you ever talked to a farmer? (I know the answer; your arrogance stands in the way of your desire to acquire knowledge) Your info (from an organic source; yawn — how totally original) about energy use is just bullcrap. You don’t have sense, but your stereeotyped shoot-from-the-hip responses are very “common” among those who don’t care to find out what biotech farming is about. I repeat: Talk to a farmer.

Actually, hyperzombie is right. I’m still in the process of penciling things out but it’s looking very good. My style of dairy farming has gotten close to the organic way of dairy farming. I still use herbicide, fertilizers and antibiotics mostly for mastitis infections. I’ve been working on reducing my fertilizer costs by growing legume cover crops for forage harvest and timing my manure applications better. My organic matter has increased from less than 3% in 2007 to 6% last fall.

Meanwhile I upped my 10 year corn average from 100bu to 110bu considering 10 years of corn on corn. Basically my main obstacles are the herbicide and antibiotics.

If I reduce my milk output a little I should be able to reduce my mastitis cases. It then comes down to the herbicide which is why I’ve commented on this site. I could go all grass and buy in my energy (corn, barley, etc). All grass would be great environmentally, but I’d have lower yields than forage sorghum and small grain double crops.

As you all might be able to tell, I try to look at the good and bad for both organic and conventional. For my farm and my management style, it looks like organic will pay without adding labor. For many dairy farms out there it likely won’t pay because their management style would have to change drastically. I’m in the Bux-Mont area of PA. I hardly garden, much less farm.

But there are dozens of farms within my cycling distance so i get to have a very cursory look at how the corn is doing. (Amazing this year, so far!) I’m beginning to understand why you’re looking at organic and why it might work for you. If you can’t competitively grow your own feed (i.e. For less than what you could buy it for) for your cows, why bother? I guess the price differential for you, then, for buying organic feed as compared to conventionally growing your own is less than for the average dairy farmer, while you’ll still get the same premium.

I guess, going totally to grass will cut down on your time too? Am i on the right track or am i just smoking weed? You use crop rotation and allow fields to rest. Plant other foods to restore the nutrients and quality of soil. Organic farming is more than tilling and no synthetic pesticides. Studies that have been extensive show organic food is in fact far more sustainable than thought, and can and will indeed feed the whole world. Studies that shows this take into account population growth for the next 25-75 years.

Organic food is something we should be looking at more objectively, instead of applying the false science junk that biotech industry funds to discredit organic foods, farming techniques. Why would biotech companies still lag decades or centuries being nature? They do, because they have to select genes from wild strains of crops for drought and flood resistance, and other climate and environmental change, yet still fail to have the performance of natural and wild strains. They admit to this. The G7 countries say they are committed to phasing out fossil fuels by 2100. So now is the time to transition to organic farming.

We have no need for synthetic petrochemical pesticides, they do more harm than good to our health, wildlife and the climate. Intensive and factory farming is the worlds number one polluter, globally. If we are to make this world sustainable and meet pollution levels then we will need to phase out all factory and intensive farming we have seen since the green revolution – that has been a great disaster for all concerned. And a return to organic farming, with more managed and better organised methods of implementing the techniques. Use nature as the technology and work with it, not against it. That way we can prevent pest resistance, soil erosion, disease, nutrient hold up in soil that prevent crops from getting nutrients which is caused by pesticides, prevent disease and more.

Organic farming can and does exactly this, when done correctly. The science supports organic farming, otherwise there would be no need at all to spend hundreds upon hundreds of millions funding and sponsoring campaigns, special interest groups, bribing officials, manipulating their own data for studies and selecting the results they desire by design, this is not science, yet this is what they have been caught red handed doing for decades and exposed by courts of law. No wonder why they have a hate for organic and spend hundreds of millions in attempt to slow the popularity. I have seen the websites of “large operations.” A few hundred acres max.

I am talking about real farming, not gardening. You got a website showing one of these methods? “Green manure” leads to even more e.coli and salmonella.

“Mechanical pickers” — just how is that an alternative to tilling for weed control? Flame killers?? You really think that’s sustainable and good for the soils, runoff into water, and air? Scorching everything in the topsoil? You have a lot to learn about protecting the soil, water, and air, buddy. “Democracy” my butt.

Go back and try again and post something that doesn’t make me wet my pants laffing. Check out Gabe Browwn, Ken Lang and jeff royer. Comical to suggest that organic farmers are a measurable cause of soil degradation. Heavy tillage conventional agriculture is undeniably common. I love the no till idea. No denying the many benefits but – the big but – in the conventional world, it typically only works when you apply pass after pass of toxic substances to the crop. I think to have a meaningful discussion, gmo crop production’s contribution to the human food chain needs to be added into the mix.

Corn to ethanol would be 40+% of the U.S. Corn acreage that could grow something more meaningful. It seems the fetish with corn is what causes a disproportionate amount of the degradation, no til/conventional or organic. It’s a plant that requires early planting, late harvesting, unnatural levels of nutrients and makes cover cropping challenging relative to other crops.

Humorous to hear people talk of corn on corn or soy on soy rotations. Somewhere in history the word rotation evolved out of the word round. A six crop rotation gives a bumpy hexagon wheel ride. A corn on corn “rotation” gives a flat line.

Some thought that the world was flat. How could anyone have denied the obvious. The concept held true for so many years until knowledge and experience demonstrated otherwise. Crazy idea but could perhaps a rotation make pesticides and herbicides an unnecessary cost of production?

A farmer that has built their business plan on a two or three crop “rotation” is not sustainable regardless of science’s work arounds to maintain unnatural situations. Long term realities are easily ignored due to our relatively short lifespan. To the guys who get special priority at the equipment dealerships because they wear out lots of equipment and drop a few million a year – why? Who really thinks that they maximize the return on capital growing GMO corn or soy on anything arable.

If the goal is net – that’s great, grow non GMO or organic, if the goal is to max gross, well – continue to think others are messed up and you’re the critical link in feeding the world. There will always be Walmart customers but are they really the target market to make your business work? You can have your opinion and you sure do have one heck of a strong opinion here, but I still continue to disagree with you and that is based upon clear thinking and evidence. No matter how much you try to make fun of me and the millions of other people who know that clean food is good food, you still going to find that there’s a market for organic produce simply because people want good food.

And they know that the industrial stuff is crap. And you just wait and see if there is a GMO wheat coming out, then the organic we share will increase greatly. People don’t want GMOs and people don’t want glyphosate especially. People do not trust the chemical industry is assurances that it’s just fine and safe and just move on move on. People actually are skeptical and realize that they’ve been lied to in the past and they’re probably being lied to right now. Of course there will always be a sliver of market share for organic and nonGMO, just as for quack remedies, nutritional supplements, rhinoceros horn, ponzi schemes, astrology, scientology, all that esoteric mumbo jumbo. And, as we all know, there will always be frauds, phonies and imposters ready at hand to delude and profit from the gullible.

You know the type; conniving, sneaking, dishonest, preaching, beseeching, whining phony baloney evangelists stuffed full of themselves to the point of burstingyeah, you of all people know the type, don’t you, I mean you do look in the mirror from time to time, eh? So what are you today Tinkler?

Still pretending to be a nail bender or is it maybe a farmer again, or maybe a CIA operative, maybe an Olympic bobsledder? You will understand if we place no trust or value in anything you say, ’cause it’s all baloney and all subject to editing with a few keystrokes. Troll on Tinkler, troll on!

It’s more than a sliver and it’s based upon very sound decision making. It’s not snake oil to want food without toxic chemicals in it. Of course the agrochemical industry would want you to think that it’s foolish, right? They have even invented the term chemophobia to make it sound as if it is silly to have concerns about specific toxic chemicals like atrazine.

That where it is actually the fine work of one of the industry propagandists, Jon Entine. It’s quite interesting how a very well organized group of public relations and propaganda experts have come together to communicate to the public their version of reality in regard to agrochemicals. Wrong yet again, Tinkler! You say organic food is “food without toxic chemicals in it”, that’s your claim? Oh, you know better than that.

During the past 5 years when organic produce has been tested for pesticide residues invariably 40-50% of it has come back showing detectable pesticide residue, and of those about 4% are illegal residues. Wow, that’s nearly half of organic produce with pesticide on it!

How’s your definition of the term chemophobia working for you right about now, dude? Now watch and learn, Tinkler. Here’s how you link a citation to backup a statement — just like this right here: See how easy that was! I don’t make up nonsense and then have to implore people to trust me. Nope, I direct them right to the source where they can read it for themselves. You really should try it some time, Tinkler.

It’s relatively painlessif you’re not a fraud. Oh, one other thing you should have told people — you should also have informed them that some of the really nasty primitive organic pesticides that are commonly sprayed on their organic produce aren’t included in the USDA pesticide residue survey, really icky stuff like sulfur, copper compounds, mineral oil.

So, when we recognize 40-50% of organic food has pesticide residues we’re really low-balling the extent of the issue, it’s way more than that really. But instead, Tinkler, you lied (sigh, as usual) and told people organic has no toxic chemicals in it. Shame on you, man. They are indeed competitive in the marketplace because they make a product of higher quality and greater desirability, because people know that good food takes a bit more work and effort and does not magically appear on the ground. Chemical weed control is cheaper than holistic weed control, but the result is food with chemicals in it. And glyphosate is a systemic herbicide and is completely embedded within the food crap and is not washed off, unlike people sometimes claimed, people like Kevin Folta who would say anything to defend the industry even if it’s counterfactual.

I am of the understanding that anaerobic soils (>300 psi penetrometer measurement) are the ideal environment harbouring disease, toxin producing and denitrification related organisms. Anaerobic conditions favor fermentation (alcohol, methane, formaldehyde, cyanide, etc.) and sterilization of beneficial soil biology. Anaerobic soils are prone to erosion & drought due to the inability of water to infiltrate into non-existent pore space. Porous, high organic matter content, aerobic soils have lower chance of creating disease friendly conditions, have better water & nutrient holding capacity, have better nutrient exchange for optimal food plant health & yield (truly healthy plants aren’t susceptible to disease or insect attack), and increased resistance to drought & erosion. I agree, the anaerobic and aerobic soil zones should not be mixed together (unless using amendments to modify anaerobic soil zone structure). Tillage, if implemented, should be limited to the aerobic zone.

While not a proponent of tillage, there are chemical & biological methods of creating aerobic soil conditions. In fairness, Shade makes a valid point. I guess CO2 has its uses but it’s had nothing but bad press for the past 5 or 6 years now, sort of like GMOs. The challenge seems to be managing CO2 levels to effect. Of course we’ll never get around to exploring anything meaningful around that because it has been vaulted into such a political hot button.

To mention carbon dioxide is equivalent to mentioning racism, abortion, guns, wealth redistribution, social securityall those taboo third-rail panic-inducing issues and non-issues that cause all of us to leave off thinking and cling tenaciously to believing. That used the be the bailiwick of religionah, those were the good old days, eh? You do realize that no till is the foster child of the chemical companies right? Tillage is not done for recreation but for many practical reasons.

The environmental degradations now blamed on tillage should be credited to excessive tillage, incorrect tillage, un-timely tillage. Somehow the subject has lost objectivity and has become something like religious or political arguments. The combination of both systems is where we need to go to regenerate our soils while maintaining a profitable business at the producer level. I have over 50 years in this business of hands on in the soil practical experience and I can take you to farms all across north America that demonstrate regenerative soil management using tools as necessary to be both profitable and environmentally beneficial. When you do anything with soil you create disturbance to the microbial colonies. Many millions are killed only to become plant food and like us above the surface when we are faced with a disaster we rebuild stronger than ever.

The trick is to make sure that you don’t have disasters back to back so you have time to replenish your resources and re-build your strength. As above so below.

Straw Bale Gardening Has a Hidden Risk Straw bale gardening can destroy your garden. A bold claim, but it’s true. And the evidence is mounting.

Straw bale gardens have taken off over the last decade or so. I’ve seen some really pretty and clever methods of straw bale gardening.

Just a quick Google image search will show you lots of beautiful straw bale gardens. It makes you want to jump right in, doesn’t it? Are Straw Bales Safe to Use? Unfortunately, straw bales (and hay bales) can destroy your garden for years. Let’s take a look. Those of you that haven’t read may be wondering why in the world I’d state that straw bale gardening can destroy your garden. My friend Andi knows.

My friend Luzette knows as well, though her gardens were destroyed by manure, not directly via straw or hay. When I broke the story of toxic herbicides in manure back in August of 2012 via Natural Awakenings magazine, there were very few people that knew this stuff was around or how pervasive it really was.

I wouldn’t have known either if it hadn’t destroyed about $1000 worth of plants. Since that first article, the stories keep mounting. Read more: Toxic Herbicides Can Poison Gardens I love the concept of straw bale gardening. It’s a lot of fun and it’s a quick way to get a garden going without worrying about improving the soil. You could consider straw bale gardening a form of composting and gardening simultaneously. The soil beneath a pile of rotten hay or straw improves marvelously after a year or so, leaving a patch of humus-rich earthworm-populated earth. Yet if that hay or straw came from a field that was sprayed with one or more persistent herbicides such as Grazon™ or CleanWave™, the vegetables in your straw bale gardens will be wrecked.

Not only that, you can’t even compost the contaminated straw because the toxins (usually aminopyralid or its cousin clopyralid) stick around and will destroy whatever ends up with the resulting compost. Read more: Factory Farming’s Downstream Consequences The reality of modern factory farming is that it’s farming based on poisons. Wheat, oats, barley and other grain fields, as well as hay fields, are often sprayed with herbicides to control broad-leaf weeds long-term. “Weeds” like blackberries, amaranth, etc. The toxins don’t effect members of the grass family (grains included) but they will destroy most garden vegetables quite efficiently. I’ve been thanked multiple times from people that have either saved their gardens from these poisons – or who had finally figured out what had wrecked their crops.

Many people are just discovering the dangers. Check out this Amazon review of: Do You Know Where Your Straw Came From? Around my neck of the woods many farmers have discovered the amazing power of these herbicides to control weeds in their hay fields. They’re sprayed everywhere – it’s incredible. As the grains/grasses grow, they uptake these toxins without harm.

Animals can also graze on the fields without apparent issue. Yet the resulting straw and manure still contains a potent dose of plant-killing power – and the toxins can stick around for years. Toxic Pesticides in Animal Manure I’ve been offered free manure for my gardens many times. I’ve even been told, “We don’t spray anything on our fields.” Yet if those animals are eating hay from the feed store – or if there’s straw bedding in the stables – the chances of contamination are very high. Otherwise things like this happen to your plants: Nasty. Protect Your Garden from Hidden Pesticides If you want to start straw bale gardening, how will you know if the straw has been sprayed at some point?

If you have some rotten hay you want to compost, how will you know if it contains deadly toxins or not? Eventually, it’s going to blow up in your face. You won’t know, the feed store won’t know, and good luck tracing the straw bales back to a specific field so you can ask the original farmer if he’s sprayed anything within the last couple of years. Read more: The Bottom Line on Straw Bales and Manure I used to sweep up all the loose hay and straw every week or so from the local feed store after I got permission to scavenge it for my compost piles. That’s a game of Russian roulette you’re going to lose. Verdict: Unless you can verify that the fields from which your straw or hay was harvested weren’t sprayed within the last three years or so with persistent herbicides, you’re risking a lost gardening year or more!

There was a time when straw bale gardening was a great idea. That time has passed. David The Good is a Grow Network Change Maker, a gardening expert, and the author of four books you can find on Amazon: Compost Everything: The Good Guide to Extreme Composting, Grow or Die: The Good Guide to Survival Gardening, Totally Crazy Easy Florida Gardening, and Create Your Own Florida Food Forest.

His upcoming book Push the Zone explores growing tropical edibles outside the tropics. Find fresh gardening inspiration at his website and be sure to follow his popular YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/user/davidthegood. The solution is not to give up mulching and composting but to become discriminating and discerning about the source. Every year I buy straw bales from a certified organic farmer. I buy his year old bales that he wants to get rid of for the new hay crop to go in his barn. Since I am buying leftovers I get certified organic straw for the price of conventional.

Every inch of my city residential yard is planted in annuals, biennials and perennials. If something I bring in to compost, mulch or plant isn’t certified organic I make sure I know where it came from and what practices were used to grow it. It would be nice if instead of discouraging people to use beneficial gardening methods you would instead warn them to educate themselves about chemical contaminants in agricultural materials and products and how to identify and avoid them. Your current approach is throwing the baby out with the bath water. How long are these chemicals potent? Roundup/glyphosate as well. I live in North Central Montana.

There are acres forever of hay and grain fields. Ten times more cattle than people (probably more than that).

Its not hard to find a pile of hay bales gone bad or mountains of manure. Alot of this stuff has been sitting for years,the hay or straw decomposing for years. I see the spray rigs out on the highway every day, so I know some places are being sprayed. Lots of grain for major beer companies is grown hereI wonder how many spray their fields. I guess if a guy could find composting bales or an old stack,making their own bale would work.Thanks for the heads up.I was gonna go to town and get some bales this weekend to set a friend up with a straw bale garden. Only reason was the convenience factor. I guess we will go find an old pile somewhere.

You are looking at no less than 7 years with Roundup and those chemicals like it, I don’t allow any of them on our property. I used to watch our landlord (we lived next door), he would spray Roundup on his grass for weeds and then he would end up with a huge circle where the weed and the grass died and then he couldn’t figure out why his small pine trees kept dying. I tried to tell him but he didn’t believe me. Why don’t you go on Facebook and join one of the ranch pages and ask if there is any place you can get organic straw or old hay. Just do an “In search of” ad, you will probably get lots of information. Composting does not break down the persistent herbicides. The persistent herbicides are broken down by soil microbes.

You can’t wash them away by heavy watering. I had problems in about 2008 from horse manure I got from a neighbor. The manure was at least a year old when I got it from her manure pile. When I used it the maure was at least 3 years old so I thought it would be good to renew my garden. The potatoes did not like it–distorted stems and leaves, few potatoes (they went in the garbage). When I figured out the problem, I planted oats and vetch and got a great crop of hay which I went to the dump. Several years later I grew a wonderful crop of onions there.

Finally I feel comfortable planting broad leaf plants. I no longer use manure but mulch with barley straw from a grower who assures me he does not use persistent herbicides. Thanks for posting this.I lost 800 plants 2 years ago to clopyralid in the the “organic” compost I bought.According to Elaine Ingham(personal Correspondence)there is one species of pseudomonas bacteria that will break it down;over time.It’s been three years and that compost will still kill (or severely maim) any broad leaf plant.Solanacea and Leguminacea are the most sensitive.Nasty shit.My first question to anyone offering any kind of grass or manure related products is:Has it been tested for clopyralid?If there is ANY doubt,do not use it!

This article is EXTREMELY misleading. Many basic facts counter to the authors agenda are simply, maybe purposefully, left out.

Selling straw or hay sprayed with the listed herbicides is “off lable” use and therefore illegal. Farmers would be extremely unlikely to ever allow their crop to enter this market. In addition while this article makes many claims which might lead readers to believe this is an issue on a large scale, the fact is that very few actual cases where this has happened have ever been actually documented. These involved hay bales, and not straw.

To my knowledge, not a single documented case exists of straw causing this issue. I have 23 years of extensive experience with straw bale gardening, and my opinion is that this article is simply “click bate” trying to create controversy where none should exist. Sorry, but you are simply wrong. Almost all straw is sprayed nowadays, not only for weeds, etc but also to dessicate the grain more quickly. I bought round bales of straw for a horse shelter and almost 15 years later, there is still no sign of anything sprouting out of the straw. I hadn’t thought to ask at the time, but clearly it’d been sprayed.

Not that many people yet use glyphosates on hay, but some do, for the same reason. Things have changed a lot. I first saw what could happen when friends had to buy hay one year and every single one of their mares aborted; when they finally looked at the hay, they found it had been dessicated, something that none of us had ever run across before so it never crossed anyone’s mind to ask!!this year I saw ads that proudly ADVERTISED the fact that the hay had been dessicated! I live in the prairies, where grain is grown on farms from small up to townships in size, and it is getting harder and harder to find straw that hasn’t been sprayed. It is the norm now. Farmers have been told for years that it’s safe. Just as doctors used to tell people it was safe to smoke so because they believe that they not only sell it, but they sell it for feed extender as well as bedding.

Thousands of gardens in Britain were poisoned by contaminated manure. That product is no longer sold but it was too late for the gardens. I once got one bale of hay in a semiload that must have been sprayed with something. It looked normal, but where it had sat on the ground NOTHING would grow for almost 8 years. Not even the toughest of weeds.

I still don’t know what was in it, but now, almost 12 years later, the grass is finally filling in the area. None of the studies saying this stuff safe have been done by governments, they have simply taken Monsanto’s word for it.

Not the Canadian government, not the American government. If you actually look at ANY of the studies done by anyone not being paid by Monsanto et al.

You will find that the results are invariably that it is NOT safe, that is DOES stay in the soil for at least a year. It’s been scientifically linked to cancers, diabetes, autism, leaky gut and a host of other diseases.

It’s been banned in three countries for causing an epidemic of kidney failure deaths in farmers, specifically traced to glyphosate, and even the WHO says it is likely to cause human cancers. This is important stuff for people to know, it isn’t just click bait, it’s bringing people real information on just how dangerous the world has become, when farming relies on poisoning the food we eat. So are the EPA and the NIH telling the truth in the above links to two most recent studies that all the hype over the toxicity of Glyphosate aka Round-Up, is total bunk? By the acute standard of LD50, glyphosate is indeed less toxic than either caffeine or table salt. It has an LD50 of 5600 mg/kg based on oral ingestions in rats, according to EPA assessments, placing it in Toxicity Category III.

Did you know that the LD50 (lethal dose of 50% of exposed) Coffee is 192 mg/kg which means coffee is 29 times as deadly to a humans as Round-Up. Keep your head in the sand if you want, but don’t try to educate me about the use of Ag Chemicals until you get your basic facts in order. The attempt to manipulate people’s opinions by those who do not even a basic understanding of FACTS, is very frustrating. People like the author of this article who simply read propaganda and recites as fact anomaly occurrences that are neither controlled nor evaluated based on any scientific technique or protocols.

Your arguments are similar to people that used to be convinced that the earth was flat, simply because they did not understand basic science nor would they listen to those who tried to reason with them. Keep up the ignorance at home because nobody will protect you from yourself, but don’t try to spread that ignorance to others publicly and expect to never be challenged for your ignorance. This article is completely “Clickbate”. Understand that the owner or this blog gets paid by his advertisers based on how much traffic he generates. I am sorry to those who believe a word of it, many of you are simply victims of this author’s ignorance and deceitful intent to generate clicks. You don’t know what you are talking about. Glyphosate is being found in our water, soil, and our bodies.

Send your urine in to be tested and you’ll probably find that your own body has glyphosate in it. The bees aren’t dying because people are “organic” gardening. The bees are dying because of some CHEMICAL being used in their environment.

The soils are being DEPLETED because of CHEMICALS being used in them. And tests have shown that REGENERATIVE gardening can remove excess carbon from the air and soil. Not happening with CHEMICAL gardening.

There are a lot of helpful and not so helpful comments on straw bale gardening. I can’t really comment on it yet because I am at the beginning phase of my experimentation with the straw. I AM an experienced, chemical free gardener.

My current garden soil has been under my care for 13 years and is full of helpful earthworms, and no chemicals. Thank you Joel for weighing in on this. I do believe in “buying local” and supporting local, organic farms. Doing so, and knowing that farmer and his/her practices is what will insure clean bales. My hay comes from the property across my road. My next door neighbor grows it and I can see how he does that, as well as ask him about his spraying techniques.

As I read this article, I thought that it seemed alarmist. Of course, if we don’t stay informed and communicate such concerns, things can rapidly go that direction completely! And Be Informed about your food sources. Now I understand why my vegetable garden never did thrive, on the island of Maui of all places! I knew other gardeners who had bountiful gardens with the same exposure, soil, etc.

The only difference was I had hay baled my compost pile and that compost was all I used on my plants, besides azomite. I guess not even the azomite could overcome using the hay bales. I am definitely glad to learn this as it was a very disheartening experience which I thought had to do with gardening in a tropical climate.

David, I take it then that using straw to mulch on top of my garden soil is going to have the same effect? I have collected some bales of straw the last few years from our April Off-road motorcycle races here just for the purpose of mulch. Have no idea where the straw came from. Haven’t used the soil from underneath, and haven’t used any in my compost barrel. I have a new, very small 10 x16 garden plot which I have been preparing over time with manure I’ve collected from all the wild horses we get here.

I’ts against the law to feed them, so their diet is local flora. Made sure it was dried out in the open for a year before working it in along with my compost. No trees to speak of that I can collect the leaves from, and no lawn at all. My neighbor used to use an herbicide on his!

So I was looking forward to using the straw. I’m in Virginia City, NV, zone 7a, elev. You’re right, Joe! Hadn’t thought about them eating my neighbor’s grass, which was sprayed, duh!

Guess I’ll have to buy some reputable bagged compost, since i don’t make enough on my own. I did use straw from one of VCMM’s races a few years ago to ‘ring’ a potato tower, and got potatoes! But no guarantee the bales are still coming from their same source and I need to find out who to ask about that.

Really want decent mulch, since our water bills are so high now! Thanks for your feedback, appreciated. There was a well documented clopyralid residuals attack from compost that was distributed in upstate Vermont a few years ago. A test was developed using pea seeds to verify yea or nay quickly. If the peas sprouted then withered, the soil failed.

It seemed that rotary tilling exposed the residual toxin to the heat of the sun, where it broke down in one to two years. Affected fields were planted with corn which was not affected by the toxin residuals. I suspect a soil blend containing the straw sample in question could be devised. I remember doing several “pea tests” to identify clopyralid residuals. Llama 9mm Serial Number. Either UVM Extension or Cornell published instructions. I’m guessing the information is still on line, google it.

Yes, the information is still online concerning clopyralid remaining in horse and cow manure for years, as well as an often used chemical by DOW named “Grazon”, which is a chemical named aminopyralid, and the chemical found in Purina horse feed, known as picloram. These chemicals remain in composted horse and cow manure for many years. I did not find anything related to chicken or rabbit manure, yet, but I would be sure to check where ANY feed is coming from.

And for those who question this, let your fingers do the ‘googling’ – it’s there, and it is not good. You will end up having to water much more than with actual straw bales, if you use hay instead. It is the water holding capacity of the straw itself, due to the capillary action of the individual tubular stalks, which stores the water and allows the quick internal composting action to occur.

Once the interior of your bales are composted, however, (which may take much more frequent watering and a longer time than with straw, fair warning!), hay should work as well. Used old “mulch hay”, myself last year, so I speak from experience. I am a Master Gardener as well. Same thing happened to my garden after I used straw as mulch. Also happened to my compost pile, that apparently had the same straw in it.

It just wouldn’t heat up, no matter what I did. I now am very diligent about warning students and clients about this to make sure they use organic straw for any gardening or compost applications.

I have been trying to re-establish the health of my garden for the past two years. For two summers in a row, nothing would grow in my garden, even after I removed all the straw. Hopefully this year will be better. ALWAYS use organic. You can use straw or hay that’s organic, there won’t be any problems at all. You can use leaves. Some people use wet newspaper or cardboard, others wouldn’t touch it.

Wood chips are super, as long as they aren’t from something like walnuts. Sometimes sawdust can be used, NOT from chipboard or MSB because of the glues!!

– but it tends to pack so you have to be a little careful, also if it gets mixed into the soil it can draw out nitrogen while it breaks down. You can solve that by peeing on it, lots of nitrogen ( and other nutrients!) in urine. Coffee grounds are wonderful if you can get them. Or you can grow green manure crops and chop and drop them in place, buckwheat is good for this but you have to drop it before it starts to go to seed or you’ll never get rid of it. Clovers, alfalfa, mustards -grow your mulch in place! This is a great article!

One thing to remember with most of these persistent herbicides, wormers, etc is that they do break down rapidly with exposure to UV light (i.e. One way to be able to utilize the often times plentiful and cheap resource is to spread it out thinly in a sacrificial area and turn it every so often to get the material plenty of exposure to the sun and air. That’s probably why David had pretty good success with the feed store swept up free hay.

Fungal action does a really good job at remediation of the toxic components in the sprays as well. I’ve had good success soaking straw bales and keeping them moist for a season. They get some pretty massive fungal flushes (nothing edible or that you would want to eat of course!), but after that the material seems to work well as mulch. I don’t think this would be as easy with hay because of its tendency to want to compost down (quite a bit more N in the hay vs. Don’t rule out this resource, just be aware of the potential problems and take measures to mitigate them!! Thanks for this!

At this moment my whole jump-on-the-bandwagon straw bales are spread on my whole garden in a thin layer getting soaked by rain. I had spent so much money on organic fertilizer to prime eight bales, so i thought i’d make sure to re-use them. I am not a fan and won’t be strawbaling again, but my cover crop is doing fine so far so i dont think i need to go out and scrape it all off as poisonous!! Thank you for some remedial advice. This sensationalist article needs balanced with info on what to do if you have already “!!!completely destroyed!!!” your garden. It is definitely possible there is some chemical residue in the straw.

The labels of herbicides have a section stating what crops can be planted after application. We call it plant back. If I want to plant cotton behind grain sorghum and I applied atrazine to the grain sorghum, there is a certain waiting period I need to follow or there is a chance the cotton could be damaged. Climate plays a huge factor in this.

Hotter climates break down the herbicide at a quicker rate. Soil type also comes in to play with application rates and plant back intervals. Once again READ AND FOLLOW THE LABEL.

Love your logic John Harrison. Why on earth would you go organic if you are unafraid of Monsanto and company? Why would you ever see to it that all your straw came from organic farmers if this was no issue? Yes, the heading was disturbing, but not worse than any newspaper.

Thanks David for the heads up. I always thought Americans were really going the whole hog on organics until I saw Ty Bollinger’s site The Truth About Cancer. I have no connection to him whatsoever. On of the things I saw in one of his video’s was comment about herbicides. Apparently there are two ways of fighting off weeds and insects. One is the known Roundup issue, but the other one is a real shocker. It was said that there is a virus which actually make a bactericide and this gene is spliced into the grain.

The grain you eat (or rather the killers in the grain) then kill microbes in your digestive tract. I don’t think I need to have Certified Scientific Research Papers to tell me to watch my step. Especially as other reports reveal how “papers” can be written up by copywriters not having a clue about the inside knowledge of the subject, purely pushing a political agenda. Stunning to discover that Carnegie and Rockefeller started the entire big pharma thing we battle today. Also thought the Americans were a bit health nuts, going overboard about it.

I humbly apologize as I stand corrected severely. In South Africa our agriculture is a carbon copy of that in America. But, as I said, I have no connection to Ty. Before you hit me with the big mallet, please go and do your own research on this. A grass seed grower I talked to said she definitely uses aminopyralid on her crops because it kills only the broad-leaf weeds and leaves the grass and sod unharmed. This product is used on grain crops or on hay eaten by animals without apparent harm to them, but it lingers through their digestive tracts so the manures are as deadly to broadleaf plants as the straw waste product often sold by feed and farm stores.

My Wilco farm store said I should consider all straw contaminated unless purchased as organic or grown on my own land. If in doubt, make a strong tea from your straw, steep it a couple days, then use it to water bean and corn seeds planted in clean compost.

If this herbicide is present in the tea, the beans, if they germinate at all, will be stunted and deformed. The corn, which is a grass, will be unaffected. It’s worth taking the time to do this. One thing not being mentioned is the carbon to nitrogen ratio when using a straw bale. A straw bale is NOT an ideal growing media. When decomposing, it creates an environment that is too “hot” for many plants to thrive. We see this in fields with high levels of decomposing plant matter such as sugarcane the first season after terminating that crop.

The microorganisms are literally heating up the soil while decomposing the crop residue and an unfavorable growing environment is created resulting in poorly growing plants. Nutrients are also temporarily tied up. While you may have some pesticide residue in the straw bale, I do not see how there would be enough to harm the plant if the pesticide was applied according to label. The statement above concerning glyphosate killing a tree is one example. I would bet that the neighbor did not measure the amount of glyphosate he put in the sprayer. 2 to 4 oz per gallon is usually the rate. There are also some glyphosate products with additional herbicides in the mix.

Glyphosate alone will not sterilize the soil or kill a plant it does not touch. It is a contact herbicide that must enter through the leaves and is translocation to the roots and kills the plant. If it doesn’t touch the plant it won’t kill it.

We use hooded sprayers in cotton and only the plants that come in contact with the glyphosate are killed. The main negative I have seen with glyphosate over time is a reduction in soil health. This can be quickly resolved by adding applications of humid acid and a high quality soil microorganism product.

It is all about knowing how to use the tools you have correctly. But remember to keep the carbon to nitrogen ratio in mind with straw bale gardening. I have been using straw bales for gardening for several years. This is a great technique but you should always know your sources for anything you are going to use for growing food. My bales come from one wheat farm, it is not certified organic but he doesn’t even own a sprayer and he doesn’t use chemicals anywhere on his farm. He is a “natural” farmer.

If you have straw that you suspect then mychorrizal fungi are one part of the answer. I get hay for our hogs from the same farmer and when we are done for the winter, the left overs go into the compost heaps. I then put on a 2″ thick layer of spent coffee grounds, this nitrogen rich waste material does great things for a compost heap. It adds nitrogen which causes the heap to heat up quickly, it contains several bacteria and fungi which also help in the break down and they help break down any “nasties” that may have come along. I have worked for three years to get plenty of hyphae growing in our soil, we have an earthworm per sq.

Inch now as well as fungi spawn and a multitude of bacterium. Being mindful of what you are using is a key, then you can take time to remediate suspect materials with bacteria and fungi prior to using these in the garden. Straw bales need a “break in” period of at least three weeks. You set them in place, water to saturation, add nitrogen and water the bales daily for this break in time span. Once this is done, you are ready to dig your holes, add some soil and plant.

Properly prepared bales will be in the process of myco-remediation when you plant, this goes a long way towards decomposition of any “cides” the bales may contain. Of course it is always best to know your materials and what they may have hidden within them. He’s partly right. Planting veggies, herbs, any broadleaf plant in a bale that has pesticide carryover will wreck your crop; it will NOT wreck your garden. Southern blight, for example, WILL wreck your garden perhaps for years if not forever. There is a simple test determine if pesticides are purchased bales: cure one making it ready for planting then insert a transplant or insert a seed. It will die if pesticides are present.

Then, what do you do with all those bales you purchased–mulch your grass. Pesticides do not kill grasses.

This article contains too much hyped information for me. As a landscaper in Sweden, one of the worlds strictest countries when it comes to the use of pesticides, I have still advocated this for years. Always check where your organic material, straw, manure or other, comes from, and if you can´t ensure it´s pesticide (and antibiotics) free, don´t use it, at least not to grow vegs in.

Although using mykhorizza and promoting microorganisms may take away some of the effect of the bad things, when it comes to things we are supposed to eat it is better to be safe than sorry. The article makes some good points in that I was not aware of the persistence of toxins, but had assumed that they would break down naturally within a short time of being applied. Isn’t that the excuse people who use them have for frequent reapplications? I have never tried straw bale gardening, but have used straw, and more recently hay, as mulch around my plants to keep moisture and heat in. Any problems I have had are not due to my vegetables dying, but rather “volunteers”, as we like to call them, sprouting from viable seeds left in the bales and trying to take over the space. It helps to cover the bales and let them bake in the hot sun for a few days before using them, for natural weed control. If you cannot grow the straw or hay yourself, it is best to know where it came from and whether the farmer uses any herbicides or pesticides.

I would not ever buy it from a big box store. I was against the concept of planting into bales of hay/straw to begin with. It’s not composted enough and robs vital nitrogen from plants.

The composting process requires nitrogen. I don’t use it as a top mulch for any perennials either, vegetable or flower. It puts to much stress on them as it robs them of needed nitrogen to be stored in their root system to get them through the winter months. The worms compost it until it’s broken down to humus and worm castings, only then is it applied in my garden in the spring. In my northern region that compost process takes 2 years.

What is very noticeable is the “earthworm” population in my compost. It use to be only red wigglers and tiger worms but that has changed. Last year was my first year using straw bales. I needed extra gardening medium as my raised beds were already planned for. In January, I purchased straw from a big box store which sat idle and seasoned themselves for 5 months.

I planted watermelons, cantaloupes, cucumbers, and several varieties of winter squash in 10 bales. I watered and fertilized as required. ALL seeds sprouted successfully and produced lush plants and due to our abundant pollinators, bumper crops. The bales were not contaminated with herbicides as many weeds also sprouted in the bales. In my area seedless straw bales are primarily used as animal feed. Yet still, the article is a warning to test a batch of bales prior to full out planting. I reason that a good test would be to plant peas in a random bale to see if the seed comes up and produces a quality plant.

Buying straw is a crapshoot. I live in Binghamton, New York. First year, I bought expensive bales from our local Agway. They were bigger bales out of Canada. Agway people had no way of knowing if it had been sprayed.

This was the best stuff I ever used. Second year, I bought wheat straw from a beef farmer in Pennsylvania. Very good stuff, cheaper, and smaller bales. I bought another bunch of bales, late season, from another beef farmer in New York who baled “swamp grass.” This stuff was crap, although it did produce some good cucumbers. In 2015 we had tons of rain and the garden went crazy in a matter of 3 to 4 weeks.

Abundance of produce galore. In 2016, we had a severe drought and I didn’t have a catchment system under the bales. Daily water usage skyrocketed. Pulled out all the bales and put them in a big compost pile.

I’m switching over to the rain gutter grow system and the grow bag grow system touted by Larry Hall of Brainerd, Minnesota on YouTube. Gonna try this in 2017. I also love the keyhole gardens. They produce every year without fail. Very good YouTube videos by Larry Hall and George Hendren Sr. This is my favorite I grow within a high fenced area on asphalt that was 4 old tennis courts.

All growing is above ground. I started many, many years ago with the Earth Box out of Scranton, PA.

If money is not an issue, keyhole gardens can be purchased here A cheaper method is here I can make a 4 block high, 17 block around garden for about $107. What I like is the root depth and you can pile tons of stuff in these gardens. Put in a chicken wire composter and load it up. The blocks make it easy to put a PVC pipe cage over for green house effect. Don’t forget the worms. And if you ever need to take it apart, it’s easy. I hate to say it — but the U.S.

Is dead meat, literally. Plentiful crops and prosperity come from God — and since the U.S. Is into better living through chemistry — poisoning our kids with vaccines and our soil with weedkiller and all the Satanic stuff going on now in the government and all the through the culture — we’re cooked.

These are the end days, and the very worst place to be living in these last days is in the U.S. The sudden and total demise of the U.S.

Is prophesied all through the Bible, and it’s huge, and the precipitating event of what the Bible calls the Great Tribulation. There is a sky sign in Rev. 12 that when the coordinates are put into a sky canopy program such as Stellarium, we get one date out of 7000 years — that being 9/23/17. This date may be AFTER the destruction of the U.S. There are other scriptures that speak of a springtime destruction that begins with an eclipse that begins at noon and goes into the night, obviously not an ordinary eclipse by the moon, but by something else. This is disgusting to see all this farm work for naught. I know I keep buying bags of potting soil that nothing will grow in.

And I also have a shed full of straw, and I think the only thing it’s good for is bedding in the dog kennel when it rains, to soak up the mud and water. There is no use trying to prosper in the U.S. Nothing will grow and people I find are hooked on drugs.

The Medical people put people on addicting pain meds when they have back or knee pain, or any pain, and next thing you know they are hooked and finding out that it’s cheaper to buy heroin. Really — we need to be looking to form an intentional community somewhere else on this planet, as far away from the U.S.

As we can get. This is really amazing information. We want to grow organic plants, collect organic foods and do not harm the environment and what we could end up with!!! Now I will be afraid to use any compost or manure bought in a garden store.

Do you know if these chemicals are also being used in Canada and Europe or only in the USA? How it is even possible that such poisonous manure or straw are being sold? Shouldn’t it be tested and safely destroyed? And why in the fist place such toxic chemicals are allowed to be used on the food growing fields and around animals? I think there should be a law prohibiting doing it and I hope soon something will be done to stop using such poison anywhere and even make it a crime. It is great that people like you are teaching us about what is done to the animals and plants and our planet in general, rising the alarm.

If more people know about it, we will have a bigger chance that something will be finally done in this matter. I do think the title is too over the top however it’s a good red flag for us to be mindful of our straw/hay and batch test. Monsanto is clearly the devil and once again clearly wins the prize. I live in Italy where Monsanto has far less juice but certainly this article was a good heads up. I do find it interesting how heated some people get over posts about Big Ag and associated products. Are they paid trolls or really that programmed to believe Glyphosphate is the next great breakfast food from Kellogs? Aminopyralid or clopyralid kill, stunt, or deform broad-leaf plants, if they germinate at all.

This is a weed killer for lawns, pastures, and grain crops that doesn’t harm the grass or grain. Even animals can eat grass treated with it without apparent harm to them, but the herbicide persists even in their manure with deadly effects if used on broad-leafed garden plants. Even if you just compost the clopyralid-contaminated straw in your chicken coop and use it as a garden mulch, you risk residual herbicide damage to your plants.

Buy organic, and if in doubt, test your straw by making a tea of it. Bean seeds watered with it will be deformed, corn seeds will be unaffected. First of all, in order to end up in this pickle, where you have straw contaminated with clopyralid or aminopyralid herbicides, we have to operate under the assumption that the farmer we are buying them from is a criminal. We must assume that the farmer used the chemicals in question for an off label use, which is illegal, and punishable under criminal and civil law. He then must have sold the straw or hay bales to a customer secretely using an elaborate ruse to hide his identity, and thus avoid ever having those sick bales traced back to his fields, where he would face serious ramifications for his subversive actions to break the law. Jail time, huge fines, loss of his license to buy and use farm chemicals which are restricted use, all are consequences every farmer knows, and is tested on his knowledge of in order to gain his applicators license from the state he operates in.

After all he probably made $3 selling you that bale of straw, it is definately worth the risk for $3, and we all know farmers are just out to screw over every poor unsuspecting bale buyer. The whole time he is offering you a cup of coffee from his kitchen when you come to pick up your bales he is thinking about “how can I take money from this person and sell them some bales that will ruin their gardens for the rest of eternity.” You must believe this in order to believe that this happens on a regular basis. Come on people! With that said, if you have a bale made from straw which was treated with a clopyralid or aminopyralid herbicide, and you planted vegetables into that bale, would the vegetables grow and thrive? OF COURSE NOT!

Thus you would not get a crop and you would have nothing to consume, thus the risk to you is nil. The conditioning process in Straw Bale Gardening will easily generate vigorous bacteria and fungi growth, so much so that they cause the bales to generate heat often exceeding 140 degrees. This bacterial colonization of the bales completely metabloizes these chemicals, and certainly with a half-life of 30-40 days these chemicals will be long gone once a bale of straw is completely decomposed. A paper from NC State claims ” According to the labels, plant materials treated with these herbicides should not be considered safe for growing sensitive crops until the plant materials are completely decayed. Breakdown of the herbicides is most rapid in sunlight under warm, moist conditions and may be enhanced with irrigation. Accelerate breakdown of plant residues by incorporating them evenly into the surface soil.” Essentially, the best thing anyone could do with a contaminated bale would be to use it for a straw bale garden, which would completely degrade any contaminate such as those of concern in this discussion. I am not saying it would produce a vegetable crop, as it probably would not, but once decomposed the straw would no longer contain levels of the chemical that would damage any future crops where the straw was integrated into the suface soils.

Running a simply assay test on any media one intends to use in a garden is simple and easy to do, and will quickly identify any potentially damaging chemicals in that media. If you are concerned, visit this link from the University of Nebraska. Many NH & VT towns, contractors, farmers & landscapers have surprises at what grows when they put down hay or regular straw as mulch. On my farm in Charlestown,NH I grow & harvest immature cereal rye as hay, Being immature, there are no seeds & any weeds are immature also.

It is the same as straw, that meaning it shakes out well, will go through a chopper/blower well & looks good on the ground. I make regular farm size bales[ 35 to 40 lbs. The bales are palletized on a 4 by 8 pallet 40 or 50 to a pallet that I can load onto your flatbed truck or trailer. I have never had a problem with contamination because I don’t use any of those sprays because I don’t go to maturity. Many NH & VT towns, contractors, farmers & landscapers have surprises at what grows when they put down hay or regular straw as mulch.

On my farm in Charlestown,NH I grow & harvest immature cereal rye as hay, Being immature, there are ¬¬no seeds & any weeds are immature also. It is the same as straw, that meaning it shakes out well, will go through a chopper/blower well & looks good on the ground. I make regular farm size bales[ 35 to 40 lbs.

The bales are palletized on a 4 by 8 pallet 40 to a pallet that I can load onto a flatbed truck or trailer It is also pesticide free because I don’t use any on the rye, no need to, making it great for straw bale gardening. The only problem is I am not near everyone. Dear David Goodman – I am so glad I linked to this information before I started actually finding some straw bales to try gardening that way. It had not occurred to me the possibilities of contamination from the very poisons I have spent years trying to avoid.

I noticed this article is from 2016. Autodesk Revit 2015 Crack Xforce Pc. It definitely needs republishing this spring – 2017 – as I know many of us older folks were looking into the straw bale method of planting because of aging issues. Thank you so much for saving me much money and misery! I have followed Joel Karsten’s book and have had straw bale gardens for 6 years now.

My straw bales grow the most amazing and beautiful crops of vegetables. I rotate the straw bales with tomatoes every year. My roses and and everything else around that I use the old bales with after the season is over with grows like the garden of Eden around here, packed with earth worms. How can these bales be full of toxins if my vegetables look so healthy and my garden flourishing???

Due to the drought in the last years out west we have only been able to get access to rice straw bales which is used for straw bale gardening and also chicken coops. I am very confused and alarmed by this article. Yeah, I loved the idea of straw bale gardening, too. I’m a beginner gardener and didn’t know much Well, 24 bales, hundreds of hours, and three months later, I sure know something now- this medium is so problematic. From herbicides, to moisture retention, to microbial health, and, to eventually dismantling my garden, this love affair and adventure has turned a bit sour. Out of my eagerness for success and the necessity to find ways to save my plants, I’v discovered that gardening is so much more than just water, dead fertilizer, and novelties such as straw bale gardening.

Next time, it going to be raised beds with good soil, compost, and rich hummus. Thanks for your article- it confirmed my experience. I have been growing in Straw Bales for about 6 years and I teach Joel Karsten’s methods and in the area of the country i live in there is not a lot of herbicides sprayed. I have yet to hear of anyone getting bales of this type. If the bales are conditioned right it seems that the composting aspect of it, where the bales can reach temperatures of 130 + during the conditioning phase, seems to remove most chemicals and or pathogens and or weeds before you even plant them. I would advise someone considering this wonderful form of gardening to do their homework and learn the correct ways to condition the bales and to try to find out the history of the bales you use. I use Hay and Straw interchangeably with no problems, so you have a larger list of places to secure your bales.