Guano Fertiliser Improves Soil Health

Suddenly we live in crazy and challenging times, a rude welcome into the 2020’s.

No more trips to clients, field days or conferences for us. My last trip arriving home on March 20^th from Ariah Park Field Day NSW. We traveled across the Hay Plains to get back home, we didn’t see many trees on the Plains

The Ariah Park Field Day was organized by local farmer Col Harper, who is another example of a farmer seeking out ways to improve soil health and diversity in their farming operations.

The Soil Health Field Expo

Titled “The Soil Health Field Expo”, Col Harper introduced it this way –

Soil health has been forgotten in favour of chemical

manipulation of the soil in an attempt to fix the symptom while

overlooking the problems that caused those symptoms in the

first place. Join us on this learning curve that can bring

enjoyment back to farming, lower input costs, lower financial

risk, improve your soil, your crop/pasture health, stock health,

human health and our environment.

Pretty much sums it up.  See more information on Col Harper farming ideas

Anne a farmer from Coonamble with a university degree in soil health shared her and Husband Ray results and supporting data from their experiences on their farm. As usual much discussion followed over drinks.

Very positive results abound from focusing on improving health and nutritional status of soils. One, from an Adelaide University PhD student Kara Levin reporting in the Crop Science Newsletter on her attendance at the American Society of Plant Biologist Conference California 2019. It will be interesting to follow her further research work.

“The most helpful symposium for my research was the section ‘Plant Disease and Resistance Mechanisms’. A very important concept presented was the fact that there is a dynamic relationship in immune response signaling or symbiosis based on the nutrient status of plants. In other words, a plant is more receptive to symbiosis when it is deficient in nutrients but will trigger an immune response if it is nutrient-sufficient. This may have implications in my research on parasitic interactions between nematodes and plants; would the host plant behave differently under different nutrient levels”?

Active diverse biology in soils has long been known to increase nutrient availability to plants as well as moisture holding capacity of soils. This biology out competes nematodes and pathogens which damages root systems and thus the chemicals that control them are no longer needed.

Unlike most traditional fertilisers SMS Guano is rich in all nutrients as well as being very attractive to soil biology which in research trials show soil microbes and fungi homing in on the Guano granules as soon as there is moisture in the soil. In turn the healthy rhizosphere created as a result greatly increases plant health and productivity.