Potatoes and Soil Health
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
One of the principles of soil health is to reduce soil disturbance. But what about in crops like potatoes where soil disturbance is inevitable? Dr. Michelle D’Souza of McCain Foods believes that’s where regenerative practices come in, especially in rotational crops.
D’Souza… “You are gonna disturb the soil. We know that disturbing soil has some detriment to soil life, carbon emissions, all of these things that we care about. So how do you do things in those other years to mitigate some of that damage? That's really, I think, how we need to tackle regenerative agriculture in potato systems.”
Dr. D’Souza says the proof is in the pudding, or in this case, the biodiversity of the field.
D’Souza… “The easiest thing that I think most people see when they come onto the farm of the future is you take a shovel and you try and stick it in the ground how easily that shovel can go into our fields versus going into some of our control fields where we haven't done regenerative practices. How many earthworms you get to uncover. After a really heavy rainfall going in and seeing how the rocks kind of pop up on the fields where we haven't done regenerative practices because you're seeing erosion in real time versus not. It's these things like you can see it happening.”
Again that’s Michelle D’Souza of McCain Foods.
