Sometimes the wisdom we need to build a great future is buried in the past. Regenerative agriculture isn’t an entirely new concept, it’s actually more of a return to the wisdom of farmers from days gone by. What’s old is new again and its popularity is spreading around the globe like a prairie fire.

While regenerative agriculture gives a well-earned nod to the past, its relationship with science and technology allows it to effectively transform the way we currently grow food. microBIOMETER®, with their customers all around the world, are leading the way with technology that shows farmers when their soil health practices are working and when they are not.

“I believe biological agriculture is the way to regenerate and create more resilient soil that will supply nutrients and higher immunity to the plants. This is why microBIOMETER® has become an invaluable asset to my soil management efforts.” ~ Marcelo Chiappetta of Chiapeta Empresa Agricola in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.

Creating healthy soil may take the wisdom of generations of farmers, but microBIOMETER® supplies the knowledge farmers need to best manage potential outcomes.

In learning how to develop healthy soil for healthy plants and people, Frans Plugge of New Zealand discovered the importance of increasing the fungi population in his garden and this led him to microBIOMETER®.

“The microBIOMETER® soil test makes measuring the fungi to bacteria ratio so easy,” Frans said. 

To promote the benefits of soil regeneration, Frans has started the community street garden using the principles of regenerative agriculture; minimizing artificial fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides.  Frans plans to take regular measurements of the fungi to bacteria ratio using microBIOMETER® to monitor his progress as well as create a great discussion point with members of the garden community, therefore, contributing to a healthy plant community.

Some of the microBIOMETER® results Frans shared with us for his home garden and compost:

• Our compost.  1102 ug C/g, F:B 1.7:1
• Veggie garden soil. 310 ug C/g  F:B 0.1:1
• Purchased compost soil mix. 1299 ug C/g F:B 2.4:1
• Soil from native bush. 469 ug C/g  F:B 0.8:1

The first photo pictured here is a bare clay strip that Frans forked loose but did not turn. He added a thin layer of garden compost along with a layer of soil sowing in ten different species of autumn crops; legumes, grasses, and cereals. Then he planted brassicas into the garden (second photo).

Over the years, Frans typically added compost and dug in green crop in the main vegetable garden, but had not had great success in yield. This autumn in the area the microBIOMETER® sample was taken from, he planted an autumn cover crop of 7-8 different species and a selection of brassicas amongst them. The idea is when the cover crop begins to go to seed, they cut at root level and drop as mulch (third photo).  Frans is hoping they can stop digging in an effort to build up healthy soil organisms.

Frans’ conclusions related to New Zealand’s potential to reduce its carbon footprint:

• If all New Zealand farmers lifted their soil organic matter (SOM) by .25% per annum, we could offset all New Zealand’s annual GHG emissions including methane.
• Globally, numerous farmers are lifting SOM by 0.5 – 1% per annum over many years.
• Add in parks, recreation spaces, berms, gardens and Crown Land.

About Frans:

• Completed his degree at Lincoln University in Valuation and Farm Management
• Founded ECOsystems in 1995 with the vision “Saving Energy and the Environment” and the mission “To reduce energy consumption in commercial buildings by 50%”
• Longstanding and current elected board member of the Carbon and Energy Professionals N.Z. (CEPNZ).
• In 2018, established the Kata School to promote practices of continuous improvement that Toyota has used for 70 years. He is the current chair.
• Attended and presented at Al Gore’s Climate Reality Leadership training in Brisbane and completedthe Kiss the Ground training on Regenerating Soils.
• Currently focused on using the behaviours of Toyota Kata scientific thinking and experimenting towards a vision to develop the culture required to achieve the challenge of carbon positive.

Katharhy G. is an agroecosystem and ethnoscience researcher who traveled to Ecuador to investigate the relationship between microbial biomass and crop health, as well as to study the local indigenous agriculture practices.

He visited 28 different farms growing 15 different crops. 14 of these farms are practicing conventional farming, while the other 14 farms are practicing indigenous regenerative farming. Most sites are not receiving irrigation. He tested the soil with microBIOMETER® and ranked the crop health as poor (1), average (2), good (3), excellent (4).

As the graph shows, microbial biomass correlated with crop health under all these different conditions. Samples with microbial biomass lower than 225 were all poor (1) and samples above 400 were all excellent.

The take home lesson is that to improve your plant health and yield, increase your microbial biomass by feeding your microbes with organic amendments.

If you have microBIOMETER® research data you’d like to share with us, please contact us. We would love to share it with our readers!

Contact:. ka*******@***il.com

Microbial biomass (MB) is the best single indicator of soil health (Doran, 2000). Microbes feed and protect plants, build soil structure which prevents erosion, increase water holding capacity, and build soil organic matter (SOM). MB is low in any situation that is harmful to plant growth (and vice versa) and protects against pathogens, thereby reducing the need for pesticides. MB can predict success before plant outcome. The Fungal:Bacterial ratio (F:B) of the MB provides crucial information regarding colonization by Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi (AMF), and the recycling metabolic processes of saprophytic fungi (SpF).

Soil stewards all over the world are seeking to understand the microbial levels in their soil and the ratio of fungal to bacterial life. The higher the microbial biomass, the more nutrients will be available to plants naturally, decreasing or eliminating the need for chemical fertilizers. Higher fungal to bacterial ratios are critical for building soil structure that prevents erosion and runoff off of pollutant chemicals while building moisture holding capacity of the soil and sequestering carbon.

Soil health is fast becoming one of the most important factors in agriculture and in the growing efforts to improve the earth’s stock of agricultural land. Farmers, industry, and environmentalists are looking for cost-effective and reliable ways to measure soil health and to assess impacts of progressive changes to soil and harvest management.

Testing soil in homogeneous sections at similar stages of the growth cycle can set a baseline for microbial biomass and fungal to bacterial ratio. That baseline can be used to assess how different stewardship practices are impacting the soil and allow for refinement to soil management plans and show soil health improvement over time. While every soil steward’s situation is unique, microBIOMETER® can help measure, follow, and assess efficacy of improvement to soil health.

Ben Rodman is a vermicomposter with a love for all things biology and horticulture. His vermicomposting operation, Lyons Worm Works, has grown from simply diverting and reclaiming their household organic wastes into a small-scale but growing community effort.

Combined with all the spent substrate from their gourmet mushroom cultivation and gardening and brewing waste, Lyons Worm Works creates high-quality, microbially dense and diverse living vermicast for regional consumers. For Ben, providing quality vermicast to customers means having objective measurements of its quality for multiple reasons: integrity and trust, quality assurance, marketing, and constant experimentation to improve his product and process.

“Experimentation and real data has always been important to me; bridging my idealism with the real world we live in and grow our food and medicine in. microBIOMETER® is giving me fast, quantitative data to assess important considerations like feedstock quality, evaluating the impacts of process changes, durability and storage for finished product, and for fine-tuning my compost tea kit recipes so customers can make high-quality aerated teas at home. Having a fast, accurate and objective way to assess my products provides me with the data needed to make informed decisions. It gives my customers and I confidence that my products are going to help them meet their goals. What a great product for the small producer like me, for whom a home lab isn’t practical and routine commercial lab testing is prohibitively costly!”

Green Country Worms is a small worm farm located in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. Their main focus is producing high quality worm castings. They started vermicomposting in 2008 when they received their first pound of compost worms. 12 years later they still love composting with worms and are fascinated with the worm castings they produce.

About a year ago they discovered their customers wanted proof of the quality of their product. While they could make claims about their worm castings, their customers wanted to see actual data. They periodically sent their castings to a certified lab to be tested, however, this is costly to do on a regular basis.

They love the microBIOMETER® soil test because it is affordable and it gives them a quick census of the microorganisms in their castings. They learned early on that a simple NPK soil test did not give them the data they were looking for. Being research minded they were also happy to find out that microBIOMETER® is involved in various university studies to demonstrate it’s validity and reliability as a soil testing instrument.

Green Country is currently using microBIOMETER® to compare worm castings that are produced with high quality malted barley. They feed malted barley in some of their worm bins and not in others.

Stay tuned! We will post the results of their experiment once it is complete.