Healthy soils are the foundation for a profitable farming operation. We work with farmers to build their soil health.

BENEFITS OF SOIL MANAGEMENT
Healthy soils are well balanced, highly mineralized soils that are biologically active and will benefit to your farming operation in many ways:

Save you money by reducing your fertilizer rates . Many of our soils have large amounts of nutrients present in an unavailable form and many of our fertilizer nutrients are leached from our soils. This is due to soil imbalances, excess acidity and poor soil aeration, leading to a poor environment for promoting biological activity. Correct soil biology, including nitrogen fixing bacteria, is the key to building and holding soluble nutrients in the root zone and for releasing locked up nutrients. When your calcium, magnesium and potassium are balanced, pH corrected and soil biology is built up, you will benefit from applying much lower rates of fertilizer. We are looking to feed the soil, and then letting the soil feed the crop. In addition, soil testing indicates exactly how much fertilizer to use, so when levels of a particular nutrient are high, we can give you recommendations to reduce fertilizer rates that match the exact needs of each of your fields.

Save you money by reduc-ing your requirement for insecticides and fungicides. Crops that are mineral deficient fail to convert nitrates to protein and amino acids, resulting in a build up of nitrates and reducing sugars in the leaf. These are the exact conditions that attract pests and diseases. Crops on your farm that are well mineralized will not be attacked so readilyby insects and diseases, allowing large savings on pesticides.

Save you money by reducing your requirement for soil applied pesticides. Soils that have biological diversity will be able to control soil born disease pathogens from dominating the soil environment by direct competition for food sources. Controlling the C:N ratio in your soils is also critical for managing soil pathogens as excess nitrogen in low available carbon soils is a recipe for soil pathogen attack. 
Save you money by reducing your herbicide applica-tions.  Well adapted weeds grow much stronger than commercial crops in poorly balanced soils. It is well documented that grass weedsare indicators of low oxygen, calcium deficient soils and broadleaf weeds indicate a low P:K ratio. As soils are balanced and mineralized, weed pressure reduces. 

Save you money by improving your water use efficiency (less water needed per tonne of crop). By combining a well managed crop rotation and cover cropping system with reduced tillage(no till, strip till, CA), you will build humus levels (organic matter levels). Humus holds four times its own weight in water, therefore for every 1% organic matter that you build up in your soils, you can hold approximately 48 cubes more water for your crop which greatly reduces irrigation and greatly increases crop tolerance to drought. 
Greatly reduces soil erosionand environmental contamination. With increased humus and optimum calcium to magnesium balance in your soils, the healthy soil structure will be able to resist soil and nutrient loss (pollution) through erosion. This approach mean excess fertilizers are never applied, so run off of nitrates and phosphates is minimized.

Give you higher profits by providing your customers with high quality, nutrient dense products. Cut flowers will have better shelf life.  In the future, nutrient dense products therefore allow growers to command higher prices in the market. Nutrient dense foods provide better nutrition  for consumers. 

Reduce global warming by capturing and storing carbon in your soils through improved crop residue management as a result of a healthy microbial soil population which enables rapid residue digestion and carbon sequestration. For every 1% organic matter built up in your soils, you are storing approximately an extra 12 tonnes of carbon. Opportunities also arise in carbon trading.

HOW TO MANAGE SOIL?
The above benefits can be achieved through a biological farming approach. “Biological farming” is an integration of soil balancing, correct crop nutrition and a strong focus on soil biology management – it is a system. These benefits will start to be realized on your farm within one growing season, depending on the level of implementation intensity. No two fields are the same, so the system must be adapted to the suit each specific situation. Our focus is to offer our customers a complete range of professional soil and crop nutrient manage-ment services which will enable you to make this highly profitable transition a success.

THESE APPROACH INCLUDE:
PROFESSIONAL SOIL TESTING SERVICES
We offer you expert soil analytical services which cover the complete range of the most important soil fertility parameters and nutrients including soil pH, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, sodium, sulphur, iron, manganese, zinc, copper and boron. We determine the level for each parameter, quickly identifying deficiencies and toxicities in your soils. This must be the first step in the whole program, as without this essential soil chemistry information, there is no basis for developing your soil management program.
RECOMMENDATIONS ON HOW TO RE-MINERALIZE YOUR FARM SOILS

Using our lab results from each field samples you send us, we calculate and give you the recommendations on the exact amounts of each products that is needed to re-balance you soils which will include rates of lime, phosphate and gypsum for example, which are all very effective soil fertility correction inputs. Calcium and phosphorus are critical components of the soil balancing process. These applications rates can be spread over several years, according to your budget.

WE DEVELOP A BALANCED CROP FERTILIZER PROGRAM
Using your crop yield target and your soil test results, we will recommend a balanced fertilizer and foliar feed program which will supply the nutrients required for maximum yields. These program work best on soils that are well balanced and biologically active, as there is no lock up the nutrients. We also use leaf analysis to inform of us the crop nutrition status, and this also gives us a lot of information about how well the soil biology and crop feeding program is working (i.e. root health and nutrient availability).

WE DESIGN THE OPTIMUM FOLIAR FEEDING PROGRAM FOR YOUR CROPS
For higher input systems we advise on the use of special foliar feeds for boosting leaf production of sugars and supplying nutrients directly to the crop. In a well mineralized crop, up to 30% of sugars produced through photosynthesis are moved to the roots and feed the root surface dwelling microbes, boosting soil nutrient supply to the crop (especially important for free living nitrogen fixing bacteria, which can supply all your nitrogen needs). This part of the system only works effectively when soils are already balanced with calcium and when the crop is adequate in boron – boron allows for sugar translocation to feed these root dwelling microbes.

ADVICE ON HOW TO BUILD YOUR SOIL HUMUS LEVELS AND DIVERSIFY YOUR SOIL BIOLOGY
Our advisory services will show you how to build a soil with high levels humus and diverse biology. We promote reduced tillage, cover crops, green manure crops, nitrogen fixing rotation crops, composts and microbial inoculants. Like all organisms, soil microbes are sensitive to environmental conditions. In order to build and allow your soil microbes to thrive you need to focus on managing your soil oxygen levels, soil moisture, food availability (nutrition) and general comfort (soil structure, tillage etc ) – this is key in the biological farming approach. You will find that putting microbial inoculants (“silver bullets”) into a poorly balanced soil will not show results, as the environment will not allow them to survive - this is a waste of your money. You need to look at the basics of soil balancing first.

 
ADVICE ON HOW TO FEED & ACTIVATE YOUR SOIL BIOLOGY
This is what turns your soil “on”. A well balanced soil with a fully operating microbial population is the ultimate goal.  Microbes are dependent on calcium and therefore optimum soil calcium levels are critical component of this system. Microbes require carbon as their primary food source so building humus (organic carbon) through good stubbleand residuemanagement is critical. Soluble carbon sources can also be applied to soils as an immediate source of food for the microbes. Low organic matter soils cannot sustain adequate levels of biology, which reduces nutrient uptake and fertilizer efficiency. 

Currently, our farming systems rely heavily on chemical inputs of fertilizers and pesticides for high yielding crops. As the prices of these inputs continue to rise with increasing oil prices, many are asking how they will continue to farm profitably in the future. 
Building healthy soils, through adopting our biological farming systems approach, based on re-mineralizing and improving the biology of our soils, will reduce farmer’s reliance on these increasingly expensive inputs, and will result in a highly sustainable and profitable farming operation.