Today, farmers in the United States and around the world face the same problem. How to maximize crop yield & quality, while keeping production costs down. The success of any farm program is based totally on production verses expenses. As soils are farmed season after season, crop production costs increase sharply, while crop quality and profit margins decrease.

How can this problem be overcome? The farmer can farm more acreage to make up for the smaller profit margin per acre farmed. In many cases, farming more acreage is not the answer due to the increased capital needed – equipment, labor, etc. Another solution is to farm virgin ground. In many areas there is not enough virgin ground available, or the virgin ground is too expensive to bring into production. The third and most promising solution for the farmer is to increase crop yield on the acreage they are farming, while decreasing their costs of production. This sounds easy, but is it?

For years, farmers have been advised to use more chemical fertilizers each season for better crop production. Time has shown that this may not always be effective, in either cost of production, yield, or crop quality. When commercial NPK fertilizers alone are used on relatively virgin soil, yields do increase for a period of time. As the seasons continue, more and more fertilizer is required to maintain these crop yields, but with time yields tend to fall off, instead of being maintained. Why?

The problem with today’s chemical agriculture is the fact that some farmers think they can simply grow crops solely with chemicals. They tend to disregard their soil’s condition completely, as it simply represents a growing medium for the crop. What they fail to realize is that unhealthy soils, no matter how many chemicals used, cannot maintain high quality, or high yielding crop production.

Due to continual farming over the years, our soils have become extremely susceptible to both water and wind erosion. Erosion is defined as the wearing away of the land surface by running water, wind, ice, or other geological agents. Due to modern farming practices, soil erosion has accelerated at an alarming rate. Even the best productive farmland is extremely susceptible to both wind and water erosion today.

Farmers today watch helplessly as their productive agricultural soils erode away at an ever increasing rate by both water runoff and wind. Even their irrigation water is eroding their soils away. Continuous cropping, crop residue removal (both physical removal and burning), non-selective insecticides, nematicides, soil fumigants, and harsh fertilizers, have all contributed to the present critical condition of our agricultural soils. New cultivation and harvesting equipment, have also added to today’s erosion problems. Farmers have disrupted the natural Humus Cycle that breaks plant residues into organic matter and finally into humus. Without proper humus in the soil, excessive erosion proceeds unchecked.

There are two methods commonly used to control furrow erosion in irrigated farmland that show some promise today. The first method accomplished by working grain straw into the furrows by a specially designed machine or spread by hand and worked into the soil with a shovel. The straw slows down the water runoff, thus decreasing soil erosion. The second method uses a variety of polymers that are incorporated into the soil. The polymers are made up of synthetic materials that absorb water. Both methods have some success in decreasing soil erosion under some conditions, but in many cases are cost prohibitive. The problem with both methods is that they deal with the symptoms NO the CAUSE of soil erosion.

The only way to solve the problem of soil erosion is to restore our soils to their once healthy, productive state. KozGro’s Agricultural Field Blend (AFB) not only adds humus to the soil, but sets up the environment to break down plant residues into organic matter and finally into the usable form, humus. AFB also helps to reestablish earthworms and other beneficial microorganism populations in the soil, creating a healthy living soil that is not prone to erosion.

KozGro’s Agricultural Field Blend works with nature – not against it.

By KozGro Organics