Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["John D'hondt" <dhondt@eircom.net>]

The first thing that struck me when the farmer was complaining about not 
being able to go out on the land and give the crops what they need was that 
what was actually meant was ; " I can't go out spraying pesticides".
And there was I thinking that this might be a good thing.
Wetter conditions can be surmounted by planting different crops imo. There 
are many pulse species that like wet soils, just not soy beans. The coloured 
corn that we have been growing for the last 20 years does quite well on wet 
soils. All without spraying anything.
Perhaps the most important tactique is to have a wider variety of crops and 
get away more from monoculture. There has always been something that has 
done right well for us every summer however miserable the weather was. Hard 
to predict what that will be next year these days. Crops that have 
traditionally done very well may fail completely the next time for a number 
of reasons; mostly weather related or because of an exploding rodent 
population.
John

> Grim Harvest: Climate Change Sweeps Iowa Farms (Op-Ed)
> http://www.livescience.com/46863-iowa-farms-try-to-cope-with-climate-changes.html
>
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