Spring is here and one of our greatest business assets is visually kicking into life again. As with all valuable assets, we should be working with the soil to help it help us. But how much do we really know about it and is it in optimum condition to really help us?
Soil is so valuable to our farm businesses yet we generally know very little about it. It provides the environment and sustenance for our pastures and crops to grow. These in turn provide the nutrition for our animals to grow and produce. Animals then provide food for us and other humans to feed, grow and maintain our bodies and minds. If it all starts in the soil and ends up with us, then how about we get to know how to encourage soil to be the best it can be?! After all, how your farm is managed has a great effect on the soil and long term profit from your business.
A great way to begin to understand the soil (without becoming a soil scientist) is to conduct a VSA or Visual Soil Assessment. The VSA technique was developed several years ago by Mr Graham Shepherd of Palmerston North in conjunction with other individuals and organisations, such as Landcare Research. It is a fantastic, easy and cheap way to objectively measure the quality of the soil. It requires basic equipment and can be learned as you go by following the text and picture examples. Mr Shepherd designed it so that anyone conducting the assessment should get roughly the same answer, whether it was their first time or they were seasoned campaigners.
VSA is based on the visual assessment of certain soil and plant performance indicators. These are presented on a score card and the specific soil quality measures are ranked with a score of 0 - 2. Mid scores of a 0.5 interval provide 5 possible readings for each measure. This ranking ultimately allows you to make cause and effect links between characteristics of the soil and our management practices, such as winter stocking rates, any pugging, grazing residuals and the like.
Measures examined and recorded for the soil part of the VSA includes soil structure, consistence and porosity. Soil colour is assessed as is the colour and number of soil mottles. Earthworm counts are taken and surface relief is noted. Soil erosion, topsoil depth and humus type are also accounted for. Depending on the contour and land use some of these measures are included or omitted i.e. for flat to rolling pastoral land, hill country pastoral land or cropping land.
The plant section of the VSA allows assessment of pasture composition, pasture growth and regrowth rates and pasture utilisation. The area of bare ground and drought stress are two further assessments, along with surface ponding and stock carrying capacity / fertiliser use. Several of these require prior knowledge of the land use so need to be completed by someone e.g. the manager, who knows past management practices.
There are optimum times for completing the test due to soil moisture conditions and timing of cropping etc. The time taken to carry out the VSA is about 20 mins once you have done a few of them and understood the method. All the details are contained in the Visual Soil Assessment booklet available free to all NZ farmers from Beef and Lamb NZ. Contact your local rep.
No-one is forcing you to do VSAs on your farm but just remember there is no substitute for the knowledge gained from objective measurement. Any way for you to open up the possibilities for your business is always worth a look and most importantly, action!