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The Rural Voice, 1979-10, Page 40Is soll a renewable resource? Parking lots and shopping centers aren't the only culprits in the loss of prime farmland in Canada. Food crops them- selves are rapidly using up this precious resource, and only 11 per cent of the total area of Canada is capable of any form of agricultural use, including rough grazing. J.F. Dormaar, a soil chemist at Agriculture Canada's research station at Lethbridge, Alta., says opening up the soil to prepare a seedbed is like "opening the furnace door to allow more oxygen into the fire." The scientist says the fuel in this case is soil organic matter. Its carbon and hydrogen change to carbon dioxide and water when exposed to oxygen. The energy tied up in the soil organic matter is lost in the process. "The question of whether soil is a renewable resource should concern all Canadians," Dr. Dormaar says. "Most of our food comes from the soil, and we have relatively little food -producing soil." The scientist says organic matter has a marked effect on both the physical and chemical properties of soils. It helps soil hold important moisture and makes it easier to work. It also causes individual soil particles to stick together to form aggre- gates. Without this cementing effect, much surface soil would be lost to wind and water erosion. Dr. Dormaar is evaluating changes that occur in soil organic matter on dryland, where cereals ,alone or in rotation with a legume crop, are grown on land that already has lost its topsoil through erosion. He has found that when legumes are included in a cereal rotation critical fractions of the organic matter can, in fact, be increased. Although the total organic matter content of the top 15 cm of soil decreased in quantity after five wheat -fallow cyclesythe fraction of organic matter thought to be necessary to make soil particles stick together increased slightly.. "If soil aggregates are indeed on the increase, this will help in the prevention of wind and water erosion," Dr. Dormaar says. "It also shows that soil is a renewable resource, although the process is very slow." Garden farms for the future Instead of farms, the food -producing acreages of the future may be known as PG. 38 THE RURAL VOICE/OCTOBER 1979 "garms", or garden -farms. According to Prof. Wesley Buchele and Prof. Curtis Gunnells of Iowa State University, these garden farms with their smaller acreages and energy -efficiency, may be a fact of life in the future if oil shortages continue. The two men outlined their predictions on garms at a joint meeting of the American and Canadian societies of agricultural engineers held in Winnipeg recently. The men predicted that garms, which will average betw een three and 10 acres in size, will not provide a living income for farmers, so an off -farm income will become a necessity for most. "The new farmers and especially the garden -farmer must be willing to cut costs by replacing capital -intensive, energy - intensive practices with labor -low energy methods," the speakers said. The new farmer will have to put in long hours and develop specialty crops and livestock enterprises and adopt good marketing practices if he wants to successfully combat energy shortages. The professors envision a garm as a unit large enough to keep one person employed fulltime or two persons part-time, with off -farm employment available within bicycling distance. Corn borer eggs used in crop research Agriculture Canada's research station at Saint-Jean, Que., is also a factory --it produces and sells millions of European corn borer eggs each year for use in crop research. For the past decade, the station has been developing better grain corn lines that are early maturing and resistant to disease and insects. "Our program is part of a world-wide trend in corn production. Originally, the emphasis in developing new grain corn lines was on earliness and yield. But now we are also looking for improved stock quality," explains Marcel Hudon, a research entomologist at the station. "The European corn borer is central to our program, not only because of the damage it causes, but because resistance to some diseases is often linked to resistance to the corn borer." The corn borer attacks corn leaves, stems and ears and burrows into the plant's main stalk. It causes considerable damage, making sweet corn unsuitable for eating and reducing yields in grain corn. To identify disease - and borer-resistan strains, corn plants are infested artificially with the borer. But this process requires a steady supply of borer eggs when corn plants are at the whorl stage. Three years ago the station began massive rearing of the European corn borer in its laboratories. "Ever since we began producing the borers, the demand for borer eggs has been increasing each year," Mr. Hudon says. Because of the success of the corn program at the station, four years ago Canadian seed companies started their own programs. The breeding of the borer in the laboratory is a risky business, involving special equipment operated by experts, so the companies have turned to the station for the borer eggs they need. Annual borer production at the station now exceeds 200,000 egg masses. The eggs are sold chiefly in Ontario. However, last year the station also exported 40,000 egg masses to a Nebraska firm. "This year sales have been made to two U.S. firms in Illinois and Iowa, and we are hoping to sell some to a firm in northern France," Mr. Hudon says. Farming produces stress for the farmer Few people realize that farming is considered one of North America's highest stress -producing occupations. The Nation- al Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in the United States ranks the operating of a farm in the top 10 percent in its listing of 130 high stress occupations. Until recently, very few agencies have become involved in programs helping people to cope with stress, particularly in farming. Recently, the Alberta Agri- culture/Labour Farm Safety Program, in conjunction with Women of Unifarm in that Province, have developed a new program called 'Coping with Stress on the Farm'. During April of this year, the two sponsoring organizations held 15 regional conferences or workshops on stress. The main purposes of the workshop were to identify stress sources on the farm and determine the level of stress in comparison to previous years. So far, the workshops have identified 11 areas of concern. Farm finances led all other areas as an identifiable stress area. Also affecting the financial area were factors that related directly to finance; for example, bad weather. Other stress pro- ducing areas that were identified were family, work, farm management, health and retirement, and community social problems. The stress level attached to finances, family and work were double that of all other areas.