Balls' Nuffield Trip: Indian Head Agricultural Research Foundation

Catching up with Guy was very good. We had caught up a few times since 2000. Guy is the senior researcher and manager of Indian Head Research Farm. Guy’s work mainly revolves around crop agronomy and the interaction between crops and soils. He has been working with Jim Halford of Conserva-Pak fame to see the effect of No-Till on prairie soils, degraded soil and 20 year no-till farmed soil.

All the soils in the trial have a sandy loam texture with the unfarmed prairie soils having high organic matter but with structure. Simce Jim has been no-till for twenty years he has bought his soil back to the equivalent of native prairie soils. The highly degraded soils are paddocks that Jim had recently purchased which had been conventionally farmed. This soil had less than 1% organic matter.

Guy has been looking at the amount of nitrogen that still has an economical response from the application on the soils of the trial. The long term no-till soils do not respond to an increase in nitrogen fertilisers above 40kg N/ha. This is showing that the nutrients are cycling quickly and is readily used by the plant.

Sandy Loam with High Organic Matter & Dark Colour

Guy’s work with other trials shows that organic matter has lots of benefits on the soils and is easily summarised by:
• Organic matter is a slow release form of nitrogen, phosphorous and sulphur for plant nutrition and microbial growth.
• Organic matter has considerable water holding capacity, therefore helps to hold water in the soil.
• Organic matter buffers against changes in pH or acidity of a soil.
• The dark colour of organic matter enhances absorption of energy from the sun and helps heat the soil.
• Organic materials are cement that holds clay and silt particles together, thus contribution to the granular or crumb structure of the soil, resulting in a more porous soil, with higher infiltration of water, a greater resistance to erosion.
• Organic matter binds nutrient ions (K, Ca, Mg) in the soil that otherwise might be leached or lost from surface horizons.
• Organic constituents in the humus may act as plant growth stimulants

At Indian Head farm they have a sizeable chunk of land, so they can do trials from single row right up to paddock (farmer) size. Alos it is big enough to find new land each year upon which a trial has not be done for 5 years. The farm produce can all be sold and put into new equipment and infra structure.