So, I just want to talk a little about soil health. Has anyone seen the February, 2013 edition of The Furrow, a magazine published by John Deere? I find it kind of refreshing that the entire publication talked about how important it is to have healthy soil, especially if your goal is to reduce your input costs (e.g., by reducing the amount of synthetic fertilizer that you need to use). The articles talked about how having healthy soil results in healthier plants. Healthier plants can produce higher yields with fewer inputs. Healthy soil also helps with water management — we see less water runoff and, in turn, less runoff of top soil and fertilizers.
One article talked about using crop rotation and no till practices to build organic matter and microbial life in the soil. For farmers interested in moving to these practices, SumaGreen will help build up the organic matter and microbial life in your soil at a faster rate than using those practices alone. However, not all farmers will want to use no till and/or crop rotation practices as a method for improving soil health. For these farmers, using SumaGreen provides an alternative, and very effective, avenue for improving soil health.
Field trials and independent testing have shown that SumaGreen helps to build up organic matter and microbial life in the soil. These same trials have also shown that you can reduce the amount of fertilizer applied and still get a high yield. As an added bonus, SumaGreen costs less than fertilizers to apply.
One study, conducted by Aries research in 2011 (Illinois__Arise_Research___Discovery_Water_Nitrate_Leaching) on corn, compared a treatment using 100% fertilizer and no SumaGrow to a treatment that used a 50% reduction in fertilizer and SumaGrow. The treatment that used SumaGrow was the clear winner. Some specific results include:
- 52% reduction of water runoff
- 56% less nitrate in the water runoff
- 19% increase in yield.
Even if using SumaGreen products with a 50% reduction in fertilizer resulted in less water and nitrate runoff and produced the same yield, I believe this would be worth it because input costs would be less. However, this study also found a 19% increase in yield. Thus, I hope you all will consider using SumaGreen products to increase the health of your soil. I have posted the link below for the articles I was talking about from The Furrow.
http://www.deere.com/wps/dcom/en_US/industry/agriculture/our_offerings/furrow/furrow.page?
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