61 Better Farming | January 2024 Ontario Ag Marketplace It’s almost Christmas and for those of us who celebrate the glorious season and best wishes, I send the blessing of health and happiness to everyone who is reading this. My name is Morley Wallace, and I am a true and solid believer in Innovative Fertile Stripping. A process of blending the fertility for your cropping season into the ground, prior to planting of your row crop. In the past few years, we have seen advancements in crop production as high as 30%. Fields that produced 163 bu/ac last year produced 206 bu/ac this year. Obviously, this is not a great field nor is it one of my best. that If I can do this, for this field, then what can be done for a good high organic field. I know you will check my math. With reduced fertilizer placed in the ground, and an increase in yield, my ROI is up. I booked 100 Tonn of Soybean this summer and we harvested 132 Tonn that is a 30% plus increase. With only part of my corn harvested we are averaging 263 bu/ac with most of the fields yielding 275 to 290 bu/ac. The yields are good in Eastern Ontario and My Innovative Fertile Stripping program is showing big ROI responses. Three years ago, when we started working the soils at the SMART FARM in Ottawa, we saw poor microbial activity, and cellulose trash was slow to break down. The soil response to the fertilizer, applied to plant growth, was slow and came late in the season. It dampened the yield for that year. Once we understood the microbial deficiency, then the lack of worms in the soil also made sense. That has changed, and in three years we have good microbial action, and the seagulls testified to the fact that the ground was alive with worms. This is Mother Natures way of saying we are doing a good job. Innovative Fertile Stripping is only working up 6” x 5” of soil and blending the fertilizer into that strip. The 20” Between the rows doesn’t get disturbed and those microbes and bacteria and worms continue to live and reproduce. The fertilizer that gets planted in the fall has additional time to break down and convert to food for next year’s crop. This also reduces and virtually eliminates the chance of burning the roots of the crop. To me this sounds like a fantastic program. We as farmers have grown up with the love of driving tractors, the bigger the better, and blackening the soil in the fall. Old habits die slowly, and plowing the soil for many of us has become a thing of the past. We hear that plowing is not good for the soil, but we still believe that we have to do some tillage every fall. Driving through the countryside there is hardly a field of harvested beans and harvested Corn that hasn’t been disced or ripped up in some way. If you do till that field, are there any birds feasting on the worms in the soil? If not then that is saying your soil is dead. If there are plentiful numbers of seagulls, and you have worked all the soil, then you are allowing the birds to steal your natural natures. Resources required to process the cellulose and crop trash. Plus the microbes on the surface have no protection, and they are being blasted by the sun. We have been told this, we know this, but we are still loving to work that soil. With Innovative Fertile Stripping I am also working a small portion of the soil, but the exposed surfaces allow easy access for the worms to come and go. This allows you to restore, rejuvenate, and rebuild the organic levels in the soil. As the picture is showing, they are doing a beautiful job of processing the surface but there is not a bird to be seen. We love to farm but we are “KILLING OUR SOILS WITH LOVE”. GROW MORE WITH LESS by MORLEY WALLACE GPS Ontario No seagulls in the field. KILLING OUR SOIL WITH LOVE Worms aggressively ate all the seeds off the cob.
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