We know that a well planned and well implemented soil fertility and crop nutrition program on your farm is the key foundation for a long term healthy, profitable farming operation.
Well balanced, highly mineralized soils and crop feeding programs that are biologically active will benefit to your farming operation in many ways:
1. Give you higher profits by providing your customers with high quality, nutrient dense products – food products that are nutrient dense will have great taste. Cut flowers will have better shelf life. Nutrient dense products therefore allow growers to command higher prices in the market. Nutrient dense foods also provide your customers with the best medicine against illness and degenerative diseases.
2. Save you money by reducing your requirement for insecticides and fungicides – minerally deficient crops fail to convert nitrates to protein and amino acids resulting in a build up of nitrates and reducing sugars – these are the exact conditions that attract pests and diseases. Crops on your farm that are well mineralized will always make this successful conversion of nitrates and thus will not be attacked so readily by insects and diseases, allowing large savings on pesticides.
3. Save you money by reducing your requirement for soil applied pesticides – soils that have great soil microbial diversity will be able to control soil born disease pathogens from dominating the soil environment by direct competition for food sources. Controlling the C:N ratio in your soils is critical for managing soil pathogens – excess nitrogen in low available carbon soils is a recipe for soil pathogen attack.
4. Save you money by reducing your herbicide applications – well adapted weeds grow much stonger than commercial crops in poorly balanced soils. It is well documented that grass weeds are indicators of calcium deficiency and low oxygen soils and broadleaf weeds indicate a low P:K ratio (both these conditions are typical of many Kenyan highland soils). As soils are balanced and mineralized, weed pressure reduces.
5. Save you money by reducing your fertilizer rates – many of our soils have large amounts of nutrients present in an unavailable form and many of our fertilizer nutrients are leached from our soils. This is due to soil imbalances and excess acidity and poor soil aearation, leading to a poor environment for promoting biological activity. Correct soil biology, including nitrogen fixing bacteria, is the key to building and holding soluble nutrients in the root zone and for releasing locked up nutrients ….so when your soil minerals are balanced, pH corrected and soil biology is built up, you will benefit from applying lower rates of crop fertilizers. In addition, soil testing indicates exactly how much fertilizer to use, so when levels of a particular nutrient are high, we can give you recommendations to reduce fertilizer rates that match the exact needs of each of your fields.
6. Save you money by improving your water use efficiency (less water needed per tonne of crop) – well managed crop rotation and cover cropping on your farm will build humus levels (organic matter levels). Humus holds four times its own weight in water – therefore for every 1% organic matter that you build up in your soils, you can hold approximately 48,000 more litres of water for your crop which greatly reduces irrigation and rainfall lossess.
7. Greatly reduce soil erosion and environmental contamination – with increased humus and optimum calcium to magnesium balance in your soils, the healthy soil structure will be able to resist soil and nutrient loss (pollution) through erosion. Our approach follows Dr. Albrecht who believed in “feeding the soil, and letting the soil feed the plant”…this approach mean excess fertilizers are never applied, so run off of nitrates and phosphates is minimized.
8. Reduce global warming – by capturing and storing carbon in your soils through improved crop residue management as a result of a healthy microbial soil population which enables rapid residue digestion and carbon sequestration. For every 1% organic matter built up in your soils, you are storing approximatly an extra 12 tonnes of carbon. Carbon trading will be a possibility for East Africa farmers in the future.
The above benefits can be achieved through a biological farming systems approach. “Biological farming” is an integration of correct nutrition and soil biology management – it is a system. These benefits will start to be realized on your farm within one growing season, depending on the level of implementation intensity. No two fields are the same, so the system must be adapted to the suit each specific situation.
Our objective is to offer you a complete range of professional soil and crop nutrient managment services which will enable you to make this highly profitable transition a sucess on your farm. These include:
1. Professional soil testing services - we offer you expert soil analytical services which cover the complete range of the most important soil fertility parameters and nutrients including soil pH, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, sodium, sulphur, iron, manganese, zinc, copper and boron. We detemine the level for each parameter, quickly identifying deficiencies and toxicities in your soils. This must be the first step in the whole program, as without this essential soil chemistry information, there is nothing to base your soil and fertilizer managment decisions on.
2. Recommendations on how to re-mineralize your farm soils – using our lab results from each field samples you send us, we calculate the eact amounts of each products that is needed to rebalance you soils using the Albrecht system. Calcium and phosphorus are critical component of the balancing process. These applications rates can be spread over several years, according to your budget.
3. Advice on how to build your soil humus levels and diversify your soil biology – our advisory services will show you how to build a soil with high levels humus and diverse biology. We use cover crops, green manure crops, nitrogen fixing rotation crops, composts, microbial inoculants and compost teas. Like all organisms, soil microbes are sensitive to environmental conditions. In order to build and allow your soil microbes to thrive you need to focus on managing your soil oxygen levels, soil moisture, food availability (nutrition) and general comfort (soil structure etc ) – this is key in the biological farming approach. You will find that putting microbial inoculants into a poorly balanced soil will not show results, as the environment will not allow them to survive - this is a waste of your money. You need to look at the basics first.
4. Advice on how to feed & activate your soil biology - we will advise you on how to activate your soil biology - this is what turns your soil “on”. A well balanced soil with a fully operating microbial population is the ultimate goal. Microbes are dependent on calcium and therefore optimum soil soil calcium levels are critical component of this system. Microbes require carbon as their primary food source so building humus (organic carbon) through good stubble and residue management is critical. Soluble carbon sources can also be applied to soils as an immediate source of food for the microbes.
5. Advice on how to minimize soil biology destruction in your fields – weuse chemicals only when absolutely necessary and when using them add in carbon sources to facilitate rapid breakdown and minimum residual effect on microbe populations. Herbicides are a big soil microbe killer and are especially harmful to free living nitrogen fixing bacteria. Fertilizer selection is also very important for preserving soil microbes and certain “toxic” fertilizers must be avoided in biological farming systems. Choose soil friendly fertilizers.
4. We monitor the efficiency of your crop feeding program – during various stages of cropping, we use the Reams soil extraction system that indicates immediately available plant nutrients. This information, in conjunction with leaf analysis tells us how well the soil biology and crop feeding program is working and we can make the necessary adjustments to maximize energy release in your soils at the lowest possible cost, both financially and environmentally.
5. We design the optimum Foliar Feeding Program for your crops – for higher input systems we advise on the use of special foliar feeds for boosting leaf production of sugars and supplying nutrients directly to the crop. In a well mineralized crop, up to 30% of sugars produced through photosynthesis are moved to the roots and feed the root surface dwelling microbes, boosting soil nutrient supply to the crop (especially important for free living nitrogen fixing bacteria, which can supply all your nitrogen needs). This part of the system only works effectively when soils are already balanced with calcium and when the crop is adequate in boron – boron allows for sugar translocation to feed these root dwelling microbes.
Currently, the worlds conventional system farmers rely heavily on chemical inputs of fertilizers and pesticides for high yielding crops. As the prices of these inputs continue to rise with increasing oil prices, many are asking how they will continue to farm profitably in the future.
Correct adoption of the biological farming systems approach, based on re-mineralizing and improving the biology of our soils, will reduce your reliance on these increasingly expensive inputs and will ultimately result in “HEALTHY, PROFITABLE FARMING” well into the future. This is our vision for East African farming.
SO INVEST NOW....
- Invest now in our soil testing and plant tissue analysis services for accurate soil fertility balancing, reducing your fertilizer and chemical inputs and improving the efficiency of your overall crop nutrition management for higher yields and better crop quality
- Invest now in our advisory services for technical assistance on how to implement the profitable and sustainable biological farming system on your farm
- Invest now in our hydroponics analysis for rapid monitoring and balancing of your nutrient solution for optimum flower quality and longer vase life
- Invest now in our irrigation water analysis services for monitoring your irrigation water quality and understanding how it can impact on your soil fertility and reduce your crop productivity if not correctly managed
- Invest now in our environmental analysis services to ensure your farming activity is not polluting your local environment and that your farm or industrial effluent water is conforming to national regulations (i.e. NEMA)
- Invest now in our compost/manure analysis to calculate total organic nutrients applied to your soils and to know by how much you can reduce your costly fertilizer applications
- Invest now in our nematode testing service to better manage the population of root damaging nematodes in your soils to avoid crop losses
- Invest now in our drinking water analysis service to keep you, your family and all your employees healthy and productive every day
- Invest now in our pesticide residue testing service to assure all your customers that they are recieving safe and healthy products from your farm
- Invest now in our fertilizer & lime analysis service to ensure the quality specs of the fertilizers, lime and other nutrient products you buy from your suppliers
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