Most of Your Organic Matter Is Dead Microbes

Lana Shaw went through a crop science degree and a master's with a soils minor and never took a class on soil biology. She learned soil chemistry and soil physics, and what she knew about biology was that some bacteria convert fertilizer into something a plant can use and others make it disappear.What changed since is the understanding of where organic matter actually comes from. Not straw breaking down, as most of us were taught, but microbial biomass. The carcasses of the soil life, fed on sugars the plant releases through its own roots.Shaw manages the Southeast Research Farm at Redvers, a non-profit, farmer-directed research operation in the far southeast corner of Saskatchewan. She has spent twenty years running replicated trials, and she is straightforward about what research can tell a producer that their own field cannot.What's InsideWhy replicated trials across multiple sites and years answer questions a single on-farm trial cannot, and what her intercrop trials actually measureHow much of an operation she thinks belongs in the experiment column, and why the field you pick should be close to homeWhat happened to southeast Saskatchewan soils through the wet years, and why she says soil sitting bare is starving rather than restingWhy the culture treats a second species in a field as a weed problem, and what that costsThe simplest test a producer can run themselves to know whether their soil is getting more functional, using a pipe and a bucket of waterWhy she thinks the old extension model, research to agronomist to farmer, is broken, and what her Nuffield work found insteadThe second half is an Ag Twitter round where producers push back on intercropping, covering storage, separation, marketability, disease pressure and whether any of it works in a dry year.Want to learn more about regenerative agriculture?  Go here Connect with Growing the FutureWebsite: growingthefuture.caYouTube: Growing the FutureInstagram: @growingthefuturepodcastLinkedIn: Growing the FutureSubscribe to the Growing the Future Podcast wherever you listen, and register for Convergence Conference 2027 at convergence.ag. Register for the Convergence Conference at convergence.ag and stay updated by subscribing to the Growing the Future Podcast at growingthefuturepodcast.ca.