Just south of Longmont, a field of corn is demonstrating the innovative ways conservation can help improve soil viability and crop output.
Jules Van Thuyne, on his 42nd season as a farmer, owns the 11 acres of land, but the Longmont and Boulder Valley Conservation Districts use the plot as a demonstration field for practices that can make agriculture more sustainable. On Wednesday, the district hosted a field tour to explain some of those practices.
The demonstration plot was used for sugarbeet in 2021, with corn planted in May of this year.
“The reasoning behind this plot is trying to incorporate some soil health and some resource conservation into a commercial cornfield,” said Peyton Ward, district conservation technician.
Christine Newton, state conservation agronomist for Natural Resources Conservation Service, explained that an indicator of healthy soil is its ability to take in and store water. When soil doesn’t do that, the water runs off and takes nutrients with it — something that hurts the environment and a farmer’s bottom line.
“A healthy functioning soil ecosystem can provide us with services,” Newton said. “When we think about soil health and the services that our soils can provide for us, we first think of productivity, whether it’s food, fiber, feed. A healthy, functioning soil can provide us with productive, healthy crops.”
How soil is managed impacts its health, so employing some or all of the five soil health principles can improve its function. Those principles include reducing disturbance, keeping a living root in the ground for as much of the year as possible, increasing diversity of plants, adding cover to the soil and allowing livestock to graze plots.
Hybrid seeds have been planted in most of the demonstration field, and representatives of those seed companies spoke to the benefits of those corn crops. Specifically, the corn has a shorter season and higher drought tolerance that make the plants ideal for the conditions on Colorado’s plains.
To see how these crops are doing, throughout the season the conservation district has used probes from Sentek Soil Moisture Monitoring Solutions to understand when crops need water and how deeply the water is penetrating the soil. There are seven sensors throughout the plot gathering data on the soil moisture.
The biggest focus of the demonstration plot has been on interseeding. Along with corn, various rows of the plot have been planted with a cover crop seed mix to add that diversity component to the soil management.
Dennis Schwarzkopf of Buffalo Brand Seed explained that the corn is only going to take the sun and water that it needs, so adding cover crops doesn’t take away nutrients from the crop.
“People say, oh, it’s taking everything away from your corn plant. No, it’s actually making that corn plant live in harmony,” Schwarzkopf said. “Corn loves moisture and humidity, and that’s why it’s taken so long for corn yields out here to make up for the lag versus the Midwest where there’s a lot more moisture.”
By using this management method, the soil becomes a lot healthier and moister.
“I get into a lot of arguments speaking in front of farmers because there’s always been the adage, ‘I’m a farmer. I’m a steward of the land.’ That’s a misnomer. For 150 years, we destroyed the land,” Schwarzkopf said. “… You can do this (companion crop) over a period of years, bring that soil back to balance, use less nutrients and get a higher yield, and you improve the one thing we can never replace: You’ve improved the soil.”
Van Thuyne’s crop will likely be harvested and sold for dairy bedding or baled and hauled out, Ward said. He added that while no one has expressed interest in grazing yet, he believes someone likely will due to the density of biomass in the plot.
