Is rganic’s

soil based

standard all

washed up?

Dr. Michelle Wander (mwander@illinois.edu)

Department of Natural Resources and Environmental

Science, University of Illinois

Commoditization

• process that gave birth to a specific category of goods called ‘primary commodities’, clearly different from manufactured goods.

• the construction of product homogeneity – a necessary condition for pure and perfect competition (Marshall, 1890) – is the core of the process of commoditization (ready trade)

• good or service whose wide availability typically leads to smaller profit margins and diminishes the importance of factors (as brand name) other than price

• typically products are inputs for manufacture or production of other goods, require standardization to facilitate supply by multiple vendors

• Commoditization occurs as a goods or services markets lose differentiation across its supply base

Darnhofer et al. 2011

What’s in a label?

• Holistic

• Biodynamic

• Regenerative

• Organic

• Permaculture

• Natural

• Regenerative

Regenerative Organic Certification

Soil Health

Animal Welfare

Organic

Social fairness

Organic Agriculture's Ongoing

Contribution to Soil Health and the

Oeconomy

Soil as the foundation for health

A legacy of Natural Philosophy wherein notions theoeconomy, which referred to the divine government of the natural world, saw a system that matched needs in an efficient if not perfect manner (Worster 1977).

Nature-based conceptualization of the Oeconomy that connects nutrient cycling to societal health. (Balfor, Howard, Steiner, Holmgren, Albrecht etc.)

IFOAM norms promote adoption of environmentally, socially, and economically sound systems based on organic principles of health, ecology, fairness and carethat explicitly link the health of individuals and communities to the health of ecosystems and clearly state that the development of living soils is the foundation of organic production.

Organic Soil Stewardship

Paradigm- framed in 1946

Soil and soil management is the foundation of organic production.

Organic growing systems are soil based, they care for the soil and surrounding ecosystems and provide support for a diversity of species while encouraging nutrient cycling and mitigating soil and nutrient losses.

IFOAM Norms, 2002

Sustainability standards for agriculture

Sustainable Ag History in US

1962 1989

1940s-present

1985

2012

19951985-2008

2007

Organic certification

means?

1. Food purity

2. Environmental protection

3. Social responsibility

4. All of the above

5. Other

Organic Systems Plan

• Avoid use of synthetic pesticides

• Avoid use of synthetic fertilizers

• Avoid use of genetically engineered crops

• Maintain or enhance soil health, limit erosion

• Use crop diversity

• Use organic sources of fertility

• Maximize use of local on/farm resources

• Protect off farm land, water resources

• Protect biodiversity

1992 Organic Food Production Act

• Does not explicitly state soil and its care are foundational to organic systems.

• Does explicitly call for use of practices that foster soil fertility by managing soil organic matter using ‘proper tillage, crop rotation, and manuring’

• Requires producers to consider ‘site-specific conditions by integrating cultural, biological, and mechanical practices that foster cycling of resources, promote ecological balance, and conserve biodiversity’.

Soil Defining Moments

• Soil is a natural body formed in place through the effects of edaphic and environmental factors that include climate, biology and relief acting on parent material over a period of time.

• Soil-based production practices literally ground agriculture, allowing good soil stewards to ‘pay it forward’ in places where they are applied.

• NOSB Crops Committee in their 2010 recommended Production Standards for Terrestrial Plants in Containers and Enclosures asserted growing media should be considered ‘soil’ because most soil dwelling organisms can thrive in a well-made compost

NOSB Task force on hydroponics 2016

"Observing the framework of organic farming based on its foundation of sound management of soil biology and ecology, it becomes clear that systems of crop production that eliminate soil from the system, such as hydroponics or aeroponics, cannot be considered as examples of acceptable organic farming practices. Hydroponics" “...cannot be classified as certified organic growing methods due to their exclusion of the soil-plant ecology intrinsic to organic farming systems and USDA/NOP regulations governing them.”

?????????????????????

Not clear what will happen at the 2019 Fall NOSB meeting

‘Organic’ is an aspirational standard achieved

through soil stewardship

A. Soil Fertility- The relative ability of a soil to supply

the nutrients essential to plant growth.

B. Soil Productivity- The capacity of a soil to produce

a certain yield of crops or other plants with a

specified system of management.

C. Soil Quality- The capacity of a soil to function

within ecosystem boundaries to sustain biological

productivity, maintain environmental quality, and

promote plant and animal health.

Change ‘open’ systems with rapid cycling and large fluxes to systems that

simultaneously retain and supply more from internal reserves

Mineral

forms

Organic and

occluded forms

-

Use rotation, crop, and management choices to

change the nature of nutrient and water cycles

Mineral

and

gaseous

losses

Mineral

and

gaseous

losses

Principles of organic soil stewardship

• Biologically based fertility- not organic by substitution

• Emphasis on biologically sourced N through N fixation and judicious use of

manures and composts- system dependent!

• Use of plants to liberate nutrients from organic and inorganic sources

• Facilitate plant-microbe associations (beneficial microbes)

• Reduced reliance on external inputs

• This promotes self sufficiency

• Local purchasing benefits community

• Reduces cost of production

• Create a healthy system

• Produce superior products

• Promote disease and pest suppression through rotation and cultivar selection

(management should be proactive rather than reactive)

• Judicious use of inputs (what, when and where) can promote plant and animal

health by maintaining balance and efficiency

Rodale Research Center’s FST; Left is organic plots, right is a BMP, corn/soy

rotation no cover crops, in drought year. Photo courtesy of Evian Bitan

Performance: Yield Stability, Resistance

to Drought

Resistance to erosion, improved drainage

DOK plots, organic compost v conventional

Photo

courtesy

of Evian

Bitan

Reductions of Nutrient Export

Average Nitrate-N Concentration by Crop

0.00

1.00

2.00

3.00

4.00

5.00

6.00

7.00

8.00

9.00

10.00

Corn Soybean Small Grain Green Manure

Co

ncen

tratio

n (m

g/L

or

pp

m)

Conventional

Organic

Same Crop - Same Year

Nitrate-N Concentration Comparison

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

20

Site 1 Site 1 Site 1 Site 1 Site 2 Site 2 Site 2 Site 3 Site 3 Site 3 Site 4 Site 4 Site 4 Site 5 Site 5

'98 Corn '99 Soy '02 Corn '03 Soy '99 Corn '00 Soy '03 Corn '98 Soy '01 Corn '02 Soy '00 Soy '02 Corn '03 Soy '97 Corn '98 Soy

NO

3-N

Concentr

ation (m

g/L

or

ppm

)

Conventional

Organic

Greg McIsaac, Organic Agronomy Day 2005

How to increase water and nutrient use

efficiency

Samples collected from Illinois farm fields

CT; conventional corn soy

RT; conventional corn soy

R-CT; diversified, 3 of 4 were organic

Nissen and Wander, 2003

Leached N

(g m

-2)

0.00

0.25

0.50

0.75

1.00

1.25Fertilizer-derived N

Soil-derived N

b a b

ab b a

A

AA

CT NT R-CT

Bio

mass N

(g m

-2)

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

a b ab

abb

A

AB

B

CT NT R-CT

Kg N ha-1

fertilizer

0 75 150 225

Bio

mass (

g)

8

10

12

14

16

18

20

22

24

No till, short rotation

Conventional till, diverse rotation

Conventional rotation

Credibility: organic conventional comparisons

• Biologically based fertility

• Emphasis on biologically sourced N and judicious use of external inputs

• Use of plants to liberate nutrients P, K others from organic and inorganic sources

• Facilitate plant-microbe associations (beneficial microbes) and suppress pest

• Reduced reliance on external inputs

• This promotes self sufficiency

• Local purchasing benefits community

• Reduces cost of production

• Create a healthy system

• Produce superior products

• Promote disease and pest suppression through rotation and cultivar selection (management should be proactive rather than reactive)

• Judicious use of inputs (what, when and where) can promote plant and animal health by maintaining balance and efficiency

Average Nitrate-N Concentration by Crop

0.00

1.00

2.00

3.00

4.00

5.00

6.00

7.00

8.00

9.00

10.00

Corn Soybean Small Grain Green Manure

Co

ncen

tratio

n (m

g/L

or

pp

m)

Conventional

Organic

Doc plots, FST from Evian Bitan; NO3 leaching from

Greg McIsaac, Biodiversity Deb Letoureau

Effect of Cropping Systems on SOM

Depth of sampling (cm)

0-10 0-15 0-20 0-30

SO

C r

esp

on

se r

ati

o

0.9

1.0

1.1

1.2

1.3

1.4

1.5

Organic Cons-Till No-TillUgarte et al. 2014

)(controlalconvention

practiceealternativr =

Nature and the Oeconomy

Phlogiston and humus

theories

Rational agriculture

4th Century

BCE Aristotle

On Generation and

Corruption

29 BCE Virgil The Georgics

1563

Bernard

Palissay Recette Veritable

1924

Rudolf

Steiner

Spiritual Foundations

for the Renewal of

Agriculture

1940

Lord

Nortbourne Look to the Land

1949 Aldo Leopold

A Sand County

Almanac

1977

Wendell

Berry

The Unsettling of

America: Culture and

Agriculture

1985

Masanobu

Fukuoka

The Natural Way of

Farming: the Theory

and Practice of Green

Philosophy

1996

Mohan

Deshpande

Organic Farming wrt

Cosmic Energy

1661 Robert Boyle Skeptical Chemist

1804

Nicolas de

Sassure

Chemical Researches

on Vegetation

1813

Sir Humphrey

Davy

Elements of

Agricultural Chemistry

1826 Carl Sprengel

About Plant Humus,

Humic Acids and Salts

of Humic Acids

1840 Justis von Leibig

Organic Chemistry in

its Application to

Agriculture and

Physiology

1860 Louis Pasteur

Expériences Rrelatives

aux Générations Dites

Spontanées

1862 Louis Pasteur

Note Remise au

Ministère de

l’Instruction Publique

et des Cultes, Sur sa

Demande

Conceptual framing soil stewardship paradigm

1809 Albrect Thaer Principles of Rationale Agriculture

1881

Charles

Darwin

The Formation of Vegetable

Mould Through the Action of

Worms

1910 Cyril Hopkins

Soil Fertility and Permanent

Agriculture

1911 F.H. King

Farming of Forty Centuries in

China, Korea, and Japan

1938

William

Albrecht

Loss of Organic Matter and its

Restoration” in ‘Soils and Men’

1942 Lady Balfour The Living Soil

1943

Albert

Howard An Agricultural Testament

1945

Jerome Irving

Rodale

Pay Dirt: Farming and Gardening

with Composts

1947

Ehrenfried

Pfieffer,

Soil Fertility, Renewal and

Preservation: Bio-Dynamic

Farming and Gardening

1947

Ehrenfried

Pfieffer

Soil Fertility, Renewal and

Preservation: Bio-Dynamic

Farming and Gardening

1975

William

Albrecht The Albrecht Papers

Soil Centrism Widespread

“Decreasing food quality

with distance from the soil

Unfortunately consumer

and producer do not meet

each other, nor do their

separate desires meet

through the common

market

Quality is remembered

long after the price is

forgotten “

W. Albrecht

Soil Health as a Business Imperative

• Soil Health Institute

• The Fertilizer Institute

• Soil Health Partnership

• The Nature Conservancy

• Farm Foundation, Soil Renaissance

• National Association of Conservation Districts

• Conservation Technology Information Center

• Natural Resources Conservation Service

• Soil and Water Conservation Society

• Tri-Societies

• Global Soil Security

Dynamic Soil

Health Landscape

• a private nonprofit research entity initiated by the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation and the Farm Foundation (Stott, 2018)

• 2017 the SHI and key partners (the Nature Conservancy, and the Soil Health Partnership), received $20M to advance soil health goals. Half of the funds were provided as ‘matching funds’ by General Mills, Wal-Mart, the Walton Foundation and other private partners for dollars provided by USDA through the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR),

• FFAR a public nonprofit established by the 2014 Farm Bill (USDA, 2014) to foster public-private partnerships by matching public money.

‘Organic’ is an aspirational standard achieved

through soil stewardship

A. Soil Fertility- The relative ability of a soil to supply

the nutrients essential to plant growth.

B. Soil Productivity- The capacity of a soil to produce

a certain yield of crops or other plants with a

specified system of management.

C. Soil Quality- The capacity of a soil to function

within ecosystem boundaries to sustain biological

productivity, maintain environmental quality, and

promote plant and animal health.

Soil Quality ≠ Soil Health ≠ Soil Fertility

• For any soil quality or soil health effort to be legitimate it will need to ensure that indicator scoring and integration steps do not allow users to trade off environmental or cultural services in favor of productivity (Baveye 2017; Greiner et al. 2017).

• Must contend with subjective aspects of indicator interpretation raised by Sojka and Upchurch (1999) and Sojka et al. (2003)

• Very few studies have established direct (quantitative) links between soil quality indicator status and environmental outcomes or soil services beyond productivity

Rin

ot

et

al.

20

18

(In

form

ed

by A

nd

rew

s e

t a

l., 2

00

4).

Natural Capital’s Link to Economy

Robinson et al. 2011

Soil Fertility/Productivity/Quality

Biological *Chemical Physical Active Carbon pH Texture

Potenitally mineralizable N EC Bulk density

Soil respiration N,P,K Depth of rooting

Yield Organic Matter Infiltration

Water holding capacity

Tilth

Proposed Minimum Data Set to measure ‘soil quality or

health’ builds on standard soil tests (*Chemical measures)

NC-ERA-59: Soil Organic Matter: Formation,

Function and Management 1996

Soil Health Assessment

Tier 1

Physical:

• Texture, Water Stable Aggregates, Bulk Density, Penetrometer, Visual Erosion Rating

Chemical:

• Standard fertility tests (N, P,K, micronutrients, pH, CEC, Base Saturation), EC, protein

Biological:

• Respiration

Tier 2

– Micro-aggregate stability

– Enzyme activity- beta

glucocidase activity

– Permanganate oxidizable

carbon

Measuring Soil Health

Tier 1 Soil Health Institute Indicators NCR-59 Minimum Data

Set from 1994

PhysicalTier 1 Indicators

Texture, water-stable aggregation (3 sieves,

separating macro- and micro-aggregates), bulk density,

penetration resistance, visual rating of erosion

Texture, Bulk Density, Depth of

Rooting, Infiltration, Water

Holding Capacity, Soil Structure

Chemical

Routine chemical analysis (N, P, K, micros,

pH, CEC, %BS, EC), soil organic C

pH, N,P,K, EC, Soil Organic Matter

Biological

Short-term C mineralization (respiration during 3-4 day

incubation), N mineralization, crop yield

Active C, Potentially Mineralizable

N, Soil Respiration, Crop Yield

Cornell Soil Health Test

Comprehensive

• Physical

– soil texture

– available water capacity

– field penetrometer resistance

– wet aggregate stability

• Biological

– organic matter content

– soil proteins

– respiration

– active carbon

• Chemical

– macro- nutrients

– micro-nutrients

Additional Indicators

• Biological– root pathogen pressure

– potentially mineralizablenitrogen

• Chemical– salinity and sodicity

– heavy metals

– boron

• Basic= $ 60

• Standard = $110

• Extended = $170

----------------Management Category---------------- --ANOVA-

-

Dynamic Soil Property Conventional Conservation Organic Mgt3

----------------Mean ± Standard Error---------------- --P value--

Total organic C (gC.kg-1) 18.45 ± 0.85 b 20.28 ± 0.89 a1 20.29 ± 0.85 a <0.010

Total N (gN.kg-1) 1.63 ± 0.06 b 1.72 ± 0.06 ab 1.75 ± 0.06 a 0.030

Soil C:N ratio 11.34± 0.27 a 11.96 ± 0.30 a 11.59 ± 0.27 a 0.244

POM-C (gC.kg-1) 1.47 ± 0.07 b 1.62 ± 0.08 ab 1.73 + 0.07 a 0.014

POM-N (gN.kg-1) 0.10 ± 0.01 b 0.11 ± 0.01 ab 0.13 + 0.01 a0.002

POM C:N ratio 14.83 ± 0.46 a 14.94 ± 0.50 a 13.8 ± 0.45 a 0.088

P min N (mgNH4.kg-1) 34.47 ± 0.11 a2 37.34 ± 0.11 a2 39.65 + 0.11 a2 0.124

FDA (µg FDA g-1 soil hr-1) 27.94 ±0.07 a2 29.67 ±0.07 a2 30.88 ± 0.06 a2 0.189

Soil pH 6.23 ± 0.07 b 6.24 ± 0.08 b 6.52 ± 0.07 a 0.006

Bray-1 P (mgP.kg-1) 20.04 ± 2.26 a 20.16 ± 2.48 a 19.71 ± 2.23 a NS4

Bulk density (g.cm-3) 1.4 ± 0.07 a 1.42 ± 0.08 a 1.4+ 0.07 a NS

Soil Indicators: Illinois farm fields (30-cm)

1Means followed by different letters within the same row are significantly different at α<0.10. 2 Standard errors are presented as untransformed natural logarithm values. 3 Refers to Conventional, Conservation, and Organic Management. Significance tests for Crop

and Management X Crop were not significant with α>0.25. 4 Not significant with α>0.25.

Ugarte et al. 2017

Measuring, monitoring, interpretation

Implementation of Standards

Aspirational (eg: organic) vs technocratic (eg: commodities)

metrics as guide posts. Use reflective versus quantitative

approaches.

Rotation Planner

Standards for Ag Performance

Goals Practices Indicators (my tier 1)

Efficient use of resources Rotation SOM and C/N ratios

Promote ecological

balance Organic fertility sources % SOM in Active C

Conserve biodiversity Judicious cultivation Aggregation/strength

Protect soil and water

resources Nutrient budgeting Infiltration and runoff

Recycle matter and

energy Planning tools (OSP, IPM) Water holding, porosity

Minimize waste Edge of field mgt Plant available N

Precautionary principle Cultivar selection Nematodes (food webs)

Perennialization Functional genes

Pollinator habitat Root health ratings

Wildlife refuges

Tier 3 Indicators: Biology, the

Circular Economy and Health

Care for the Organic Standard

• Keep asking important questions

• Take steps forward to remain a

leader in the soil health

movement

• Embrace and articulate how soil

centrism advances the circular

economy

• Use planning and visualization

tools to link practices to

aspirational goals