One thing all farmers have in common, is their desire to maximise their yields. With the Andermatt Madumbi Root Health programme, farmers have the chance to do just that – from the root up.
With 25 years of farming experience, Mark Hutton, agricultural bio specialist at Andermatt Madumbi, learned to appreciate the value of healthy soil through his own farming ventures.
Hutton was running a crop operation, planting maize and dry beans. He farmed using traditional methods, but his yields kept decreasing. “I saw first-hand how quickly I managed to degenerate the soil. I never clearly understood that worms meant healthy soil.”
After his fourth year of crop farming, the reduction in his yields ignited Hutton’s thinking. “I started to see a decrease in production and that’s when I started to ask myself the question, ‘What am I doing that’s creating a decrease in yields?'”
Since then, Hutton has learned much more about the value of a healthy soil. “Soil is a living ecosystem. There’s change all the time.”
Shift the focus downwards
Traditionally, farmers focus on the health of their crops to ensure the maximum yield. Hutton says that it starts much deeper: a living soil provides crops with the nutrients they need, and at the right time. “Healthy soil has to have microbes… and it has to have carbon or organic matter. That constitutes a healthy soil.”
Conventionally, farmers improve their yields by applying fertilisers and chemicals to their crops, but Hutton says this focus on crop health ignores the actual soil to a large extent. “To build nutrient density, we’ve got to add nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, sulphur and calcium. [But] what about all the other nutrients that a plant needs that we’re not putting back into the soil?”
This is why products like Andermatt Madumbi Root Health are so important. With Biostimulant solutions like V12 initiate, calcium and silica are slowly released into the soil, making it ideal for the early growth phases of your plants. The product supports and optimises germination or bud bursts.
Hutton emphasises that, for farmers starting out, their soil should be their primary focus. “We want to farm soil, then we don’t really need to worry about the crop.”
Healthy soil stores more water
Microbes are required for healthy soils, but of course, there is more to it. Hutton emphasises that soil microbes need to be aerobic. In other words, the soil needs to be oxygenated for the microbes to flourish. With anaerobic microbes, or microbes with no access to oxygen, the soil will start to decline.
“We’ve got to have aerobic microbes. If we’ve got anaerobic microbes, we are going to end up with soil diseases, which will ultimately kill the plant. We’ve got to have nutrient recycling and nutrients available to the plant. We’ve [also] got to have higher water-holding capacity and good water filtration.”
Hutton says that soil with a high water-holding capacity contains a good organic matter percentage.
“For every 1% organic matter in the soil, you can hold up to – and the figures may vary – 100 000 litres of water in your soil.”
“[This is useful] if you think of a situation where you’ve got a drought, or you don’t have irrigation. Remember, a healthy, living soil has a great impact on water retention.”
Another bio stimulant solution in the Root Health programme, is RhizoVital. This bio stimulant contains a beneficial bacterium which enhances root development. It thereby improves and enhances the roots’ access to water as well as nutrients. The product helps increase plant vigour and vitality and is effective on a wide variety of plant types. It is also compatible with most fertilisers and fungicides.
Healthy roots create resilient plants
Pests and diseases pose a huge risk to crop farmers. Hutton points out that, with the continued rise in temperatures caused by global warming, pest life cycles speed up. ”Because their life cycle is speeding up, we have more pests in our orchards or in our crops.”
To combat this, farmers need to ensure that their crops are healthier and more nutrient-dense. Healthier plants are more resistant to disease, therefore building a healthier, more resilient plant is key. The best way to do this, is to start with the soil.
“[When] building a programme that encompasses the entire environment, soil is your foundation. Wherever I see a farmer actually farming the soil, all these things start to change. There’s a big shift; a dramatic shift, and it becomes easier for the farmer to actually start to combat pests and diseases.”
A huge benefit of the Root Health programme is that it increases the resilience of crops. Eco-T, the root health bio fungicide solution, inoculates soil with Trichoderma asperellum, which is a beneficial fungus. The product increases crops’ tolerance to abiotic and biotic stress and strengthens the plants against disease.
Agrisil K50, a bio stimulant, is particularly formulated to increase plant resistance to weather and disease. It improves crop quality by strengthening the plant cells and improves the crop’s resistance to pests.
Through the Root Health programme, farmers have managed to cultivate healthier, more resilient crops. “What we’ve seen so far [is that] the [farmers] who are focusing on soils are definitely starting to see a decrease in costs because we built a stronger, more resilient plant that fights back on its own. They are starting to use less chemicals. They are using softer products. And it’s been successful.”
ALSO READ: ‘Soil health can save us all’ – World Food Prize winner
Sign up for Farmer’s Inside Track: Join our exclusive platform for new entrants into farming and agri-business, with newsletters and podcasts.
