The Rural Voice, 1991-08, Page 20SOIL CONSERVATION COMES OF AGE
ONCE VIEWED AS SUITABLE ONLY FOR A FEW RADICALS, MINIMUM
TILLAGE IS GAINING SO MUCH RESPECT THAT DISCIPLES ARE NOW
CLIMBING ON THE BANDWAGON IN RECORD NUMBERS
stories and photos
by Jim Fitzgerald
Call it conservation farming, or
sustainable agriculture, or agriculture
with ethics, it all adds up to some pro-
found changes in the way food is
being grown in Canada.
Once the only the territory of a few
select pioneers, good land stewardship
has finally come of age and is being
accepted into main stream agriculture,
so much so, that if a few years, it may
be the main way of farming, while the
so-called conventional system with
moldboard plowing and continuous
cropping may become the exception.
The whole thrust in Ontario to-
wards improving farming practices,
particularly cropping systems, had its
birth in Huron County back in the
early 1980s. A group of eight farm-
ers, concerned with soil erosion and
degradation, decided that conventional
methods of crop production were
slowly ruining the soil and endan-
gering the ability of their farms to
keep producing food at a high level.
"I believe that each of us comes
into this world with a responsibility to
leave it a better place than we found
it," says Don Lobb, one of those eight
farmers, "and I believe that those land
managers who practice conservation
ADOPT A
CONSERVATION �I
CROP
PRODUCTION
SYSTEM
The "systems" wheel for no -till.
farm planning will prosper and enjoy
great satisfaction in fulfilling that
responsibility."
Because of lack of data in Ontario
in 1982, Lobb — who had started
conservation farming on his own in
1965 — and the seven other farmers
went on a field trip to Michigan to try
to find out about reduced tillage
systems.
With little experience and technical
support, they plunged into minimum
and no -till systems in 1982. In 1983,
with the help of Tom Prout of the
Ausable-Bayfield Conservation
Authority (ABCA), who was able to
get a staff advisor, and former Huron
agricultural representative Don Pullen,
they started the Huron Soil and Water
Conser-vation District (HSWCD), a
volunteer group. The Maitland Valley
Conser-vation Authority joined shortly
after -wards, and the HSWCD now
covers a combined 22,000 square
miles in the two watersheds in Huron,
Perth and parts of Lambton,
Middlesex, and Bruce counties.
Lobb says the knowledge of con-
servation practices in the early days
was very limited, but now with re-
search conducted by the University of
Guelph, and a number of land
stewardship programs offered by the
federal and provincial government, so
much progress has been made that the
system has proven superior to con-
ventional tillage. "There are now 400
farmers that know more now than the
original eight," says Lobb.
"We made some mistakes along
the way," he says, " but hundreds of
yield checks have shown that it (a
conservation system) on average gives
a five to seven per cent higher yield."
Robert Trait, the extension
services advisor for the ABCA says
there's "been a real snowballing over
the last two or three years" as
conservation farming practices prove
themselves. "Now with Brent
Kennedy (a resource management
Don Lobb with soys in no -till wheat.
specialist with the ministry of
agriculture and food) and Chris
Hoskins (of MVCA) there's plenty of
information and help out there."
In fact, Traut says there is less
demand for the HSWCD to set up
trials on individual farms and loan out
their no -till seeders because "it's
catching on so well and there's more
equipment out there."
Kennedy says in Huron there are
now 470 farmers on the province's
new five-year Land Stewardship II
program, eligible for $2.2 million in
grants for a number of projects rang-
ing from tree planting , residue man-
agement, cover crops, strip cropping,
soil conservation equipment purchase
and modification, conservation
structures, as well as en-vironmental
protection through man-ure storage
and handling systems milkhouse wash
water disposal systems, and pesticide
handling facilities.
As well, Kennedy says there is
strong interest in the federal govern-
ment's National Soil Conservation
program which pays $10,000 per farm
to put buffer strips along streams with
permanent covers of grass, legumes or
trees, take highly erodible land out of
production, and end tillage on flood
plain lands. Farmers can sign
16 THE RURAL VOICE